The Three Biggest Mistakes of Sales Leaders That Lead to Turnover

ATTENTION Sales Leaders!

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: if your sales team is underperforming or your sales turnover is sky-high, it’s not because you “hired the wrong people.” That excuse is tired, lazy, and most likely… flat-out wrong. Sales leaders and executives love to point the finger at the salespeople: “They’re lazy.” “They didn’t hit the ground running.” “They don’t have that killer instinct.” “They’re entitled.”

STOP. Seriously, stop.

Three hard questions to ask yourself:

• Did YOU provide world-class onboarding to give them the best chance to succeed?
• Did YOU provide guidance, coaching, and the inspiration they needed to thrive?
• Did YOU provide them with a structured, documented sales process for them to follow to ensure they met your expectations?

Most salespeople don’t fail in a vacuum — they fail in the system YOU created. Not always, but most of the time. After twenty-five years of evaluating thousands of salespeople and sales leaders across hundreds of organizations, I’ve identified the three biggest, most consistent, and most damaging leadership mistakes that lead to high sales turnover and low success when developing salespeople. And no, it’s not about bad hiring — it’s about bad leadership.

Sales Turnover Mistake #1: Poor Onboarding (a.k.a. “They’ll Figure It Out”).

Imagine being hired for a new sales job. You’re excited, motivated, and eager to hit the ground running, and then you’re handed a laptop, some logins, and a pat on the back. “Go get ‘em pal!” That’s the onboarding experience for new salespeople in far too many sales organizations. No roadmap. No process. No structured training. No clear expectations. No role play. This isn’t onboarding. It’s negligence.

What’s happens when you don’t properly onboard new salespeople?

When companies fail to properly onboard new salespeople, they’re basically throwing their salespeople into the deep end, not knowing if they can swim, and hoping they don’t drown.

It’s egregious. It’s malpractice. It’s just wrong.

Leaders assume that because someone has previous sales experience somewhere on Planet Earth, they should “know how to sell.” McFly, anybody home?! Seriously. What would make someone’s brain think that just because a salesperson can sell medical devices in Boston, Massachusetts would be equally successful selling surf lessons in San Diego, California? The product is different. The prices are different. The customers are different. The sales process is different. The market is different. The culture is different. But hey, they should “know how to sell,” right? SMH.

A PROPER onboarding process for a new salesperson should include:

• Your company’s mission, vision, and values (not just reciting them but showing why these hold true for you and your organization).
• What your ICP (ideal customer profile) looks like. Don’t tell them to sell to anyone who’s willing to buy or someone who has some form of currency we can extract.
• What the buyer’s journey looks like and how to guide them along the way.
• How to follow and execute your documented and specifically built sales process (I’m hoping you’re one of the 14% of companies who have one… more on that later).
• How to use your CRM effectively and how to best use the tech stack provided to them.
• How to focus on DPIs (stay tuned for what these are) rather than KPIs.
• What a successful first 30, 60, and 90 days looks like. This is NOT SOLELY ABOUT how many sales they make!!

What’s the downstream effect if you don’t have proper onboarding?

Without proper onboarding, most salespeople will fake confidence while silently drowning. They’ll avoid asking questions, so they don’t look “dumb,” and they’ll wing it on sales calls just to survive and hope they do just enough so they don’t get fired (The Peter Gibbons Principle).

This leads to:

• Poor early performance → limited success → self-doubt → they quit.
• Low engagement → low accountability → low morale.
• And inevitably… high turnover.

If your salespeople frequently leave within the first 120 days, I can almost guarantee it’s not a problem. It’s a YOU problem.

Bottom Line: If your onboarding plan is “shadow Jen for a week,” or “go sell lots of stuff,” don’t be shocked when salespeople leave.

Sales Turnover Mistake #2: No Real Coaching (a.k.a. “Hit Your Numbers or Else”).

Most sales leaders think they coach. They go through the motions by doing ineffective one-on-ones, schedule random pipeline meetings asking when the deals are going to close, go on ride alongs and say, “watch me do it,” and threaten PIPs if their salespeople don’t shape up. Wow. What an uplifting and inspiring environment! Eye roll. That’s NOT coaching — that’s BS.

Why many leaders avoid coaching.

