How to keep your top sales producers from flying the coop

Six out of ten employers don’t really understand what motivates their salespeople, which may cause their top sales producers to seek work elsewhere, according to a Harvard Business Review blog.

While employers are responding to staff burnout by tweaking the traditional motivational tools of compensation and recognition/rewards programs, these methods may not be getting at what lies at the core of the demotivation for salespeople — drag.

“Our analysis shows that two of the biggest and most common contributors to drag are a lack of career development opportunities and feeling like a cog in a machine,” blog authors Colleen Giblin, Mike Katz, Alice Walmesley, and Betsy Gregory-Hosler wrote in Why Some of Your Salespeople are Dragging — and How to Fix It.

“Fifty-nine percent of [salespeople] report having trouble envisioning a clear and attainable career path within their sales organization,” the authors said. “Those sellers who perceive a lack of career development opportunities tend to experience higher levels of drag.”

Drag is the opposite of drive. And drive is a characteristic of successful salespeople, with 76% of salespeople in a study reporting being driven or motivated to succeed, the authors observed. But if these highly motivated salespeople feel their drive is taking their careers nowhere, they get bored and start dusting off their resumes to seek other opportunities.

The authors saw high-drag sellers are 35% less likely to attain their sales quotas and up to 51% more likely to be actively job-seeking than their low-drag counterparts.

“Unfortunately, sellers looking to branch out within their organization typically have limited knowledge of available alternatives,” the authors said. “Traditionally, sellers have climbed a vertical career ladder, graduating to bigger or better accounts, segments or goals — perhaps even moving into management. This trajectory tends to afford limited opportunity to flex and stretch across a wide range of relevant competencies.”

The authors suggest taking a ‘lattice’ (or lateral) career development approach in place of a laddered one. Changing your leadership programs is one way to address drag.

For example, the authors noted, FedEx’s European sales group developed a way to allow identified leadership hopefuls to explore management roles in their careers with minimal risk of failure.

Essentially, the organization changed the structure of its leadership academy so selected applicants “could test-drive a management role before fully committing, with no penalty for opting out and remaining in a frontline sales role,” as the authors noted.

The sales group also expanded eligibility requirements for its leadership program. Instead of requiring candidates to receive a nomination from a manager, they could signal their career aspirations and commitment by applying to the program independently. Those who didn’t make it into the program were offered resources and career development opportunities to position them for success during the next recruitment cycle.

Empowering your salespeople is a second way to cure drag, the authors said.

“Fifty-six percent of sellers report feeling like a cog in a machine, while 76% feel that sales leadership dictates how to meet their sales objectives,” the authors noted. “Sellers experiencing drag from feeling like a cog in a machine are up to 34% less likely to achieve quota and up to 44% more likely to be actively job seeking.”

Many sales organizations believe standardized, repeatable sales tasks and pitches limit risk, minimize skill gaps, boost aggregate performance, and generate predictable revenue. “But this approach may leave sellers feeling that they have little control over their work, providing scarcely any real value,” the authors wrote.