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Hiring + Retention

sales lay off

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5 Things to Do Immediately After Being Laid off in Sales

Layoffs, Recessions, and RIFs (Ooooooh, my)

It’s a crap situation folks, no way around that. But if you’re in a revenue role and you smell it coming, or just got your notice, here are our top 5 tips to help you recover from a sales layoff:

  1. Attitude is everything. I don’t mean to not FEEL angry, sad, betrayed, and revenge-fueled! I just mean don’t show it. You’re in a fishbowl right now and everyone you rant to may actually be a prospective employer or referrer. And let’s face it, they’re all wondering if it was the company or it was you. We’ve heard that companies use uncertain economies to trim the fat, and telling the story of your betrayal may tip things in the direction of you being the problem. 
  2. Try a re-frame. Perhaps you were cut because you were the most expensive! It’s the most efficient way to cut costs, right? You may have not been as aligned with the new leadership or go-to-market strategy. It’s probably time to refresh your skills, sharpen the saw, and expand your horizons! What I’m talking about here is your internal self-talk AND your “packaging.” Are you a dejected, rejected, dime-a-dozen AE on the hunt? Or are you a senior-level, uber-expensive, in-demand revenue professional!? I thought so. 🙂 
  3. Get clear on what you want. For decades I’ve made a hobby of helping great people find great companies, and every time I get an email requesting help, I reply asking them to detail their dream job. I don’t mean title and income (you DID think that didn’t you!?). I mean what industry, working with what kinds of customers? What will you be learning? What kind of product or service would make you proud? How will your boss treat you, how do sell, and how will you be led and fed? Go nuts on the wish list and ask questions about past peeves like work hours, development opportunities, bosses and mentors, facilities, friends at work, tools, and more! When we know exactly what we want, we can describe that for people and INSTANTLY get better referrals than a generic, “anything in SaaS.”
    Try this: When I ask if you know someone who leads a new or growing sales team in the banking industry, runs an insurance house, or manages a team that sells into government, did your brain find someone? Could you feel it scanning deeper than, “Know anyone hiring?” When you help people picture someone they know, you’re more than halfway to a referral.

    I’m also a believer that putting it out there in the universe is necessary step #1 in bringing what we want to us!

  4. Brag a little. No, strike that. Brag a LOT. Your resume needs to be packed with results!
    Numbers Are The Love Language Of All Sales Leaders!

    Get yours in order! What percent did you increase market share? Was there a spike in metrics under your leadership? How many quarters did you exceed quota? How about your team? Did you win any records? Awards? Listen, if the very best thing you did was reach quota consistently realize that is a WIN! If you’re still there, start running reports to shore up your data.

    What else did you do? Customer satisfaction? Product development? Process documentation? Testimonial acquisition? New customer types? Lead with numbers and close with some voice of the customer. They’ll be lining up to talk to you!

  5. Call in the favors (by offering to help!) If you fear it’s coming but haven’t left yet, NOW is the time to work your network. Funny how our colleagues, customers, and friends lose our numbers when we leave (and listen, some actually do only know your work email). But a call from an employed friend calling to catch up and see how I am and how they can help me gets 10x the callbacks than my newly laid off buddy who wants to give me the Telenovela version of their unfair termination. So do as many favors as you can before you’re gone, so it’s easy to call up for the payback when you need it. Start your re-frame marketing campaign about where you’re headed and your desire to leave to move up or move on! Then find out how you can help THEM and do it. Reciprocity is real (and everyone will like you better.)

In short, approach this well-deserved break like the freaking diamond you are. There’s an international shortage of professional sellers – especially virtual sellers. Find an industry and company that’s thriving and package yourself as a FIND! I’m confident that YOU are something you can sell.

Good luck out there! If we can help you brush up on your selling skills at Factor 8 with free virtual sales BDR, AE, or Account Management training, please email us at info@factor8.com and mention this blog.

If you’re a woman in revenue leadership, please apply to join the #GirlsClub Sales Leadership Certification Program as a Protégé (new or aspiring manager) or Mentor (5+ years of leadership experience). Our amazing sponsors will help foot the bill.

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sales team development plan

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How to Create A Sales Team Development Plan and Budget

Professional development opportunities are a major factor in the decision to change jobs. That’s according to numerous research papers, including our recent Sales Team Retention survey. So if you want to improve employee satisfaction and stave off attrition, then a sales team development plan must be a top priority. 

By giving your reps a roadmap to build their skills and advance their careers, you give them a compelling reason to stay in your organization. Read on for actionable tips to build the perfect development plan for your sales team. 

Why is sales team development critical?

Sales team development is more important than ever. Ambition found that 98% of sales reps would stay with a company forever if they were given ongoing development opportunities. 

What’s more, companies that invest in sales team development put themselves at a significant competitive advantage by retaining talent. Losing a salesperson costs an average of $115,000. 

