10 Tips on How to Lose Your Top Sales Producers

Do you need to get rid of your top producers or maybe you're looking for them to find a new home with a competitor.

Just follow these 10 Tips:

1)  Don't update your demo room with the latest and greatest MFP's, some owners and managers will say, "aw we never do that many demonstrations anyway, why should we have the extra expense?".  I'll state that if you're not updating your demo fleet then your competitor is, plus how can you test new features, print samples and demonstrate the system?

2) Don't fix pricing errors in your price books: It's commission time and surprise surprise you told the rep there's a mistake, adjusted the commissions however you never revised the pricing. Funny, you had the time to correct the commissions but not the price book.

3) Make sure you don't give out the sales persons commission statement until a day before or a day after commissions are paid, thus if there is a mistake you can get another 30 days to make it up.

4) Don't invest in a lead generation program/lease UCC service or do any marketing to your existing clients. It takes money to make money, you need to invest, funny everyone wants new business but no one wants to pay for it.

5) Ignore emails from your sales reps, all they do is complain anyway right?

6) Don't update your price books for new models until you get a call or email from your sales people.

7) Don't offer them any advanced sales training and new product training.

8) Don't ever offer up any empathy for your sales team and rightly so who cares about them they're just sales people.

9) Don't ever give them a raise in salary (for a job well done) like you you with the rest of your employees. 

10) Don't follow through an Incentive Trip that you announced for your Top Producers.

In sales we (sales people) understand that the grass MAY not always be greener on the other side of the hill, however sales people will and can put up with many deficiencies and I believe it's because we make mistakes also and we understand more than anyone that it is not a perfect world.  The problem with sales people making mistakes is that they pay for their mistakes and hopefully we will not make the same mistake twice. 

I'm sure there are many principals that are so removed from the sales process that they really have no clue what transpires on a day to day basis. If a rep is consistently making points about the process, then he or she is then labeled as a complainer. On the other hand those points that the rep is making may not be making it up the chain of command, thus everyone believes there is a perfect process.  Many reps will just say nothing at all, and then just turn in a resignation. In most cases your sales producers are trying to help fix deficiencies in your process.

Your top sales producers want to to do well, they want to overachieve, they want to make more for themselves and their families for a better way of life.  Just maybe those "C" people at the top need to take a step back and engage with their sales people, and ask them, what it is the good the bad and the ugly.

-=Good Selling=-