We’ve been focusing on retention recently as the present job market has forced this issue.  One point to note is that retention topics show up during the offer stage of hiring new salespeople.  The items the candidate values are often the ones in which they engage the hiring company.

Forbes.com’s How To Keep Your Employees Happy offers this:

Interestingly, throwing money at staffers isn’t always the answer. Neither is throwing a party every few months. Having fun at work and creating a cohesive team is just one element. The most successful companies also realize flexibility, values, career development and providing meaningful experiences are also important elements to minimizing turnover. The interesting thing is that many of the companies that value having a good time usually incorporate those other elements too.

Flexibility has risen to a highly-valued asset - an asset that enters into most offer negotiations nowadays.  Flexibility is the needed component  for reaching a desired work-life balance.

We recently had to virtually rewrite one of our customer’s offers due to a lack of definition regarding flexibility (vacation, telecommuting, etc.).  This factor was part of an undefined offer that cost us a strong candidate.  Companies with flexibility in their culture have a marketable advantage in this tight labor market.

The next step is to advertise the culture of the company. Use those events as a way to recruit talent. “The best thing to do if you’re a company is make it clear what you have to offer,” says Erickson. That way, when a candidate receives two job offers, and everything else is equal, they might go to the company that has a culture similar to theirs.

Hiring strong salespeople often comes down to a slight advantage.

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From the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link-my emphasis):

And a growing number of employees have concluded that the best way to move up is to move around. According to international-employment-matchmaker Randstad’s latest World of Work Survey, more than half of today’s employed are searching the Internet for a better situation; yet most profess to be happy in their current jobs, despite a 41-to-60-hour work week.

A just-released study by the Conference Board confirms that almost three-quarters of job-seekers are pounding virtual pavement. They’re scanning Internet job boards like Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com and networking with friends, acquaintances and friends of acquaintances on sites like Facebook and its business-networking predecessor LinkedIn.

Most job hunters simply scout employer offerings on job sites, but significant percentages also post resumes and register for e-mail alerts of openings. And these aren’t necessarily unhappy campers, insists Harris Interactive, which conducted the Randstad study. “This year, we see the highest workforce morale in three years, mirrored by impressions of improved productivity and less pessimism about the state of the job market,” writes Harris Senior Vice President Deanna Wert. “These workers are looking to cash in on their skills,” adds Wert, “and are more likely to switch jobs than at any time in the past five years.”

Retention will be one of the most important sales management topics of 2008.

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Great quote that is.  Selling Power provided it in their article Re-Recruiting and Retention.  The gist of the article deals with keeping your top performers when they have been recruited from your company.  The article lists some suggested goals you can gather by conducting exit interviews:

- Eliminate the barriers to retention that were mentioned in surveys of ex-employees.
- Identify essential, “can’t operate without” employees and thank each one of them (often).
- Upgrade personal performance contracts, paying special attention to the problem areas identified.
- Provide extra compensation and rewards. (Pacetta suggests establishing a recruiting and retaining fund for this purpose.)
- Ask each of your essential employees to come to you immediately if another firm approaches them.
- Make a personal commitment to keep your essential employees €“ especially when they attempt to leave €“ it will raise the stakes for you as well as put the recruiting company at a disadvantage.

I’m of two minds when it comes to salespeople who give their notice.  First off, they have crossed a bridge from which it is difficult to return.  Normally, the return involves paying the salesperson more money while wondering if they are going to be swayed by the next employment overture.  Expectations are now raised and the sales manager may get an itchy trigger finger when it comes to the salesperson’s performance.

Also, I’m highly skeptical that asking employees to come to you “immediately” if they are approached about another opportunity.  I’ve worked in plenty of companies where a recruiter reached me.  I always listened to what they had to say and never, ever, told my boss about the call.  Maybe it is just me, but I think I am in the majority on this one.

The main point I gather from the above list is that you need to pay attention to your employees.  Communicate with them on a regular basis.  Make sure your compensation plan is inline with the market.  Give them accolades when they deserve them.

Simple, yes, but successful retention is not a grand scheme of epic actions.  Instead, it is a daily commitment to doing the little things right.

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Tight employment markets require a successful hiring processes and strong retention programs.  Companies have to play good defense when it comes to the rainmakers within their sales department.  CareerJournal.com ’s Six Reasons Top Performers Seek Out Greener Pastures lays out a handful of clear pitfalls to avoid in this present market.