Your sales team is only as good as the people on that team. By investing in their development, both as individuals and as a group, you can improve their ability to meet quotas and move the needle. 

How to build a sales team development plan

Sales development doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of a lot of intentional strategy and effort and requires a commitment of resources from the organization. 

As such, it’s important to have a clear plan to get you from Point A to Point B. A cohesive development plan includes role definitions, resources, expectations, and timelines. Here are some steps you can take to develop your own. 

1. Establish a sales development budget

On average, 1–3% of the total annual budget should be earmarked for development. Small to medium businesses are spending more than $77,000 annually on outsourced sales training and development. Large companies spend more than five times as much. 

If you under or over-spend on sales development, that will create bigger problems down the road. Over-spending without generating results will cause you to lose buy-in among executive stakeholders. Under-spending is unlikely to generate positive results. 

By understanding your needs, you can set a realistic budget that suits your goals and needs and, more importantly, moves the needle in the right direction. 

Download our Sales Training Budget Guide to help you determine how much to budget for development.

2. Reallocate unused resources

There’s no point in spending money on tools and resources that no one uses. A great way to invest in development without increasing costs is to look for resources that you aren’t using. Rather than waste those dollars, use them to grow and improve your team. 

3. Identify high-impact opportunities 

Most companies have limited budgets. This is especially true in today’s economic climate. 

The key to an effective sales team development plan is knowing where to spend the most time and money. After all, you want your limited resources to go where they’ll have the greatest impact. 

This is where having high-quality managers makes all the difference. When you support your managers and empower them to make decisions around resource allocation, they can effectively support your sales reps at every stage of onboarding and production. 

Effective managers understand the best delivery methods for training and development. Live in-person and virtual training sessions are both great options for team training. For companies that are local, live training sessions are refreshing in today’s remote-heavy work environment. Getting reps face-to-face for in-person training is worth the cost of the return. For remote companies or spread-out teams, virtual sessions are a great alternative to in-person meetings. For best results avoid pre-recorded training videos. When participants are able to meet in person or join a live virtual session, they feel more engaged and collaborative, which promotes learning. 

4. Prioritize your tools and tech stack

Not all tools and technologies are created equal. For example, many sales teams have a digital resource library—a big expense content bank that no one uses. It’s important, then, to look at your current resources and decide which are actually empowering your team to do their jobs better.

Instead of thinking of technologies by their product class (e.g. “asset management platform”) think of them based on the problems they solve for your organization (e.g. storehouse of information to educate our reps). 

When you break out the mold, you may find other more creative solutions to the problem (e.g. interactive, live training sessions vs. pre-recorded talking-head videos). 

5. Make use of free resources

While it’s important to invest resources in sales development, there’s a wide range of free courses, webinars, and training available online. In an interactive group setting, these resources can be a valuable tool—and they don’t require additional buy-in from budget holders!

However, it’s not enough to simply throw these free resources at a rep without any context or structure. Prepare discussion questions and exercises to test skills during webinars and presentations. 

When reps take part in live discussions and practice the skills they’re learning, they’re more likely to retain and apply them when they hit the floor. 

6. Think outside the classroom 

Training and lecturing are two different things. Lecturing is telling someone how to do something, while training is actually showing them. 

Take new hires out of the classroom so they can see skills being put to use in real-life scenarios and how to put them into action themselves. 

7. Focus on moving the needle

Hiring and training salespeople is an investment. To get the best return on that investment, you can’t treat it as a one-and-done. Skill retention requires applied learning and repetition. 

Don’t waste your investment by neglecting follow-up sessions, coaching, and feedback. Good coaching builds on the skills learned in training and helps reps understand where they are and where they need to be. 

8. Leverage gamification

Gamifying information is an easy way to improve retention and increase problem-solving. New hires who are challenged to solve problems and demonstrate skills outside of the pressure of the sales floor feel safer trying new things. Contests, competitions, and similar tactics help reps use skills in dynamic ways.

Who needs a sales development plan?

You may be wondering: do you even need a sales development plan?

The answer is YES if you want to:

  • Meet quota consistently
  • Retain your team over the long haul
  • Improve morale 
  • Grow and scale your business

Regardless of size, every sales department needs certain skills and information to be successful. A comprehensive sales development plan lays the foundation for your team to build and adopt these skills. 

Reach out to learn more about our customizable virtual sales training programs and get the best out of people. 

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New Sales Rep Onboarding

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7 Hacks to Improve New Sales Rep Onboarding

When was the last time you learned something new as a sales leader? If you’re struggling to find an answer, that’s a problem. 

In fact, the problem is with our entire system of onboarding. Too many organizations see learning as an event, not a career-long process. So once the onboarding phase is complete, training stops, and sales reps are expected to figure things out on their own. 

But ask yourself this: how many salespeople know how to do their job perfectly and meet quotas consistently after a three-month training period?

Don’t worry. I’ll wait. 