There are four main reasons most sales leaders fail miserably at coaching:

1. They don’t prioritize it. They’re “too busy” chasing forecasts, doing ineffective meetings, or giving orders to sell more. Coaching gets relegated to “when I have time” which is almost never.
2. They don’t know how to coach. Coaching isn’t natural for most people. It’s a learned skill, and if they’ve never been trained how to properly coach, how could they possibly do it effectively?
3. They don’t do it consistently. Salespeople need regular feedback loops to grow. Sporadic or one-off sessions don’t change behavior.
4. They don’t think it’s necessary. When you make your top salespeople a sales manager, they often didn’t “need coaching” so, why should anyone else?

What does real coaching look like?

• Regular one-on-ones focused not just on deals, but on skill development.
• Reviewing call/Zoom recordings and role-playing real-life sales scenarios.
• Asking deep questions and guiding salespeople to find answers themselves.
• Providing encouragement and constructive feedback consistently.
• Tracking progress on habits, not just results. Remember, DPIs, not KPIs.

What’s the downstream effect if you don’t properly coach your salespeople?

Without proper coaching:

• Your salespeople will plateau quickly. They won’t get better; they’ll just get older.
• Small issues become big problems (bad habits, lack of confidence, poor messaging).
• Top performers leave because they crave growth, not micromanagement.
• Bottom performers continue to underperform and drain your resources and energy.

When salespeople don’t feel supported, developed, or heard, they disengage. Disengaged salespeople don’t sell. Disengaged salespeople quit, either physically or mentally. For more information about the connection between coaching, sales team engagement, and turnover, check out our our sales team engagement statistics report, synthesized from insights of ~7K U.S. sales leaders.

Bottom Line: If you’re not actively making your people better, you’re actively making them leave.

Sales Turnover Mistake #3: No Sales Process (a.k.a. “Go Sell Stuff!”).

Here’s a dirty little secret in most companies: They say they have a sales process, but no one’s following it, even if they do. And that’s a leadership failure. A good sales process isn’t just a flowchart on a whiteboard — it’s a shared language, a mutual agreement, and a living system that drives consistency across the team. But when leaders don’t hold salespeople accountable to that process, chaos ensues. Would you be surprised if I told you only 14% of companies have a documented sales process for their salespeople to follow?

Why the sales process gets ignored.

•         Leadership never believed they needed one.
•         Leadership never reinforced it after they rolled it out (if they even had one).
•         New salespeople weren’t trained properly or checked on to see if they could execute it.
•         Managers let “top performers” do their own thing because “they hit their numbers.”
•         There’s no visibility or metrics tied to the process stages.

When this happens, salespeople start freewheeling — making up their own way of selling, skipping key steps, or relying on charm, luck, or brute force instead of relying on strategy.

What’s the downstream effect of not following a documented sales process?

•         Data becomes meaningless because the stages in the CRM don’t reflect reality.
•         Forecasting becomes guesswork.
•         Customer experience varies wildly depending on which salesperson they talk to.
•         No repeatable system = no scalable growth.
•         Revenue growth is inconsistent and intermittent.

Worst of all, new salespeople get confused and frustrated. They want structure. They want to know how to win. And when every person on the team is doing something different, it breeds chaos, confusion, and attrition.

Bottom Line: If your sales process isn’t adopted and enforced, it’s just a theory. And people don’t stay long in theoretical organizations.

Stop Blaming the Salespeople!

Here’s the truth: Turnover isn’t a sales problem. It’s a leadership problem. If you:

•         Don’t onboard properly,
•         Don’t coach consistently,
•         And don’t hold salespeople accountable to the executing the sales process…

You don’t have a people problem. You have a leadership problem.

Now, I’m not saying every salesperson you’ve ever hired was perfect. Some of them aren’t great salespeople and heck, one or two of them may have been psychopaths. But most of them never had a real shot. You didn’t give them the tools, the structure, or the guidance to succeed. It’s time to stop blaming salespeople for the environment they were forced into.

So, what can you do to fix this?

•         Build a real onboarding process. Document it. Test it. Improve it. Execute it.
•         Commit to coaching. Block time for it. Learn how to do it. Make it sacred. It matters.
•         Build and execute the sales process. Build it. Reinforce it. Tie it to success metrics.

Sales is hard enough as it is. Don’t make it harder by failing your people before they’ve even begun. If you want loyalty, performance, and long-term growth, start leading — not blaming. Because great salespeople don’t leave great companies. They leave bad leadership.

If you want to take the next step in solving your sales turnover problem, consider assessing your current sales managers for their strengths and weaknesses in the specific competencies they need to excel in leading sales teams.

We offer a Sales DNA assessment specific for sales managers that measures for these core competencies critical for success with 72% predictive validity. You can download a free sample of our Sales Manager DNA Test below.