First off, number 1 is rudimentary…and, in our experience, the most abused of the list:

They receive few rewards for good behavior. If high performers receive no extra kudos or compensation for their extraordinary performance, they’ll begin to wonder whether it’s worth putting in the extra effort. It’s important to acknowledge those who work to promote the success of the whole company. If you can’t afford to reward them financially, find another way to recognize their contributions.

In sales, you have many different egos.  Part of the sales manager’s job is to sort out the right buttons for each individual.  That is an area in which we help managers.  The most common transgression we see is the sales manager who projects his or her reward pattern on to all of their salespeople.  They assume every is like them and responds to the same rewards.  Big mistake.

They feel underutilized or unchallenged. Because of their need for mastery, high performing employees can get easily frustrated and bored when their roles become too circumscribed or stagnant. The antidote: Feed them a steady diet of challenges.

Monotony drives change for many salespeople.  If they begin to view each day as the same day over and over (remember the movie Groundhog Day?), they will start to look for a new challenge.

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Here is a sales management question for you - in terms of coaching and developing your sales team, is it best to focus on your top performers to make them better or your bottom performers to build them up? I have recently read articles that argue from each side of this equation. It’s a good question.

My position would be to manage top-down with a focus on your top performers. The main reason I take this position is retention. I would qualify this position by assessing the top salespeople and adjusting my management style slightly to match their preferred communication, motivation and reward pattern. Simply put, some top salespeople are prima donnas and enjoy much adulation, some prefer an engaged sales manager who is involved in the selling process and others prefer to take a bit of a lone wolf approach.

I would focus on these top people and ensure that they are growing in their roles and supported in their goals. I wouldn’t say I would want to pamper them or overmanage them, but I would want to keep their path as straight and smooth as possible.

The worst scenario would be for the top performers to think they are underappreciated to the point where they leave the company for a new opportunity elsewhere. Just like your top customer is your competitor’s top prospect, in this present employment market, your top salesperson is your competitor’s top candidate.

Now, I’m not focusing on the top performers to the exclusion of the bottom dwellers. Obviously, I would spend time with them and attempt to neutralize their weaknesses and develop their natural strengths. But my priority would be to the top salespeople first.

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This isn’t shocking news, but telecommuters are more satisfied with their work when compared to the traditional office worker.  CareerJournal.com’s Working From Home Fosters Job Satisfaction does provide some detail to this difference that I found noteworthy.  First the background stats:

Seventy-three percent of the remote and home-based workers surveyed said they are satisfied with their company as a place to work compared with 64% of office workers, according to the survey in June of about 10,000 U.S. workers.

But here is the section that points to retention (emphasis mine):

Some of the differences were striking, Wiley said, pointing to the 10 percentage point difference between the 54% of telecommuters who said there is “open, honest two-way communication” at their company versus 44% of the office workers who said that.

Fifty-three percent of the remote workers said they were not considering leaving the company within 12 months, while 46% of the office workers said leaving was not a consideration.

Fifty-eight percent of the telecommuters said “senior management demonstrates that employees are important to the success of the company,” versus 51% of the office workers who agreed, and 53% of the telecommuters said they believe senior management speaks honestly versus 44% of the office workers.

That is remarkable.  I seriously doubt there is a tremendous difference between the companies that allow telecommuting and those that do not.  But the employee’s perception is drastically different.

Telecommuting is a sea change that is occurring in the modern work environment.  If you are struggling with retention, telecommuting is an excellent option for changing the problem completely.  Yes, it requires a change in management approach.  Yes, you have to trust your salespeople to be self starters.  But it will pay dividends in your retention efforts.

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From today’s excellent ERE.net article Employees Are Not Assets:

Employees As Investors

One of our problems is that we think of employees as assets, or things we control and dispose of as we see fit. Unfortunately, this characterization leads to behaviors that are incompatible with reality. Employees cannot be owned, taxed, depreciated, or disposed of as machines or other tangible assets.

They are investors in our organizations and they freely choose to share their expertise and skills with us or not. Each employee has a built-in return on investment meter that is constantly sampling the atmosphere and deciding if she is gaining or losing from a continuing association with the firm. As long as employees feel they are gaining, they don’t look for different jobs.

But in this job market, whenever the balance shifts even slightly, employees become vulnerable to any offer that may present itself. That is why having managers who have a history of good employee loyalty and low turnover are so valuable.

