The Real Reason Your Sales Team Is Underperforming (and How to Fix It)

As a sales leader, there‘s no worse feeling than seeing your team miss its targets. Months of hard work culminate in a gap between expectations and reality, leaving you wondering where you went wrong. While it‘s easy to blame external factors like increased competition or market volatility, the reality is that the biggest threat to most sales teams isn‘t losing clients – it‘s losing their own people.

Research shows that sales has one of the highest turnover rates of any profession, with average rep tenure dropping to just 1.5 years. And the costs of this revolving door are staggering:

• The average cost of replacing a sales rep is 1.5-2X their annual salary when you factor in recruiting, onboarding, and lost productivity. For a rep making $75K per year, that‘s over $100K in sunk costs.
• It takes an average of 6 months to hire a new sales rep and 3 more months to fully ramp them to productivity. That‘s 9 months of a territory being underserved or missing quota.
• Only 13% of sales leaders believe they have the talent they need to succeed long-term. Constant churn makes it nearly impossible to build the high-performing team you need.

The harsh truth is that if you‘re not making rep retention a top priority, you‘re putting your team‘s success at serious risk. SDR turnover isn‘t just expensive – it can cost you clients, culture, and growth potential.

But the good news is that there are proven strategies sales managers can use to build an environment where reps feel supported, empowered, and motivated to stick around for the long haul. Here are the key areas where the best sales leaders focus their efforts:

Hire Right, Onboard Well

Reducing turnover starts with bringing the right people in the door. Too often, sales managers are so desperate to fill open headcount that they rush the hiring process and end up with reps who aren‘t a good fit.

To avoid this mistake, start by creating an ideal candidate profile that goes beyond just years of experience and industry background. What specific skills, traits, and motivators are needed to thrive in this particular sales role? Use objective assessments to gauge things like coachability, resilience, and competitive drive.

Give candidates realistic job previews during the interview process. Be upfront about quotas, selling motions, common objections, and career paths. Let them shadow existing reps and ask questions. The goal is to paint a vivid picture of life in the role so there are no surprises once they start.

Finally, develop a robust onboarding program to set new hires up for success from day one. This should include:

• A 30-60-90 day plan with clear goals, milestones, and success metrics for each month
• Ongoing product, industry, and skills training (not just a one-time bootcamp)
• Ride-alongs with top reps to see what "good" looks like
• Dedicated mentoring from a veteran peer
• Frequent check-ins and feedback to course-correct as needed

Onboarding Step	Purpose
30-60-90 Day Plan	Provides clear expectations and success metrics for ramp period
Ongoing Training	Arms reps with hard and soft skills needed to succeed in role
Ride-Alongs	Shows best practices in action from the team‘s top performers
Peer Mentoring	Gives new hires a go-to person for guidance and support
Check-ins & Feedback	Allows managers to monitor progress and address issues early

By taking a more intentional, structured approach to hiring and onboarding, you‘ll improve the chances that new reps will hit the ground running and want to build a long-term career at your company.

Make Coaching a Daily Habit

Once reps are in seat, the real work of sales management begins. And the most powerful tool in a manager‘s arsenal is coaching. Research shows that organizations with dynamic coaching programs achieve 28% higher win rates on forecasted deals and have 10% lower overall rep turnover.

But for coaching to be effective, it can‘t just happen quarterly or when a rep is struggling. The best sales managers make it a daily habit through:

• Weekly 1:1 meetings to review pipeline, metrics, and development areas
• Call reviews and game tape sessions to analyze rep-customer interactions
• "Ride-alongs" to observe reps in live selling situations
• Skill-specific micro-coaching (e.g. objection handling, storytelling, active listening)
• Stretch assignments to help reps tackle weaknesses and reach the next level

Importantly, coaching should be a two-way dialogue, not a one-way lecture. Ask reps to come to 1:1s with an agenda of what they want to discuss. Collaborate with them on their personal development plans. Encourage them to give you feedback on your coaching style and management approach.

Technology can also be a force multiplier for coaching at scale. Tools like conversation intelligence automatically record, transcribe and analyze sales calls to surface coachable moments and skill gaps across the team. AI-based sales coaching software serves up bite-sized learning activities and role play scenarios to reinforce training.

The key is to make coaching an integral part of a rep‘s weekly rhythm and development journey, not a sporadic check-the-box activity. Create a coaching culture on your team, and watch engagement and performance soar.

Get Comp Plans Right

Few things are more frustrating to reps than feeling like their comp plan is working against them. If the bar to earn commissions is too high, quotas seem unattainable, or territories are unfairly divided, motivation will inevitably suffer.

