--- title: "Sales Rep Turnover Cost Calculator: What a Departure Costs" description: "Free sales rep turnover cost calculator: hiring, vacancy, ramp-up, lost pipeline and manager time, the cost of one departure and of your yearly attrition." url: https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sales-rep-turnover-cost-calculator language: en --- [Free tools](https://skipcall.io/en/tools) # Sales rep turnover cost calculator Hiring, the empty seat, the replacement’s ramp-up, lost pipeline, your manager’s hours: what one departure really costs, what your attrition costs each year, and which lever pays back first. Counted in margin, unpaid salary deducted The departure Every change recalculates everything. The rep who leaves Annual gross pay, before taxes. Role Base salary Bridge Group 2025 $ / year Variable at target Bridge Group 2025 $ / year Payroll taxes and benefits Assumption % Time in the job months Added on top of gross pay: payroll taxes, health insurance, retirement. Use your own payroll figure. Used for severance. What they produce Always in gross margin, never in revenue. Meetings held per month Assumption meetings Value of one meeting Assumption $ / meeting Margin a meeting brings on average: deal size × margin × close rate. **Work out the value of a meeting** Average deal size $ Gross margin % Meetings that close % One meeting is worth $900 in margin. Monthly output at full speed (margin): 12 × $900 = $10,800. How they leave Notice period and any severance. Employment law Type of departure Notice period months Output during notice Assumption % Two weeks = 0.5. Share of normal output. Few people still prospect hard in their last weeks. The replacement Time to fill the seat, then time to full speed. Seat empty for Assumption months From the last day of the rep who left to the first day of the new one, including their own notice. Ramp-up to full speed Bridge Group 2025 months Ramp-up curve Same progress every month. Fine-tune line by line Hiring, onboarding, pipeline, manager time, other costs. **Hiring$1,900** Hiring Job ads and outside costs Assumption $ Job boards, tests, background checks. Hours spent hiring Assumption hours Loaded cost of an internal hour Assumption $ / hr Screening, interviews, debriefs, references, for everyone involved. **Onboarding$2,750** Training and equipment Assumption $ Outside training, laptop, headset, onboarding material. Hours of training by the team Assumption hours Shadowing, call reviews, product sessions. Output covered by the team Assumption % What colleagues absorb while the seat is empty. **Pipeline and accounts$2,160** Meetings in flight at departure meetings Share lost in the handover Assumption % Booked but not held, or held but not handed over. Accounts that leave with them $ / yr margin Yearly margin of customers who follow the rep. **Manager time$2,250** Extra manager hours Assumption hours Loaded cost of a manager hour Assumption $ / hr Handover, reassigning accounts, exit talks, extra coaching. Interviews and training are counted above. **Pay and other costs$0** Pay increase for the replacement % If you have to pay more to hire. Counted over their first year. Other costs $ Temp staff, overtime, duplicate licenses. Currency One departure costs $28,600. Skipcall Cost of a sales rep departure Assumptions - **Role** : SDR / BDR - **Annual gross pay (base + variable)** : $80,000 ($55,000 + $25,000) - **Monthly output at full speed (margin)** : $10,800 - **Type of departure** : Quits (United States) - **Seat empty for** : 2 months - **Ramp-up to full speed** : 3 months, steady - **Team and attrition** : 6 reps, 40% a year Recalculate online: ## What one departure costs you per departure $28,600 36% of annual gross pay · 3.4 months of the role’s loaded cost - Cash out $2,300 Severance, agency, ads, training, other costs - Internal time $4,600 Hours of recruiters, trainers and managers - Lost output $38,300 Margin not produced: notice, empty seat, ramp-up, pipeline - Pay not spent -$16,700 Salary saved while the seat is empty Gallup puts the cost of replacing an employee at one-half to two times annual salary (2019). Your estimate: 36%. Below that range: your assumptions are cautious, or the seat produces little margin. ## Where the money goes Largest line first. The pay not spent on the empty seat comes off the total. - Empty seat $17,300 38% 2 months without output, 20% covered by the team - Replacement’s ramp-up $16,200 36% 3 months, steady curve: 1.5 months of full output lost - Onboarding and training $2,750 6% $1,500 outside costs + 25 h of the team’s time - Notice period $2,700 6% 0.5 months at 50% of normal output - Manager time $2,250 5% 30 h beyond hiring and training - Pipeline and accounts lost $2,160 5% 8 meetings in flight, 30% lost - Hiring $1,900 4% $800 outside costs + 22 h of internal time - Pay not spent on the empty seat -$16,700 2 months × $8,333 loaded pay per month ## Output, month by month From the day they hand in their notice to the day the replacement is at full speed. The shaded area is the lost output. Months since the notice was handed in Notice Empty seat Ramp-up Full speed Back to full speed after 5.5 months 3.4 months of full output lost ## What attrition costs your team each year One departure, multiplied by how often it happens. Reps on the team reps Yearly attrition Bridge Group 2025 % Departures in a year ÷ average headcount. The Bridge Group’s median for SDR teams: 40% (2024), of which 16 points are promotions. **Don’t know your rate? Work it out** Reps who left in the last 12 months Average headcount over the period Headcount at the start plus headcount at the end, divided by 2. Count promotions out of the role as departures. Your yearly attrition: 33.3%. Yearly cost of attrition $68,600 2.4 departures a year × $28,600 One point of attrition $1,710 What every point less saves you each year. If you cut attrition by 10 points Saved each year by cutting 10 points: **$17,100** You could spend up to $2,860 per rep per year on retention and still break even. That attrition rate means reps stay about 2.5 years on average (rough order of magnitude). ## Levers, ranked by what they save Each one recalculates the whole model. Yearly savings for the team. 1. 1Ramp the replacement one month faster +$13,000 / year A written 30-60-90 day plan, call reviews from week one, and ready-made lists so they dial on day two. [30-60-90 day plan](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/30-60-90-day-sales-onboarding-plan) 2. 