High turnover is a big flashing sign of distress in your company. It is toxic for your management team and your remaining employees, affecting their morale, productivity, and work quality. Constantly recruiting, onboarding, and then losing staff is also very costly. It is currently affecting many businesses in almost every industry in record numbers.
The Big Quit or The Great Resignation are names you may have heard to describe the phenomenon. People's dissatisfaction with their jobs hit a boiling point during the pandemic. They started reassessing what was important to them and finding that the jobs that didn't give them flexibility or growth opportunities were a big part of the problem. So they quit.
As of April 2021, there were a record 8.1 million job openings. The BevAlc industry is no stranger to the impact of attrition: retail alcohol sales attrition is 60% on average. While there is no way to prevent every resignation, you can provide the growth opportunities that employees not only want but demand in their jobs now.
The key to reducing salesperson turnover is to develop a culture of continuous learning.
An enterprise that has embraced continuous learning encourages and values learning at every level of the organization. The goal is to increase overall industry knowledge, individual and company-wide performance, competence, and innovation. The type of culture allows the salespeople to reach their potential and surpass previous sales and achievement benchmarks.
Continuous learning requires an educational platform that provides blended learning. By giving the salespeople an online platform that offers a combination of self-paced study, live virtual training, and on-demand resources, you provide the flexibility they crave. You also allow them to acquire new skills or reinforce existing ones in a way that fits their learning style. When they can access the information at will, they are more engaged and have greater memory retention.
Successful sales managers know the ROI of learning and development. Decreased turnover leads to greater employee satisfaction, higher productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and increased sales. However, the right platform is only part of the equation. If you want to create a continuous learning culture, you need to practice the following:
The last one is critical if you want to attract and retain high-performing salespeople. 70% of workers are willing to change jobs if the new employer offers employee learning and development as a benefit. If you still aren't convinced about the ROI of learning and development, consider that statistic. Which side of that decision do you want to represent?
Your sales reps also want the opportunity to develop skills on the job that don't prevent them from doing their jobs. In other words, they don't want to devote entire days to traveling to live training. Your highest potential earners want to be out in the field servicing their customers and achieving sales goals while still having the opportunity to acquire the skills and techniques that allow them to achieve their personal and career goals. The most valuable role you have as a BevAlc sales manager is to provide the necessary tools and techniques and reinforce the skills necessary to succeed.
Quality tools like those that produce graphical sell sheets have revolutionized selling. Your reps no longer have to try to convince their customers of the benefits of suggested solutions. By creating fact-based, visual representations of the profit potential of different scenarios, the customer can see how their investment can increase their bottom line or provide the growth they desire. They can hold the key to their goals in their hand as a leave-behind or view it at their leisure digitally.
Sales assessments are vital to constructive, consistent growth across your team, as well as a critical tool for performance reviews. They itemize specific expectations upfront so the rep understands the requirements of their role. Assessments also identify the areas for additional work or improvement, both from the employee and manager perspectives. They provide a more interactive and qualitative conversation that ultimately allows everyone to reap the benefits they desire.
The world of managing employees has changed. To be competitive in attracting and retaining top talent, you have to offer what today's employees want. There may be many open jobs but that doesn't mean people don't want to work. It simply means that those employers have still not responded to the new environment. Employees have always wanted more opportunities to learn and develop their skills when and how works best for them, but only recently have they been willing to hold out for the employer that will provide it.