You hire a good salesperson. They ramp up, they start hitting number, and then about fourteen months in they hand in their notice and go to a competitor for a couple of grand more. If that pattern feels familiar, you are not unlucky. You are watching something that has a cause, and most of the causes are fixable before they cost you another hire.
Losing a rep is expensive in a way that does not show up cleanly on a spreadsheet. There is the pipeline they take with them, the accounts that go quiet while the desk sits empty, the ramp time on whoever replaces them. And the quiet bit nobody likes to admit, which is that one person leaving makes the next person start looking too.
So here is what actually drives good salespeople out, in the order we see it most.
The comp plan changed and nobody explained why
Salespeople live and breathe their comp plan. When you tweak it, cap it, or move the goalposts mid-year, they notice within about a day. Sometimes the change is fair. That does not matter if it lands as a surprise. The rep who feels the plan can be changed under them at any moment is a rep who is already updating their CV, even if they say nothing.
They stopped believing in the target
A stretch target motivates. An impossible one does the opposite. Once a rep privately decides the number cannot be hit, they stop trying to hit it and start trying to survive it. And a rep in survival mode is halfway out the door. Worth asking yourself honestly whether your targets are set from what the market can bear or from what the board wants to hear.
The manager is the reason, even when they say it is the money
People quit managers. It is almost a cliche now, but it keeps being true because it keeps being true. In sales it shows up as micromanagement, or taking credit, or a manager who only appears when something is wrong. Exit interviews will tell you it was the salary. Half the time the salary was just the thing that was easy to say out loud.
No path, no point
Ambitious salespeople want to know what is next. If the honest answer is 'this, forever', the ambitious ones leave and the comfortable ones stay, which is the exact opposite of what you want your retention to select for. You do not need a fancy career framework. The least you can do is tell a good rep what winning looks like in two years, and mean it.
What actually helps
Some of this is culture and management, and that is on you rather than on any recruiter. But a fair amount of retention is decided before the person even starts, at the point of hiring. Bring in someone whose motivation fits the role and the reward, and they stay. Hire a mis-fit because they interviewed well and you needed a bum on a seat, and no comp plan on earth will keep them past their first tough quarter.
That front-end matching is most of what we do. We spend the time working out what actually makes a rep tick before we put them in front of you, so you are hiring for fit and not just for a pulse. If turnover is the problem you are trying to solve, our piece on reducing turnover in sales teams goes deeper on the fixes.
And if you would rather just get the next hire right first time, take a look at how our sales recruitment works or book a quick call and tell us what keeps going wrong. Every placement is covered by a rebate and replacement guarantee, so if it does not stick, that is on us to put right.