I think the author makes a great point in the context of today’s talent demands.  He couches the article around the need to allow employees to have positional movement within your company.  It is a compelling argument.

The key here is to monitor your manager’s retention rate within his department and within the company (do employees want to stay with the company but get out of that dept.?).

About 5 years ago we worked with a large company who had many sales managers within its divisions.  It was quite clear which managers were adept at growing their people and retaining top talent.  There was one manager who was able to retain his “right-hand man” and nobody else - his department was a consistent turnstile.  After our first meeting with him, it became quite apparent why this was.

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A quick read from Inc.com - Younger Employees More Loyal.  Some excerpts:

In a survey of 2,469 adults nationwide, 56 percent said they feel appreciated by their employer, according to the latest Workplace Insights Survey by Adecco, a Melville, N.Y.-based workforce-solutions firm.

It doesn’t get any fuzzier than to use the words “feel appreciated.”

Three-quarters of respondents reported that they are committed to their employers, with members of Generation X — ages 30 to 42 — feeling the most secure in their jobs.

I suspect the Gen Xers are moving into management positions and are more confident.

However, the survey also found that feelings of company loyalty often vary by generation. Twenty-one percent of the oldest generation of workers — 65 years and older — do not believe that their company is loyal to them, compared to 13 percent of Generation Xers.

Interesting, but what’s missing?

How about Gen Y?  This is a quick news brief article, but I would think the results for Gen Y would be important (dare I say more important than the oldest generation staring at retirement?).  Retention is a mission-critical issue today so I am surprised that the upcoming generation is omitted.

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Retention is on everyone’s mind with the job-hopping world we now live in. I have to admit, if we see a candidate who has been locked in with a company for 10+ years, we start to wonder about their overall development. Today Kevin Wheeler offers an excellent article on the ERE website that deals with strategies to implement to improve employee retention.

Money Won’t Hold Them starts with a quick history lesson on how we got here:

But somewhere in the early 1980s, things began to change. The first crack came with the advent of the 401(k) and (b) plans that freed employees from the corporate retirement programs. The 401 programs are, in effect, portable pensions. In effect, you take your accumulated savings and add to them somewhere else.

The pension fund is toast for we Gen Xers and younger. Workers now freed from a loyalty-inducing pension plan now look for opportunities more freely.

I often hear managers, CEOs, and supervisors promising this and that and making speeches about how committed they are to their workers.

When it comes time to allow workers some say in their work, or the opportunity to transfer to another department, or the chance to try something new, they just as often hesitate. Words can take on many meanings and can be twisted to fit any occasion. Deeds speak for themselves.

We’ve seen that approach all too often. I think he is spot on in that commentary.

Finally, he provides 6 suggestions for improving retention that are must reads. I’ll pull a couple of pieces from the article as a tease:

4. Pay at market rates or more. Don’t think that your benefits or loyalty will keep employees happy. Err on the side of generosity when you offer pay increases and never let pay be an excuse for an employee leaving. Pay is never the real reason people leave a firm, but it sure makes a great excuse for employees. Most organizations can’t defend themselves on this issue because they don’t pay that well.

6. Remember that we have entered a time when the employees are in charge. They can cripple your success and they know exactly how. They own the tools of production, and management needs to understand that the best companies, those that are most financially successful, have employees who enjoy “just enough” management and a lot of freedom. Today’s employees are better educated, more independent, less afraid, more secure, and far more entrepreneurial than those of even 10 years ago. This means that HR policies and management styles have to radically change.

As they say, read the entire thing.

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We have been discussing telecommuting in the sales world over the past year and have seen it appear in our sourcing efforts as a common topic. Inc.com looks into this trend in their article The Benefits of Telecommuting.

The focus of the article is in the realm of IT professionals. That group is obviously an early adopter of technology trends so this isn’t surprising:

In a survey of 1,400 chief information officers, 44 percent said their company’s IT workforce is telecommuting at a rate the same as or higher than five years ago, according to Robert Half Technology, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based technology-consulting firm.

Many IT workers fall to the younger side of the workforce so I would expect this trend to carry over into other departments. This trend is going to be an expected benefit of Gen Y workers over the next decade. If you are hesitant to go down this path, think of this:

The survey also found that among companies where IT employees telecommute, 34 percent of CIOs cited employee retention and morale as the greatest benefits. Another 28 percent of respondents said they saw increased productivity among employees due to the reduced commute time.

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