When your business depends on making sales, losing your best sales employees can be devastating. When you add up recruiting expenses, training costs, and lost sales, turnover can cost as much—or more—than a full-time employee. In other words, it pays to keep your sales talent on board.

Here are 5 retention tips to maintain motivation and spur your high-performing sales team's productivity:

Provide challenges.

Most salespeople are drawn to a challenge. After all, if they didn’t enjoy the thrill of succeeding in a tough environment, they wouldn’t last very long in their job. However, sometimes sales employees need a different type of challenge to stay engaged. Consider asking them to launch a new product or service to keep them challenged and motivated.

Reward reps with happy customers.

Success isn’t always about the highest sales numbers (although those are important). Success can also be measured in testimonials, NPS, and repeated business. Pay attention to customers who are raving fans of your sales employees and make sure those employees know their customer service efforts are valued and appreciated.

Improve engagement.

Fostering an emotional connection to the company can help retain your top sales talent. Many organizations help grow such connections through showing appreciation, creating mentorship programs, and building a great company culture. Creating a positive relationship can also encourage your sales reps to remain honest with you about whether they feel appropriately challenged, incentivized, and appreciated.

Offer the right incentives.

Understanding what motivates your sales staff to do their best work can make all the difference—and it won’t be the same thing for every employee. Some employees work hardest for financial incentives, while others live for praise and recognition. Trips, non-monetary rewards, development opportunities, and shares in the company can all play a part in incentivizing your salesforce. Don’t just assume that every employee wants the same rewards. Get to know your employees and individualize your strategy to keep them selling for you. Another tip: increase the amount of the bonus or perk as their tenure increases to offer even more incentives.

Set clear milestones.

Provide a framework of clear expectations, goals to reach, and ways to measure progress. With a clearly outlined plan, your top performers will know they are making progress toward their sales targets, and you will be able to offer commensurate praise and compensation.

Looking to hire top-performing sales talent who will add to your culture and remain loyal to the company?

We’ve got the talent you need across diverse industries! Our expert recruiters offer a truly unique and high level of care. Whether you’re looking to hire temporary, contract-to-hire, or direct hire talent, partner with Premier Talent today.