Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Employee retention seemed to be a taboo subject at my old sales jobs. If sales managers didn’t speak about it, the problem would simply not be a problem. Unfortunately, they seemed to be conditioned to accept that attrition was inevitable with a team of people making cold calls all day. It wasn't uncommon to see about 50% of new hires exit the organization after 6 months. Why? You've taken the time to interview, hire and train a rep, but once they're at altitude, they leave. No one should be OK with that.

When we start working with a new client at AG, we establish a time for all parties involved to have a conference call per week. We like to check in with our clients once a week to make sure everyone is on the same page and all teams are aware of opportunities and pipeline. It is also a good time for questions to be answered if schedules are tight during the week. I’ve found that most clients like to use this time to ask us questions and give advice on certain accounts.

At the beginning of the year I set a goal to improve communication across the entire company, from the way we communicate to our customers to the way we communicate among the management team, the way management communicates with team members, and how team members communicate with each other.  We invested in formal training, and had a summer outing with an Olympics theme which turned out to be an excellent team building opportunity. 

The additional emphasis on communication has had a positive impact on performance as well as morale.  Great ideas have been shared and implemented, team members have expressed interest in various areas, and as a result have had the opportunity to do more and in some cases get promoted.  When others see the positive impact they tend to become more engaged, which further improves the effectiveness of the team.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Craig Wortmann, CEO and Founder of Sales Engine, a company that helps firms build and tune their sales engine(s). You can find him on Google +, LinkedIn, & Twitter!

The best sales leaders I’ve ever worked for had three traits in common that made them powerful leaders.  Like all great leaders, they model the behaviors they ask for from their people.