Of course, that expectation is silly. Maybe that’s why 62% of companies consider themselves ineffective at onboarding new sales hires. 

No one—and I’m including myself—masters their job so quickly. We become proficient at sales, management, coaching, and leadership a little bit every day. Then one day, we wake up, and suddenly we’ve arrived!!! (That is until it’s time to upskill again.) 

So if you’re relying on a single onboarding phase to create perfectly competent reps, you’re missing the point. The goal of onboarding should be not competence, but confidence—which will motivate them to keep learning over their whole career. 

Not only that but with salesperson turnover at 1.7X higher than other fields, building confidence and empowering your reps to continually improve is a powerful tool to aid in retention. 

So how do you do onboarding the right way? Here are seven hacks that we’ve learned over our years of experience. 

1. Focus on confidence, not competence

I alluded to this already, but too many sales onboarding initiatives start out with the wrong goal. When you try to get reps to a certain competence level within 60-90 days, they just end up drinking from the fire hose, and very little of that knowledge sticks. 

So instead of the unrealistic goal of hitting quota within 90 days, make sales confidence your primary onboarding goal. Train the reps in a smaller number of high-impact topics, then send them out feeling like they’re ready to tackle the world.

THEN set up future training for them to continually upskill over the next months and years. If your reps are already confident, they’ll be anxious to improve themselves and will drink it all in!

2. Cover six primary competencies

Here are the six main competencies where you’ll have the most impact: 

  • Product. Not the history (no one cares—except maybe your investors). But how do you sell it? What problems does it solve? Emphasize benefits, not features. 
  • Systems. What resources do you have in place to support your reps? How do they access them? Where can they go with questions?
  • Process. What are the top five questions a rep will get from customers, and how should they address them? 
  • Acumen. Reps need to know certain basic industry and business terminology to sell in their territory. What do they need to know to be effective on day one?
  • Sales. You may think you’ve bought experience, but in today’s market, you can’t count on that. What basic sales competencies do reps need to have a solid grasp of? 
  • People. Who are the reps going to be working with on a day-to-day basis? Don’t just toss them over the wall—help them get to know their team. 
3. Cut off the talking head

No one learns anything from a talking head (and those that do probably aren’t in sales). Salespeople learn by doing. So don’t just talk at them—get them engaged in the material and using it. 

This is why it’s important to not only train your reps but also your managers. Managers are responsible for building a development culture in your organization. Your managers need to be trained on how to coach so they can help reps better develop their skills.

4. Hire reps in groups

If you want your salespeople to work as a team, hire them as a team. Training reps in groups is a great way to encourage more engagement with the material—and especially offline side discussions. Getting an entire cohort on board with the same material will only help everyone row in the same direction when they get onto the sales floor (or “virtual” sales floor). 

5. Work with third-party professional trainers

According to Aberdeen, 45% of best-in-class sales organizations use third-party sales trainers. With good reason—if you’ve hired a cohort of 20-25 reps, a single sales manager just doesn’t have the bandwidth to coach and train them all, especially in a virtual world. 

Professional sales trainers, on the other hand, will be able to get down in the mud with the reps, spending focused time on getting them up to speed and building their confidence. Remember: it’s important during onboarding to not only get the rep to process new information but encode it into their brains and bodies so they put it into practice. 

(Psst! If you’re searching for inside sales training vendors, check out what you should be looking for here.)

6. Leverage the Voice of the Customer

Your reps are going to be working with customers eventually. So why not incorporate the Voice of the Customer into your training? One great tip is to have a library of pre-recorded, model sales calls that you can pull up and walk through new hires with. These calls should demonstrate top objections and (most importantly) how reps should respond to them. 

7. Build a nest

If your goal is to build rep confidence, then it’s a good idea to have a safe place for them to go. (No, salespeople aren’t all tough as nails—we have a human side too!) Pairing reps with a designated nesting manager—usually a high-performing rep looking to move into management—can help them build confidence and skills. Keep in mind that a nesting manager is someone who’s purely developmental in focus. They’re not pulled in to save deals. They’re just about coaching people. 

Final thoughts on improving training + ramp time

Never underestimate the importance of a strong onboarding program. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. If you want reps to have a solid, lasting relationship with your company, then onboarding is the perfect chance to start that relationship on the right foot. 

And don’t be afraid to put some effort into it. Because if you do, you’ll definitely reap rewards down the road. 

Ready to improve new sales rep onboarding?

We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn how you can incorporate training into your sales rep onboarding process to speed ramp time and improve retention.


Improve the Rep Lifespan: 10 Ways You Can Help Retain Sales Reps

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Improve the Rep Lifespan: 10 Ways You Can Help Retain Sales Reps

It’s more critical than ever to retain your sales reps. It takes months to fill the seat and even longer to ramp to quota, only to start over when reps leave.

In fact, the average lifespan of a BDR/SDR rep is down from over two years to just fourteen months according to this report from The Bridge Group.

