Revelations of a Sales Director
I am the Founder and CEO of Game Strategies, a company specialized in the development of AI, simulators, and video games for corporate training. I’ve been managing sales teams for 25 years and have trained over one million people in sales skills.
Throughout all this time, turnover in my sales team has been one of my biggest headaches. It has caused me enormous frustration, immeasurable costs, and has worn down my team significantly.
After working with more than 5,000 corporate clients around the world, it’s clear to me that I’m not the only one with this problem. A few days ago, an important client asked me for advice on the topic, and I thought it would be good to share it with anyone who might be interested in my opinion.
In this short text, I wanted to gather some of my “lessons learned” in case they can serve as inspiration for finding new ways to reduce turnover and increase your team’s productivity.
🔎 1. Hire the right salespeople
Many times, poor recruitment is the cause of high turnover. Improve the quality and the “fit” of your hires, and you’ll noticeably reduce turnover rates.
✅ Define your ideal profile precisely:
- Define your ideal candidate profile with the same care and detail you use to define your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).
- Don’t just look for sales experience or experience in your industry.
- Take into account soft skills, personal motivations, and cultural fit with your organization.
- Establish a “scoring” system for each of the traits you’re looking for in a candidate. And make sure your selection process is able to identify and quantify them.
✅ Perfect the recruitment process:
- Design a thorough process that clearly specifies what information needs to be gathered from each candidate at each step of the process.
- Don’t improvise during interviews. Prepare them well. Even if it seems like you don’t have time for this, I assure you there’s no better investment of your time.
- Properly train everyone involved in the process. They should know what to look for, how to do it, and which tools to use. And they must understand how critical this process is for the organization.
- Each step of the selection process should have its own well-defined structure, checklists, goals, evaluation system…
- Design questionnaires, tests, simulations, role plays, assessment centers… whatever tools are necessary to detect the skills you’re seeking.
- Hire slowly. Never make rushed decisions. Add one or two extra interviews for candidates you’re about to hire. Those final, more relaxed interviews will give you the best insights.
✅ Detect early warning signs:
- Observe how the candidate behaves throughout the selection process, especially during the negotiation phase. At this stage, you’ll clearly see the candidate’s personality and main motivations.
- From the very beginning, clearly set expectations, both the candidate’s and yours. Expectation management is key to controlling turnover. Be clear and transparent from the start, it will save you a lot of trouble.
- Avoid candidates who are only looking for a salary.
- Avoid people who change jobs every year.
- Avoid candidates who don’t fit your team’s culture.
- Avoid applicants who aren’t “coachable”.
- If you have doubts, don’t hire the candidate.
🚀 2. Accelerate the ramp-up of new salespeople
The first month is critical. Poor onboarding can lead a salesperson to leave before the trial period ends.
✅ Invest in designing a good onboarding process:
- Design the onboarding process. You wouldn’t believe how many sales teams don’t have a well-defined and structured onboarding process.
- Don’t overwhelm them with information on day 1. Design a phased learning plan.
- Combine different formats. Not everything should be face-to-face meetings or online info. Mix formats wisely to get the best results: in-person training sessions, online training, interviews, role plays, shadowing…
- Use innovative formats that capture the attention of your salespeople and boost retention. For example: you can use a video game to make your onboarding process more engaging and effective [learn more].
- Remember: the newly hired salesperson’s manager is the main person responsible for onboarding. You can’t delegate this.
✅ Assign a mentor or buddy:
- An experienced salesperson can help newcomers adapt faster and reduce initial stress.
- Assign someone on the team the task of introducing the newcomer to their colleagues, explaining how things work, and accompanying them during their first two weeks to help them feel comfortable and speed up the sense of belonging.
✅ Make sure your new salespeople get early wins:
- Provide qualified leads as early as possible.
- Offer quick opportunities to build confidence and motivation in the newcomers.
- Accompany them on their first sales and help them close.
- Do everything you can to accelerate their first sale. The sooner they close their first deal, the more likely they’ll be to stay on your team.
🎯 3. Offer continuous coaching
Even the best salespeople need proper support. Always.
✅ 1:1 meetings focused on growth:
- In your team meetings, don’t just review numbers. Of course, you must track KPIs, but you should also dedicate time to identify obstacles, find areas for improvement and learning, clarify strategies, and push your salespeople to grow and develop.
- Your team should feel they’re learning and developing with you. They should believe you can help them grow and improve.
- Remember: your job is to teach, remove obstacles, provide tools, and structure processes/systems that help your team achieve their goals.
- Learn how to coach. With some basic techniques, you can transform the way you influence your team.
✅ Culture of feedback and recognition:
- Give feedback constantly. Every time something is done well. Every time something is done poorly. You can’t wait for the performance review to give your team feedback.
- Learn how to give feedback properly. It’s your main management tool. Get our video game Aqua, about effective feedback, for free.
- Teach your team to receive feedback and use it as a tool for continuous improvement.
- Recognize achievements, exceptional efforts, commitment, alignment with corporate values…
- Accompany recognition with rewards when appropriate.
✅ Ongoing training and challenges:
- Top salespeople want to grow. Offer training, access to experts, and challenges that keep them engaged.
- Share with your team interesting reads, podcast episodes, books, book summaries, webinars…
- Offer different learning formats that attract and engage your salespeople. For example: AI-powered simulators and role plays, training video games, or collaborative learning games.
- Lead by example by constantly learning, reading, and researching.
- Become an example and a source of knowledge and new ideas for your team. That will make them see you as a leader worth following.
🚀 4. Motivate, Motivate, Motivate
Sales is a stressful and exhausting function. One of your main roles as a sales leader is to constantly keep your team members motivated.
- Offer a clear career plan: Define growth paths within the team. Share success stories of people who have grown within the company.
- Review your incentive scheme: Make sure commissions are competitive and motivating. Add non-monetary incentives like trips, recognition, or awards. Consider a balance between base salary and commissions to provide stability.
- Listen to your team: Hold regular meetings to learn about concerns and suggestions. Use climate surveys to detect problems before they cause resignations. Keep communication channels open and foster a trusting environment.
- Reduce negative pressure and improve the work environment: Set achievable and realistic goals. Foster team spirit instead of toxic competition. Recognize effort and celebrate achievements.
- Make work easier with efficient tools and processes: Provide CRMs and technology that optimize their work. Reduce administrative burden so they can focus on selling. Offer training on technology applied to sales. You may be interested in this quick guide to boost your sales with artificial intelligence.
- Take care of work-life balance: Avoid excessive work hours that lead to burnout. Promote a culture of respect for rest time. Implement flexible hours when possible.
- Create a culture of belonging: Organize integration and team-building activities. Involve the team in strategic decisions when possible. Reinforce the company’s values and mission so they feel part of something bigger.
📌 One last tip
You can reduce turnover in your team, but you will never be able to avoid it completely.
I recommend having a candidate funnel that supplies new profiles constantly. Set aside time to interview candidates every week. That way, when you lose a team member (or decide to replace one), you’ll be able to do it quickly and efficiently.
I hope these ideas, born from 25 years of making mistakes and personally suffering the negative impact of turnover in a sales team, can help you (even just a little).
Good luck!!
👉 You may be interested in this quick guide: the 5 most common mistakes in sales team management (and how to fix them)
