People come and go. But when it comes to your sales team, you want them to come and stay. If people tend to leave your company often, it’s a red flag that something is amiss. High turnover in your sales team costs your company a great deal of money and resources, and it doesn’t really make you look good as an employer. It also takes its toll on the overall morale of your sales team. It’s your responsibility to persuade the people that it’s you they want to work for, and awaken a genuine desire to stick around.

It’s not an easy thing to do. If you want salespeople to stay, you need to offer them variety, freedom, rewards and, most importantly, motivation. Today I will tell you about how to keep your salespeople from leaving your company — or at least how to reduce the number of leavers. A company thrives when its filled with happy, motivated and devoted people. Here are a few tricks on how to make them feel that way.

People don’t quit jobs; they quit managers.

When a high number of LOs start leaving you, it’s very likely that it’s your fault. It doesn’t necessarily have to be personal though. It may be your management style that actually drives them away.

Some of the biggest mistakes that managers make are the following:

1. Micromanagement. A certain amount of detail orientation is important. However, breathing down your people’s necks is nowhere near good management. Too frequent meetings and too close scrutiny may create a very stressful and anxiety-inducing atmosphere.
2. Lack of mentoring. Managers who are not providing their teams with high-quality, personalized mentoring are taking the shortest path to failure. Coaching increases performance, but it also creates personal bounds and, if done well, produces motivation.
3. Wrong KPIs. It could also be that you’ve been going after the wrong results. There’s a difference between low performance teams that are ignoring the office rules, and top-performers coming in a few minutes late or not making a meeting every now and then. Think about it.

It all starts with who and how you hire.

High sales turnover could also be caused by hiring the wrong people through the wrong hiring process. Here’s a list of points that you may want to add to your hiring, so that you can always be sure you found the right one.

• Always be on the lookout for new talent.
• Be clear in your requirements.
• Test your candidates for the required skills.
• Be consistent and thorough with each candidate.
• Never judge by CV only.

Maybe your salespeople are just bored.

It’s very easy to become bored with your job. There are many reasons wothat happens, but one of the most common ones is lack of drive and motivation to keep improving and moving forward. Stagnation and lack of space for career growth are among the main reasons why people leave their jobs. If you feel like that could be the reason behind the turnover in your team, try coming up with some ideas to challenge and push your LOs in the right directions, such as various contests, incentives (not necessarily financial), or after-hours events that the company will pay for.

Getting the right people on board is difficult. Making them stay is even harder. Whenever the turnover of your team starts getting suspiciously high, you always have to start with yourself — by reviewing your hiring process, your management techniques, and your motivating tools.