Why is our lifespan shrinking? I have a few theories:
  1. Expectations are increasing. More tools + higher customer expectations and knowledge + the systematic approach to marketing and lead-passing means we have clearer and more demanding expectations of entry-level reps than we did two years ago.
  2. We’re adding tools at an alarming rate. The intent is to make the job easier, but we may be over-operationalizing – especially if we don’t have great hands-on training during onboarding.
  3. Customers are avoiding us. You probably don’t need an explanation here, but when we combine the customer journey stats (70% of research is done without sales) and phone answer rates (it takes 6+ calls to reach most of them), the sales job feels more fruitless on a daily basis.
  4. Desperate hires. The employee pool is shrinking and demand for inside sellers is growing. We may not be onboarding folks who are excited about careers in sales, but instead “testing the waters.”
  5. Role specialization. Although segmenting sellers according to the sales cycle makes good sense, it doesn’t help alleviate the boredom of outbound cold calling nor show the variety and spice that full-cycle selling used to. We’re starting reps in arguably the toughest gig and they’re opting out before getting to the fun of really serving customers for the majority of their days (e.g. in inbound, account management)
  6. Reps want more. More and more studies are telling us that reps seek development on the job and leave when it’s lacking. I’m not seeing studies saying we’re providing more.  In fact, nearly 50% of companies surveyed by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals said they have no ongoing development available. Ouch.

OK, now what do we do about it?  Here are ten millennial, new to sales, rep-focused tips to help.

BREAK UP THE JOB

After x hours or days of outbound cold calling, give reps new assignments where they can learn new tasks and talk to customers. Try calling past customers for feedback, riding along on renewal calls, developing new case studies, building the social responsibility calendar, qualifying inbound forms, doing competitor research, and taking some inbound calls.

MINI CAREER PATHS

This idea isn’t new and it isn’t just because millennials love trophies. When you’re slogging through thousands of calls, you need something to shoot for and quick. If your first company promotion is after fourteen months, pull it in to keep them past their average new SDR expiration date.

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FLEXIBILITY

Ten years ago we added free breakfast and a ping pong table and checked the engagement box. Now it’s table stakes. So what can you offer that doesn’t break the bank? How about earning flexible hours, early out on Fridays, or work-from-home days?  Low cost with a massive reward (just implement with proper gates and oversight).

CONNECT PEOPLE AT ALL LEVELS

Remember the Gallup engagement studies from long ago? The largest percentage of actions leaders could take were focused on getting the employee connected – with other employees, their boss, and the company. Tie their job into the company mission and vision and help them feel important often. Create opportunities for people to make friends and work and spend time with them. Implement a mentoring program. Have a few work and non-work clubs available (and randomly attend some yourself!). Train managers on how to engage their teams and be people leaders over metrics managers.

INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Planning reps’ careers and training with a long-term focus takes nothing more than an hour of managers’ time and scratches the development itch for reps. Free, easy, winner!

BEWARE THE SURVEY

Yes, you should ask how they’re doing. But the bigger the company, the bigger and longer the process. Truth: when an employee shares an issue or a suggestion, they wonder a week later why it isn’t fixed. This makes it worse! If you have autonomy over your group, keep your input nimble and frequent. (I’m thinking of the 3-button smiley stations after you go through some TSA checkpoints!). Get the gauge, then meet with folks 1:1 or a small group to get feedback and input. Bonus: this gives them face time with the leader (thank you engagement spike) and helps you set expectations about what’s feasible.

DEVELOPMENT BUDGET

Got a plan and zero resources outside of free webinars and books? Fix it. Budget a minimum of $1500 per rep a year to give yourself the room to develop and keep them. It’s the new ping pong table. Reps will go where the development is.

CHECK YOUR REWARD AND RECOGNITION

Two common errors are when the same reps win everything (the tenured folks with the big books of accounts according to your newbies) and our gamification boards celebrate the same garbage (dials and revenue).  Build a strategy where all roles and all levels can feel like winners. Work on celebrating ratios and KPIs over activity metrics and even try newbie-friendly behavior rewards (these are subjective measures that celebrate new folks doing the right things, even though results aren’t in yet). My favorite is a first-base contest where reps are rewarded for getting the conversation (first base).

WORK ON YOUR MANAGERS

You may have robust rep training, but lackluster managers – perhaps newly promoted (I speak of what I know here!). Did your managers receive training on how to develop their teams? How to provide proper call coaching? Support rep career growth? You may be doing everything right but failing on the front lines in execution.  Invest in a manager and engage 12 reps…

CLARITY IS QUEEN

The most frustrating thing for a sales employee is not knowing where they stand. Are your annual goals released on January 1 or March 31? Work on that. Does every rep know their monthly, even daily goals? There’s a worthy action item. Do they know what good sounds like on calls and how to win this month’s meeting or the annual trip? Working on this blocking and tackling can be easier and more effective than trying to open an on-site concierge or daycare (in every employee survey I’ve seen!)