To get your comp plans right, start with these best practices:

• Aim for a 60/40 split between base salary and variable comp for most rep roles. You want the base to be high enough to alleviate financial stress, but not so high that reps get complacent.
• Use a tiered commission structure that accelerates earnings as reps exceed quota. For example, pay 5% commission up to 100% of quota, 7.5% up to 110%, and 10% on anything beyond that.
• Offer SPIFFs (sales performance incentive funds) and contests around key activities like setting meetings, building pipeline, or cross-selling. This rewards the behaviors that lead to closed deals.
• Make sure comp plans are easy to understand and have clear line of sight into earnings potential. Reps should be able to do the math on how much they‘ll make at different levels of quota attainment.
• Revisit comp plans at least annually. As business priorities change, quotas and territories may need to be rebalanced to keep things fair and motivating.

Beyond just pay, consider what other incentives and benefits you can offer to boost retention. Things like equity grants, training stipends, Presidents Club trips, or even extra PTO can go a long way in making reps feel valued and committed to the company for the long-term.

Focus on Engagement & Well-being

With the shift to remote and hybrid work, it‘s harder than ever for managers to get a true pulse on how their team is doing. Reps can easily become isolated, burnt out, and disengaged – leading to poor performance and eventual turnover.

That‘s why the best sales leaders are doubling down on strategies to monitor and improve rep satisfaction and well-being, such as:

• Conducting quarterly engagement surveys to surface issues and track progress over time. Ask targeted questions around workload, manager support, growth opportunities, and overall morale.
• Monitoring leading indicators of disengagement like absenteeism, tardiness, lack of participation in team activities, or drop in work quality. Investigate root causes early before small problems snowball.
• Scheduling regular skip-level meetings where reps can bring concerns to upper management. This opens lines of communication and ensures execs stay connected to the front lines.
• Offering "stay interviews" to proactively identify top performers who may be flight risks. Ask what‘s keeping them at the company and what would entice them to leave.
• Providing mental health resources like employee assistance programs, subsidized counseling, or subscriptions to meditation apps. Make it clear that it‘s okay to not be okay.

Fostering rep well-being isn‘t just the right thing to do – it‘s a strategic business imperative. Engaged salespeople outperform their disengaged peers by up to 23% and are 81% less likely to leave their company. By making wellness a priority, you‘ll boost productivity, performance, and loyalty across the team.

Provide Clear Career Paths

Finally, one of the top reasons reps leave is lack of growth opportunities. With average SDR tenure hovering around just 18 months, it‘s critical to paint a compelling vision for reps‘ long-term career progression at your company.

Start by creating competency models and career path resources that outline:

• The core skills, experiences, and success metrics needed for each sales role (e.g. SDR > AE > AM > Sales Manager)
• Typical timing for promotions based on performance and tenure
• Real-life examples and case studies of reps who have advanced through the ranks
• Rotational programs for exposure to other departments like marketing, product, or customer success

Make these resources readily available to reps and incorporate them into ongoing coaching and development discussions. Work with each rep to create an individual development plan mapping their goals to the skills and experiences they need to get to the next level.

When new roles open up, prioritize internal promotions and make sure the process is transparent and objective. Celebrate reps who advance and share their success stories widely. This sends a clear signal that there‘s a bright future for top performers who want to build a career at your company.

Beyond promotions, look for other ways to provide growth in role. Let reps take on stretch projects to expand their skills. Encourage them to be active in the broader sales community by writing, speaking, or mentoring. Offer training stipends for professional development courses or certifications. Showing you‘re invested in their growth – both upward and laterally – is a powerful retention tool.

The Bottom Line

There‘s no silver bullet for solving sales rep turnover. It requires a multi-pronged approach that starts with attracting the right talent and continues through every stage of the rep lifecycle.

But by focusing on the five key areas above – hiring & onboarding, training & coaching, compensation, engagement & well-being, and career pathing – sales managers can create an environment where reps are setup for success from day one and motivated to stick around for the long haul.

The payoff is well worth the effort. Organizations that excel at rep retention see:

• 27% higher quota attainment
• 28% higher win rates
• 55% higher sales productivity
• 38% higher customer retention

Most importantly, you‘ll build a sales culture of trust, development, and continuous improvement that delivers results quarter after quarter. So if you‘re serious about driving growth in 2023 and beyond, put sales rep retention at the top of your priority list. Your people – and your bottom line – will thank you.