How to Retain Sales Professionals – Avoiding the Great Resignation Trend

Many articles have been written about the Great Resignation, yet statistics on its details have remained a bit foggy. In a September article from the Harvard Business Review, they conducted a study to pinpoint exactly who is resigning from their job and why.

Harvard Business Review’s Results

HBR’s in-depth analysis of more than 9 million employee records from more than 4,000 companies worldwide found that mid-level employees between 30 and 45 years old (ie: millennials & gen X) have the greatest resignation rates. All other age groups stayed the same or declined.

The report stated a few factors for the resignation boom:

• Remote-working positions did not hire fresh college graduates, as they need in-person training and guidance. This trend gave mid-level employees greater power to advance into a new position.
• Many individuals delayed finding a [new] job due to the pandemic.
• Employees had high workloads, and were experiencing hiring freezes and burnout that caused them to rethink their work-life balance.

Next, the study showed that resignations at the mid-level career level were mostly experienced in the healthcare and technology industries. It specifically stated that resignations decreased in manufacturing. However, 3.6% more healthcare employees left their jobs than the year before. The tech industry was even higher, with a 4.5% increase in resignations.

Now that we have greater insight into the Great Resignation, what can be done to keep talent in place?

Take a Good Look Inside Your Company

Its important to take a look inside of a company to determine why people in the sales organization are leaving. We’re going to assume that these sales professionals are leaving due to their own decisions (rather than layoffs or other factors). You need to use deeper questions to go beneath the surface and get a glimpse for any patterns.

In addition, take a look at those individuals remaining in the organization’s sales department. Are the departing sales professionals’ leaving a void in the rest of the team’s skill sets? How is that going to affect the company’s overall sales? If you give the pipeline to another rep, have the chances of a close been reduced?

Provide Different Levels of Support

In order to try to retain sales staff and/or support the staff that remains during the great resignation, it’s important to let them know that you’ll provide tools to help them be successful. Sales professionals will ask for resources, tools, favors… whatever it takes to develop sales leads or move the sale along to close. What tools are you giving them to avoid frustration?

1. Is your marketing department off on their own making ads, running PPC campaigns, or creating videos which have nothing to do with what your sales team needs? Is marketing aligned with sales and partnering with them to provide the support they need with case studies, articles, or lead generation campaigns that were developed as a result from the feedback provided by sales?
2. How are you identifying industrial capital projects? Have you considered using SalesLeads so all you need to do is call and get the sales process started?
3. How are you identifying additional contacts within a current customer or prospect? Have you considered using SalesLeads to get those contacts so the sale can go forward–– especially in stalling situations?
4. Does the existing sales team need help with prospecting efforts? Have you used a specialized prospecting service such as SalesLeads that can help you formulate the right customer profile and help call into markets to develop sales leads?

By providing your sales team with the different levels of support, you’ll find their level of frustration goes down. Remember, they hear “no,” a lot. They’re already making lots of calls (zoom or in-person) with prospects and customers who might be turning them down; the last thing they want to hear is a “no” from management, too: the one group of people they should really expect to have in their corner. If they don’t feel empowered or valued or respected by your company, they may very well go and find a company that will provide the level of support needed to be successful.

Get started by giving them what they need. For further help, try reaching out to SalesLeads at 800 231 7876.