All of these are easy, but only make your top priority list if you get serious about increasing your retention. Find your number and set a goal that your reps will stay 2, 4, or 6 months longer than the average. Your commission check will thank you.

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improve sales industry

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Improving Sales for the Next Generation of Talent

I’m in Sales! I’m not a Growth Manager or a Chief Delightment Officer, or anything else that people say at networking events because they don’t want to admit they’re in sales. I’m proud to be in sales, but if statistics tell us anything, my chosen and beloved profession needs to change. 

Every day, more jobs are being replaced by AI or being sent offshore. The jobs that are left are harder and faster than they were 10 years ago. The entry-level jobs need to ramp even sooner and convert deals that much quicker. If you’ve been at this for a while now, that probably sounds exciting. If you’re stepping into your first role, it’s probably terrifying.  

We’re finding the job pool of sales reps features fewer experienced candidates, all while customers are becoming savvier and with higher expectations. The game has changed and we need to change along with it. 

Remember when you first got into sales. How have you grown? What did you learn? Over the years you’ve gained experience, tooled up, and added to or adapted your tech stack. We need to change the way we are looking at entry-level sales and improve the first impression we are giving new employees.

Think about the sales calls you receive on any given day. The majority fall into two groups. It’s either a robocall or it’s a fresh-faced recent college (or high school) graduate in their very first sales role. These unseasoned front-line employees are being thrown to the wolves with nothing more than a phone and a script. It’s no wonder we lose A LOT of reps every year. 

Overall, 50% of all graduates go into sales. That’s not just business school, that’s all schools across the country. In the first year alone, we will lose a staggering 40% of those new reps. This is not sustainable. At this point, we can’t recruit enough people to fill those front-line seats. 

Leaders, it’s time to shift our thought process. 

sales team retention

Right now, when a new employee walks in the door we give them a product demonstration, a Salesforce login, direct them to the phones, and say “Good luck, better hit that quota!” We’re not teaching them how to engage or converse. They’re simply memorizing scripts and pitches. WE are teaching the next generation to hate sales. Slowly and systematically, we are scaring away bright, brilliant, young people from the sales profession and if we want it to stop, we need to be better. 

It’s going to take all of us, together, to make that happen. Here’s how…

We need to ditch the script. New sellers (and some existing sellers) need to be taught how to stop talking AT customers and instead engage with them. Sales is where the technology stops. It’s where one person has to talk to another person about their challenges or their needs. At its root, sales is about helping someone else. It’s about human connection. Right now, only 3% of customers trust salespeople. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but if we want to regain our customer’s trust we need to start by improving our conversations.  

We need to make room for failure. I’m not saying that we let employees slide every time they miss quota. What I am saying is that instead of treating an employee like the black sheep, maybe we dive deeper. Treat that failure as an area of opportunity. Let’s help normalize failure and find the “why” behind it. Every missed deal can help your employees, especially the new ones, land future deals. All we have to do is encourage people to talk about it and then help them find the solution for next time.

We need to shift our focus to retention. According to a report from The Bridge Group, the average tenure of a sales rep is 1.5 years. The old me would have said, “That gives me 18 months to find someone else to fill that seat.” What if instead, we said, “I have 540 days to make them love sales, stay, and continue in their career.”

We’ve sold everything under the sun and WE LOVE IT. So, let’s make the next generation love it just as much as we do. 

We can do this! Together, we can have sales reps proudly shouting “I’m in Sales!”

Want to improve the sales industry for your new sellers?

By training and developing your employees, they’ll perform better and stay longer.
Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps and managers.

6 Warning Signs Your Employee Is Quitting Soon

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6 Warning Signs Your Employee Is Quitting Soon

Ever been blindsided by an employee quitting? You were worried about Rep A and it was Manager B who resigned? According to Gallup, managers have higher disengagement than reps today – and we’re at our highest overall dissatisfaction since 2000!

Here are some behaviors to keep on your radar to prevent your top employees from quitting:

  1. Disengagement.

    You may think it’s the active nay-sayer who’s your problem child, but it’s actually the quiet ones. This is especially true if you used to hear from them. As employees move from “engaged” to “disengaged” they withdraw. You may find you have to call on them in a huddle when they used to speak up. It might be that when you do ask for their input, it is short and not well thought out.

  2. Absence.

    It takes work time to interview elsewhere and if your employee is virtual it will be harder to notice. Look for long response times on Slack or email and 90-minute call gaps. If they’ve gone radio silent, they’re likely searching and interviewing elsewhere. They won’t be asking for all of this time off, they’ll likely just be taking it during lunches, starting late or ending early. If your spidey sense says there might be a problem, look for numerous gaps over several weeks.

