The Great Retainment
How to better recruit, hire, ramp, scale, and retain your sales team
Hello friends -
By now we’ve all heard of (and possibly experienced) The Great Resignation. We may be benefactors, but we also may be victims.
I’d like to think about an alternative option here. What if we thought of this along the lines of The Great Recruitment - or The Great Retainment.
After all - isn’t this what we should be focused on as Sales Leaders?
Although it may not be a fully watertight option without any flaws or loopholes, two things we must be focused on in today’s crazy state of sales:
Recruitment
Retainment
In this week’s edition of Stretch Weekly -
Amy Volas gives us one of the most pertinent, relevant, thorough, and insightful pieces I’ve read about recruiting and retaining sales talent in today’s market.
Ben Goldstein with Nutshell outlines why reps leave, and gives us 8 ways to retain your top performers (even after they’ve got their bonuses).
Plus, snippets from leaders with insights to better recruit, hire, ramp, scale, and retain your sales team.
THANKS for reading!!
-Grant
And lastly - as always, if you find this newsletter valuable- subscribe or share it with someone who might as well 👊.
STRETCH SHARES
Sales Compensation Trends in a HOT Market + What to Do About It
If you’re leading sales, recruiting is one of the more critical areas you are focused on. Because of this, you likely already follow Amy Volas, and if not, start.
In this article, Amy gives us one of the most pertinent, relevant, thorough, and insightful pieces I’ve read about recruiting and retaining sales talent in today’s market.
Despite being one of the most sought-after roles, the category of sales has turnover nearly 3X the rate of any other function. If you’re lucky, they’ll stick around for 18 months. What a scary statistic as the party is JUST getting started when you’re dealing with enterprise sales.
Highlights:
The biggest risk you have to face in today’s market is fast employee turnover. Simply put, money doesn’t fix what’s broken.
The top 4 reasons enterprise salespeople look elsewhere from the last 7 years of our data collected:
Leadership – it starts at the top
Product-Market Fit (PMF) – without validation, top sellers are setup for failure
Opportunity – the path forward to grow and thrive within the business
Not Feeling Valued – being “just a number” doesn’t cut it
8 ways to retain your top sales reps
We’ve talked about the Great Resignation, and why recruitment and how retention is now even more important than ever before.
Ben Goldstein with Nutshell outlines why reps leave, and gives us 8 ways to retain your top performers (even after they’ve got their bonuses)
According to a DePaul University study, the average turnover cost per sales rep is $97,690 when you add up recruiting costs, training costs, and lost sales.
*Don’t skip part 1 -Packed full of data showing WHY good sales people leave.
8 ways to retain top sales reps:
Provide new challenges and opportunities
Increase employee engagement
Be smarter about bonuses
Stop making 1:1 meetings only about pipeline
Get serious about your onboarding process
Build camaraderie among your reps
Celebrate the small victories
Develop from the inside instead of hiring from the outside
STRETCH SNIPPETS
🏄♂️ You want to upset your top performers and get them thinking about leaving? Scott Leese says to do these 10 things...
💼 Maria Boulden with Gartner released its Workforce Resilience Survey, and it’s worth its length in gold. “The sales professional of 2022 is not as coin-operated as their pre-pandemic counterpart. And their patience for inefficiencies, bureaucratic BS or anything that wastes their time, distracts them from their vision or otherwise slows their roll is nonexistent.”
🔍 How do we improve our chances of identifying A-players? David Priemer gives us his top 10 sales interview questions for long-term success and compatibility. One of my favorites: “What’s your superpower?”
🗣 Build Competence, Build Confidence, Be Data-Driven. Setsail released their complete guide to data driven strategies for ramping new sales reps.
🧐 Mike Wolff , SVP at Salesforce talks about his “Chronological” interview approach and gives us 6 questions to ask every time in your interviews and how these can act as your very own “truth serum”.
🧠 Mindset
BONUS: Stay tuned Friday for my “March Forth” deliverable...(holding myself accountable)
Thanks for reading!
My hope is if you find this valuable, consider sharing it with friends (or signing up if you haven’t already).
— Grant 👋
About stretch vp: confessions, learnings, and insights from sales leaders in SaaS
Compiled and aggregated from a network of sales leaders in SaaS, Stretch VP showcases learnings, insights, and experiences as well as best practices to overcome common hurdles, obstacles, and setbacks in your quest for excellence as a sales leader in SaaS.
Are you a VP, Director, thought leader, or content producer in the SaaS space? We’d love to have you contribute. Just reply to this email and I’ll be in touch.
Also… check out the blog or follow on Twitter