Sales managers spend countless hours analyzing and reworking go-to-market strategies, assessing their sales reps’ strengths and weaknesses, and, hopefully, providing coaching that builds skills and improves performance. One area that many sales managers fail to focus on until it’s too late is their team’s turnover rate.
Because the impact of medium to high turnover so often negatively impacts a company’s bottom line, SalesFuel, in its Voice of the Sales Manager study, sought to discover what sales managers with low turnover do differently than those with medium or high turnover.
Mercer reports the average voluntary turnover rate in the U.S. from 2024 to 2025 was 13%. The same survey in 2023 reported an average turnover rate of 17.3% and 13.5% in 2024.
The SalesFuel study created three categories of companies in terms of sales staff turnover: under 21%, 21-40%, and 41% and above. Among all respondents, the average turnover rate over the last 12 months was 30%. The low group averaged 7.9% turnover, the middle group averaged 29.9%; and the high turnover group averaged 66% churn.
Managers Make a Difference
Clearly, high turnover can be a significant drag on a sales team’s overall performance, while low turnover can produce the sort of comprehensive understanding of a company’s go-to-market strategy that helps fuel year-over-year revenue growth.
Most managers understand the direct correlation between turnover and team performance. Fewer realize how much they can impact the turnover rate with their own actions.
Gallup reported in 2024 that a survey it conducted on employee turnover revealed that 42% of workers who voluntarily left a company within the past year said their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving their job. That is startling! It should be heartening to high-turnover companies to know that actions can be taken to lower turnover.
Angela Ching-Cemini, who held senior HR positions at Harvard Business Review and Crabtree & Evelyn, told HBR, “The manager is the singular most important force that influences the employee journey. And I think the critical thing that managers can do is demonstrate care.”
The Gallup report on turnover states that approximately three of 10 changes that former employees say could have prevented their departure were related to either increasing positive interactions such as listening and communication or having fewer negative interactions with their manager.
Gallup found that employees who have regular conversations with managers that focus on goals and priorities, recognition for recent work, and collaboration are four times more likely to be engaged.
And engagement clearly factors into holding on to workers. When asked in the SalesFuel survey to select from a list of skills that sales managers must possess to be effective (they could select up to 10 skills), a whopping 53.8% of the managers in the low-turnover category selected team engagement and motivation, while only 37.2% of managers from the high-turnover category and 38.3% from the medium-turnover category selected team engagement and motivation as important.
Of course, low engagement in a work environment is contagious. It’s not surprising that 30% of managers from high-turnover companies said they were pursuing a job at another company, while only 17% of managers from the low-turnover category said the same. Also, one-quarter of managers from high-turnover companies said they are considering leaving sales or starting their own business, while 19.5% of managers from the low-turnover companies said the same. And nearly 28% from the high-turnover category said they have a realistic opportunity to make more money this year, compared to 51% of managers from the low- turnover category who said as much.
\But there’s another important factor to consider.
“Salespeople don’t just leave bad managers — they’re more likely to leave for better opportunities,” says SalesFuel CEO C. Lee Smith. “Yes, they want more money, but they also want more flexibility, competent co-workers, and to know the people at the top see their success. Give it to them proactively, before someone else does. Because the more valuable they become, the more marketable they become.”
What Managerial Skills Are Perceived As Important
Conversations focusing on goals and career development fall into the category of coaching. From the same list of sales managers skills needed to be effective, 39.5% of the managers in the high-turnover category selected sales coaching, while nearly 60% of managers in the low-turnover category selected coaching. Clearly, recognizing the importance of frequent, individually tailored coaching has a direct impact on retaining employees.
Other noticeable differences from the SalesFuel survey’s list of key skills that sales managers must possess include:
- Pipeline management/forecasting – 36.3% of managers in the low-turnover category cited this as an important skill compared to 24.4% in the high-turnover category.
- Interdependent cooperation and collaboration – More than one-quarter (25.5%) of managers in the low- turnover category marked this as a key skill, while only 20% in the medium-turnover category and 18% from the high-turnover category marked it as important.
- Goal setting and accountability – 51.7% of low- turnover managers chose this as a key skill, while 38.3% from the high-turnover companies selected it.
- Sales talent, recruiting, selection and hiring – Managers from the high-turnover and low-turnover categories were in near alignment here (43% and 39% respectively), while (somewhat inexplicably) only 25% of managers from the medium-turnover category marked this skill as important.
Differences In Strengths and Weaknesses
Managers from the three categories of turnover were asked to rate their team’s top three strengths and weaknesses. 29% of managers from high-turnover companies included “connecting with the person who controls the budget” as a top strength, while only 16.7% of managers from low- turnover companies and 18% from medium-turnover companies cited that as a top strength.
The top skill cited by managers from low-turnover companies was negotiating and closing followed by customer retention. The top skill from high-turnover companies was sales presentations followed by identifying the buyer’s most pressing needs.
In terms of top weaknesses, managers from high-turnover companies indicated they struggle with pre-meeting/pre- call intelligence, but not as much as their counterparts from the low- and medium-turnover companies. The highest- ranked weakness among managers from high-turnover companies was negotiating and closing; from managers in the low-turnover category, the pre-call intelligence ranked as the top weakness.
Key Takeaways
Some key insights culled from the SalesFuel survey confirm what many may suspect but have not acted on.
Sales managers who place a high degree of importance on coaching, including frequent conversations with individual team members that are tailored to each worker’s specific needs, have lower turnover than those managers who don’t see that as a priority.
Moreover, sales managers who are seeking employment somewhere else will likely struggle to retain their own employees. And if they don’t believe they have a realistic chance to make more money this year, that’s going to show up in how they manage and will negatively impact their employee retention rate.