  3. Low Performance.

    You may not see it right away, but when you look for it, you’ll see productivity or ratios declining. Probably over several periods. Often I find that one big miss will start the disengagement for normally great reps. For example, Bobby was a solid A or B player and he had a big whiff three months ago. As per policy, he went on a PIP. He pulled himself back up, but never back to the “A” status. Start checking for declines in outbounding and longer absences. Call on Bobby in meetings and see what happens. You lost him at the write-up, and in the absence of great ego coddling, he may have checked out back then.

  4. High Demands.

    You won’t find this one in any research, but I tell you I’ve seen it. As an employee starts to check out, they don’t all fade out. I’ve had some make it my fault. They start asking for more and more demanding requests – perhaps even the impossible. When I can’t or won’t deliver, they have “no choice” but to leave. Look for rising demands around hours, travel, or approved expenses. They may even be shopping you against another job posting or company.

  5. New Requests.

    Be careful not to classify new requests in the high demands category. In the past few years, priorities have shifted and hyper-engaged employees expect their employers to be doing more. If you don’t have diversity plans in place including employee programs, training, equality hiring, and pay practices, you are soon to be in trouble. The same goes for work hours/days, location flexibility, and career development and training opportunities. These are all top demands of the new generations and you’ll need to meet them to attract and retain employees. If you’re getting requests here and you don’t have it in place or are soon to be deployed, get ready for some resignations.

  6. Disinterest in Learning.

    The best salespeople are lifelong learners. When they stop engaging with training opportunities, books, or team training, you know they’re checking out. You’ll see the same with decreasing engagement with other departments, special projects, and all-company concerns.

sales team retention
If you aren’t seeing any of these signs across your entire team of 10+, I beg you to look harder. Gallup reports that only 36% of our workforce are engaged today. This is up in just the past three years. Imagine you were responsible for adding #7 and #8 to this list, what would it be? What do you notice from your B and C players? What behavior changes have you noticed this year you didn’t last?

When all else fails (and even if it doesn’t), sit and talk with your team about their engagement. Wait, what? Address it head-on? Absolutely! Gallup also reported that it takes more than a 20% pay increase to lure an employee away who is engaged with their manager. Turns out YOU are the difference. See what reports, emails, and silly tasks you can delegate so you can do 2 more coaching sessions this week. The more time you spend with your team getting to know them and developing them (read: NOT talking about the numbers), the greater your chance to retain your stars and you’re at-risk.

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Retain Salespeople

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5 Powerful Strategies to Retain Salespeople

It’s easy to blame the Great Resignation on COVID-19, but according to Harvard Business Review, resignation rates only feel high because they were below trend in 2020. In 2021, resignations were exactly on par with the ten-year trend. Does that mean the “Great Resignation” isn’t real…?

Tell that to your open sales positions. Since employees are reluctant to go back into the office and they’re deep in the “life’s too short” feeling, many are switching jobs. That means they’re leaving your sales jobs too.

Most people who quit are switching jobs rather than leaving the labor force altogether, according to Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed.

In today’s times, you’re not just battling your competitors for talent, you’re competing with non-sales jobs, out-of-state jobs, and complete career changes.

That’s right, you’re actually competing with quality of life to retain salespeople. 

It’s an important distinction because that’s also how you’ll keep them. Stop focusing just on salary and pay close attention to what employees want in the workplace.

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Here are a few tips on how to retain salespeople:

1. Personal Meaning at Work

It’s not easy to get people emotionally invested in the selling of widgets and the making of profits. So try to link their efforts to what you’re solving for customers. Walmart’s tagline isn’t “Cheaper goods sold at the highest volume possible.” It’s about making people’s lives better.

At Factor 8, we’ve shifted from counting clients and revenue to reporting on “lives impacted.” We change people’s lives by making them more successful at work. This definitely trumps, “We teach people to sell more stuff.”

Spend a few hours brainstorming in your next executive meeting and then get it out there fast and often.

2. Career Development

If you don’t have a line item for development per employee in your budget, you are officially behind the curve. Training, career paths, career growth, and personal development all show up in top wants for Millennials and Gen Z. Not to mention you’ll need great sales training to get your new hires with less education and experience up to speed. Invest heavily here as soon as possible. Now advertise it on all your job openings and internal communications.

At a conference last month, I met two guys who stumbled on a hidden education benefit. Like, they literally found it in the handbook and then chased it down through several levels of bureaucracy in order to go to a career development conference and have the expense reimbursed. Likewise, over 70% of the women in our #GirlsClub management certification program couldn’t get it funded internally. #YoureDoingItWrong

3. Flexibility

This means hours, days, locations – everything. Kill the work policies and empower leaders to do what’s necessary to engage their teams. For some it’s compressed work weeks, others it’s work from home, flex-time, job-sharing, or relaxed management. If I can’t leave mid-day to pick up a sick child, plan a long weekend with friends, or work from my hermetically sealed office, I’m looking for a new job.

