Your A-Players Are a Retention Risk
By Shawn Hamilton, M.S., DBA(c) Shawn Hamilton is a leading sales leadership advisor and doctoral researcher at the University of Houston, specializing in Sales Leadership.
Your A-Players Are a Retention Risk
As a sales leader, who do you worry about most?
If you're like most, it's your B- and C-players. You spend your 1:1s coaching them, managing their performance, and worrying about their pipelines. You assume your A-Player—the rep who is 150% of quota—is happy. They're making great money, after all.
This assumption is a critical, and costly, mistake. In my experience, your A-Players are often your biggest flight risk.
The reason? They are wired differently. Most leaders believe top performers are motivated purely by their commission checks. They're not. They are motivated by mastery, autonomy, and challenge. And if you aren't providing those things, they are updating their resumes.
The Truth About Motivation: Hygiene vs. Motivators
The psychologist Frederick Herzberg, in his seminal Harvard Business Review article "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?", provided the perfect framework for this problem. He called it the "Two-Factor Theory."
Hygiene Factors: These are the basics of the job. Salary, commission, work conditions, and company policies. In our world, this includes a functional CRM and a non-toxic culture. If these factors are bad, they cause dissatisfaction. But—and this is the key—making them good does not create satisfaction. It just brings the rep to zero.
Motivator Factors: These are what actually drive performance and loyalty. They include achievement, recognition, challenging work, responsibility, and personal growth.
Your A-Player's commission check is a hygiene factor. If it's wrong, they'll be furious. If it's right, it's just what they expect. It doesn't motivate them; it just keeps them from being dissatisfied.
Your A-Player craves the motivator factors. But what happens in most organizations?
They get a "Super-Rep" manager who takes over their most challenging, interesting deals.
They get an "Outcome Coach" who only inspects their pipeline instead of helping them master a new skill.
They get a "Player-Coach" who is too busy closing their own deals to provide any real mentorship.
Your A-Player is bored. They are acing the current game, and you're not giving them a new, harder one to play. The money is just a side effect of winning. Once winning becomes too easy, they will leave in search of a challenge elsewhere.
Actionable Takeaways: How to Retain Your A-Players
Stop using hygiene factors to solve a motivator problem. You can't fix this with a SPIF or a bonus.
Ask "Growth" Questions, Not "Deal" Questions. In your next 1:1, after you've covered the pipeline, ask: "What's the most challenging part of your role right now?" "What new skill do you want to master this quarter?" "What part of our sales process do you think is broken?" Their answers will be a goldmine.
Create a Path for Mastery (Not Just Management). Not every A-Player wants to be a manager (Week 3's "Super-Rep Trap"). Create parallel career paths. Can they become a "Principal Sales Rep" who mentors new hires? A "Subject Matter Expert" who works with product? A "Major Accounts" rep who runs your most complex, strategic deals?
Delegate a Challenge. Give your proven A-Player a new, hard problem to solve. Ask them to lead a pilot for a new market segment. Task them with evaluating a new sales tool. Give them the autonomy to rebuild your discovery call deck. This demonstrates trust and provides the challenging work they crave.
Stop trying to keep your A-Players. Start trying to grow them. The first is a defensive game of retention; the second is an offensive strategy for building a loyal, world-class team.
References
Herzberg, F. (2003, January). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 81(1), 87–96.
