THE 3 MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES …

Today, I searched the internet for information on how to retain salespeople and for good discussions about salesperson turnover.  I wanted to know what others were saying about the costs and what to do about it.

When I looked at the search statistics in these areas using Google AdWords, I discovered something that alarmed me.  No one seemed to care about the search terms “salesperson turnover,” “sales rep turnover,” “salesperson retention,” or “how to retain salespeople.”  Despite the thousands of salespeople that turnover every day, month, and year, only 159 sales leaders and managers per month search for articles using these four search phrases.

When I mentioned this to my business partner, his reply was that people were looking for solution articles around recruiting, coaching, and managing salespeople.  He thought sales managers looked for how to develop as sales managers and coaches and that they may not look for problem words like turnover.  Now, I might agree with his reasoning until I looked at the search statistics for “employee turnover,” and noticed that thousands each month research articles for help in this area. I know that sales managers may do some of these searches.  However, with all the talk I hear about salesperson turnover and retention, no one puts the above search terms into Google.

What does this mean? Who knows?  Maybe, sales managers do not understand the costs and intangible negatives that occur.  What do you think?

For those concerned about salespeople and the costs of losing them, over the next few days stay tuned for a discussion about the “Costs, Causes, and Cures for Sales Rep Turnover in a Sales Force.”

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To get us started, think about what I see as the three most important issues surrounding this problem.

When a salesperson leaves a company, it hurts the:

  1. Life of the person leaving by wasting their time, work, and impacting their financial well-being by making them look for other sources of income to sustain themselves and their family.
  2. People being left while the person was employed or as the social fabric tears at their departure.
  3. Leadership of the company and their profit-making capabilities which ultimately hurts all stakeholders from President to co-workers to vendors.  Many companies lose millions of dollars each year.

Let’s work to select better, coach better, and get turnover down to 10% or less.
You can do this.  Do it.  It’s important to people.  Most want to be of value.  Lance.

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