4. Fairness & Inclusivity

Pretty please go and check your salaries right now for equity. Do it as if you’re trying to prove yourself wrong, not right. See two people in similar positions of different genders or persuasions or skin colors making a different base salary? FIX IT or plan now to budget the fix for next year.

We simply won’t stand for it anymore and the new generations are savvy. Mark my words, they WILL find out and they WILL leave.

Remember, it’s an employee’s market now, not the employer’s market we came up under. It’s our job to attract and retain them, and trying to hire people for as little money as possible to save a buck will cost us a fortune in the long run.

Don’t have a program for inclusivity that includes some groups, some awareness, some training, and some strategies to root out bias? Get some and get the word out fast, or you’ll soon be left behind.

5. Culture of Well-Being

OK, so I combined a few demands on this one. Here’s why:

According to a recent Adobe survey, over 50% of Gen Z and Millennial employees feel pressure to be available at all times, and most blame their company for their long workdays.

This is a far cry from the “work-life balance” everyone says they want. In a sales setting, this means you may actually need some rules to combat our technology. I’m guilty of this myself. Slack is easy, fast, and on my desktop and phone. I have an idea, I send a message. It’s tough for the people who work for me to not feel like they need to answer this when sent (even though I say it all the time). Saying it isn’t enough.

Try automatic notification snoozing at 4 p.m. (spend the last hour with quiet time to prepare for the next day and wind down). We put time off on a group calendar so nobody will contact them when out of the office. I’ve also seen “no email” or better, “no message” rules for evenings and weekends. Want to go the extra mile? Talk about instituting this with clients as well.

Our actions set the precedent and teach people how to work with us!

The first time you reply to a client’s midnight message and your team sees you do it, you’re implying that this is acceptable and maybe even encouraged behavior.

We the workaholic generation will have to work hard to actively undo this one.

Ready to retain salespeople by investing in sales training and development?

Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps and managers.


sales rep promotion

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Tips for Sales Reps to Get a Promotion

Truth: 9 out of 10 sales leaders have had the experience of promoting the wrong rep into management. If you’re a sales rep working on a promotion, read these tips to make sure you’re not one of the reps who shouldn’t be in management.

Tip #1: Be above quota. If you want to lead and teach reps to hit quota, don’t raise your hand if you haven’t hit or beaten quota for at least 12 straight months or 4 quarters. 

Tip #1a: Don’t be the top rep. If you’re consistently smashing quota, rethink management. You’re the number one mistake, my friend. That’s right you special snowflake, most of the managers I met who were top reps are miserable. You also have more trouble teaching new reps how to be awesome. Why? Because you’re so damn good it’s an art to you – harder to teach an art than a science. Also, you’re wired to win at all costs, and in management, the job is about helping your team win. You’ll also make less money. Yeah I know, I should have led with that.

Tip #2: Process wins. A hiring director wants to see that you have a system in place for how you: 

  1. Attack a list of leads
  2. Document your actions in CRM
  3. Penetrate new accounts
  4. Approach your day
  5. Onboard a new account

Fill in your own blank here, and do it several times. And if you aren’t asked about this in the interview, bring it up. 

Tip #2a. Document that process and hand it in. “Here’s how I approach ABC. I’ve documented it to help some of the new hires.” Boom! Winner!

Tip #3. Actually go and help the new hires. Every team of sellers has a de facto leader. No, not that person who wins every contest, the OTHER person who you go to and who actually answers your questions. The nice and helpful one. THAT’s the future manager of the team. Be them.

Tip #3a. Be a mentor. Ask your manager to assign you as a mentor to newbies on your team or others. Being a mentor for 6 months is the number one way to find out if management is a gig you want. If you don’t enjoy it, that’s your sign it may suit you more to be in control of your own success and commission as a next-level seller vs. manager.

Tip #4. Go Pro. Ask a friend or mentor to review ten random emails you’ve sent to customers or internally and give you feedback on the professionalism of your communication. Nobody is going to hire the master of misspelling or the novelist. Bullet points. Clear. Direct. Grammatically perfect. Completely auto-corrected.

Tip #4a. Now go make them all 30% shorter. Make your subject lines actionable, speak in bullets vs. paragraphs, and have a clear call to action at the end.

Tip #5. Network now. The time to start talking about career moves, desires, and paths is about a year before you probably want it. Do all the managers know your name? How about the directors? When the VP asks who is on the shortlist of folks wanting to move up, are you 100% positive you appear on that list? If not, start booking some lunches or virtual coffees. Start by sharing your desire to grow and asking for advice on how to work to get there.

Tip #5a. Speak up! Ladies, do this 11.5 months before you’re comfortable doing it. The whole reason I started #GirlsClub was to help us level the playing field, and I need your help by actually getting on the field. We’re historically the last to apply and raise our hands – and then we’re upset for not being approached or chosen. That happens because we wait and wait and wait to speak up. Learn more and maybe even participate in our management certification at www.WeAreGirlsClub.com.

Looking for sales rep training?

We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).


5 Signs It’s Time to Fire a Sales Rep

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5 Signs It’s Time to Fire a Sales Rep

Is it time to fire a sales rep? We’ve all made bad hires. And we’ve all made wrong assumptions about team members. So second-guessing ourselves on whether or not to cut bait on an underperforming rep is only natural – especially in today’s war for talent.

It’s only in hindsight we realize we should have done it long ago. When the team mood shoots up, other performance rises, or we hear a few nightmare stories we kick ourselves for not acting on sooner.

But on the reverse, we don’t lose that number when we lose the headcount. Is SOMEbody better than NObody?

I’ve got to go with no. Sure, calls are getting made and a few wins in the pipe, but what could a top-performing rep do with those leads or accounts? How many messes are being made below the surface with the leads, the existing customers, and especially the team. When I hear relief from the team members “left behind” is when I feel the worst about not cutting bait. After all, culture is created by the behavior we accept, not the goals we set or even the high performers.

Here are 5 signs that you’re prolonging the inevitable and need to fire a sales rep:

1. There’s more than a performance issue

When someone isn’t going to make it, there’s typically evidence in more than one place. Call volume is an issue, but they’ve also been late a few times. Close percent isn’t great, and neither is their attitude. Check for behavioral and cultural issues in addition to sales performance. They may not be a clear-cut write-up, but they’re your evidence to double down performance managing the quantifiable issues.

2. There’s a lack of ownership

A friend of mine recently cut bait and replaced someone on their team. When I asked how onboarding the new hire was going I heard, “Well, they’re an adult, so that helps.” This was a (possibly less than eloquent albeit true) summary of what many of us have felt before. If you could be replaced by a $15 /hour babysitter, it’s a sign. If it takes more than one conversation to get something fixed all the way to completion, you’re dealing with a lack of ownership. Could be on a deal, could be about getting to work on time. Maybe it will hit you when you hear your third, fourth, or fifth excuse. The key is to recognize it early, call it out, and get them on your list.

3. One stat rises and another falls

Talk time is up, but dials are down. Quotes are up, but penetration is down. They just can’t seem to get it all going in the right direction at the same time. It’s a great clue they’re either over-employed or don’t care the right amount to give this their full effort. Try to aggregate your performance management here so they can’t sneak by with a “different” offense. Your write-up (or whatever you use) should indicate ALL measures within goal, not one specifically. Don’t waste months chasing different tails!

4. Cover-ups

The very first time you find something in the gray area, something hidden, a half-truth or half-baked answer, you have your sign. Why? Because if you see one (or a half) now, I guarantee you’re going to find 5-10x more when they leave. Look for a customer complaint, a team member’s eye roll, a deal called back by finance, an unexplainable call time or a customer CRM note. If it raises a yellow flag, do yourself the favor of turning that flag red and saving time. 

5. Hiding

Having trouble getting a meeting nailed down? See 1:1 meetings being rescheduled or long delays in getting back to you? You’ve got a hider! Hiders know something is wrong and they’re avoiding the conflict for as long as possible. Folks who are working hard and giving you their best are responsive. Employees carrying some guilt and shame don’t speak up, don’t make eye contact, and avoid 1:1 time with you. If your time together has been pushed more than once, there’s your sign (anyone else hearing Jeff Foxworthy every time I say that??). Please note that hiding may also mean going quiet. When Gallup studies engaged, disengaged, and actively disengaged employees, the ones that cost you the most (actively disengaged) are actually NOT the voice of discontent or detractors in meetings. They’re the quiet ones who have decided speaking up isn’t worth their effort. Look for voices you haven’t heard in a while and check in privately here.

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So you’ve come this far and you have 1 solid or perhaps 2-3 “maybe” signs that it’s time to fire a sales rep. What do you do? Address them immediately. When it lingers, it festers and the rest of your team suffers. If you have a performance management system, use it strictly. Talk with HR about making the timeline as short as possible. The key is very clear actions and deadlines to whatever expectations you have.

In addition, see what you can do to coach them up or out sooner. Plenty of employees welcome the opportunity to admit they don’t love the job, but they don’t want to let you down. Together you can decide what might be a better fit and how you can help them get there. Just last month an employee I helped coach out (and helped land the next gig) came into town and stayed with my family. We continue to like and respect each other because we addressed the growing lack of fit, clear expectations on what we needed going forward, and mutually decided on a timeframe to part ways. That’s a win-win.

It probably doesn’t feel that easy right now, but I’m willing to bet it’s because you’re second-guessing yourself on taking action. Re-read my signs above, and if your yellow flag goes even halfway up on more than one, schedule a conversation. Ask how they’re liking their job, how they think they’re performing, and if they see themselves here long term. Share your feedback with specific examples and clear go-forward expectations. It doesn’t have to be contentious, instead, expect it to be a great air-clearing meeting of the minds where you both feel better afterward.

Do your sales reps need more training?

We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn about our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).



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