2Keep 5 more reps out of 100 +$8,570 / year Burnout and stalled careers drive most exits: a fair comp plan, less admin, a visible path to the next role. [SDR variable pay simulator](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sdr-variable-pay-simulator) 3. 3Halve what gets lost in the handover +$2,590 / year Every call, note and next step logged where the next rep will find it, not in someone’s head. [Call recording and transcripts](https://skipcall.io/en/features/enregistrement-transcription) 4. 4Fill the seat one month sooner +$736 / year A job description ready to post, a scorecard so interviews end in a decision, a bench of candidates you keep warm. [Job description generator](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sales-job-description-generator) **How the numbers are worked outEvery formula, with your inputs.** - Baseline: the rep stays. Only the differences with that baseline are counted. - Monthly output at full speed (margin): 12 × $900 = $10,800. - Loaded monthly pay: $80,000 × (1 + 25%) ÷ 12 = $8,333. - Notice: 0.5 months × (1 − 50%) × monthly output = $2,700. - Severance outside France: weeks of base pay × years of service, plus any extra amount. - Empty seat: 2 months × monthly output × (1 − 20% covered) = $17,280, minus 2 months of loaded pay not spent. - Ramp-up: 3 months × 0.5 × monthly output = $16,200. The fraction is the share of output a curve loses on average: 1/2 steady, 2/3 slow start, 1/3 fast start. - Team: 6 reps × 40% attrition = 2.4 departures a year. - Not counted: effect on team morale, lost referrals, the knowledge that leaves with the rep. Real, but too uncertain to price honestly. ## Share or keep the result The link carries your inputs, including pay. Share it with care. **Make the next handover less costly.** Skipcall cannot keep a rep from leaving. It keeps their work: every call with its recording, transcript and AI summary, the tasks and notes in the pre-CRM, synced with HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce or Attio. The replacement picks up the accounts where they were left, and the power and parallel dialers take the dull part out of the job. [Create an account](https://app.skipcall.io/signup) [See the pre-CRM](https://skipcall.io/en/features/pre-crm) Your inputs never leave your browser. The tool sends nothing and stores nothing. How to check ## How much does it cost when a sales rep leaves? More than the hiring bill, and less than the round numbers you see online. A departure costs money in three different ways. Some of it leaves the bank account: severance, an agency fee, job ads, training. Some of it is time your team spends instead of selling: interviews, onboarding, the manager redistributing accounts. And most of it is output that never happens: the weeks of notice when the rep has already left in their head, the empty seat, then the months it takes the replacement to reach full speed. One thing works the other way: while the seat is empty, you do not pay it. Most turnover calculators forget that line, which is why they come out so high. This one subtracts it, and counts lost output in margin, not in revenue, since revenue you never made did not cost you its full amount. With the default example (an SDR on $55,000 base and $25,000 variable, the Bridge Group medians), a departure costs about a third of annual pay. Raise the value of a meeting or slow the ramp-up and it climbs quickly: the empty seat and the replacement’s ramp-up are the two largest lines, far ahead of hiring itself. Cash out Shows up in accounting Severance, agency fee, job ads, training, equipment. The only part most budgets see. Internal time Hidden in calendars Recruiters, interviewers, trainers and the manager, valued at their loaded hourly cost. Lost output The largest share Notice, empty seat, ramp-up, lost pipeline. Counted in margin, minus the pay you did not spend. ## SDR tenure, ramp time and turnover: the published figures Where the usual numbers come from, and how much weight each deserves (checked November 2026). - 40% a year Industry survey [The Bridge Group, 2025 SDR Metrics Report (February 6, 2025, 351 B2B companies)](https://www.bridgegroupinc.com/research/2025-sdr-models-metrics-report-the-bridge-group) Median SDR attrition in 2024, with half of teams between 21 and 57%. It breaks down into 13 points involuntary, 11 voluntary and 16 promotions: a promotion empties the SDR seat too, which is why the calculator offers it as a departure type. The same report gives an average tenure of 1.9 years, an average ramp-up of 3.0 months (the calculator’s default) and a median OTE of $80,000 split $55,000 base and $25,000 variable. - $5,475 Member survey [SHRM, 2025 Recruiting Benchmarking (October 15, 2025, 2,371 respondents)](https://www.shrm.org/in/about/press-room/shrm-releases-2025-benchmarking-reports--how-does-your-organizat) Average cost per hire for non-executive roles ($35,879 for executives). It covers the hiring process only: no empty seat, no ramp-up. That is the “hiring” line of the calculator, not the cost of a departure. - 0.5× to 2× salary Estimate, all jobs [Gallup, “This Fixable Problem Costs U.S. Businesses $1 Trillion” (March 13, 2019)](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247391/fixable-problem-costs-businesses-trillion.aspx) Gallup states that replacing an employee “can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary,” calling it a conservative estimate. It covers every kind of job and gives no line-by-line method, so use it as a sanity check, not as your number. Six-figure “cost of a lost SDR” claims circulate without a method. Your own number depends on four inputs above all: what a month of the seat is worth, how long it stays empty, how long the ramp-up takes, and how often it happens. ## How the calculator works The baseline is simple: the rep stays. The calculator only counts what changes when they leave, line by line. 1. 1 ### Value the seat in margin For an SDR: meetings held per month × the margin one meeting brings (deal size × margin × close rate). For a closing rep: monthly revenue × gross margin. Revenue would overstate the loss. 2. 2 ### Notice and severance During notice the rep is paid as usual, so the cost is the output they no longer produce. Severance depends on the law and the type of departure: none for a resignation, a contractual amount in the US, a statutory minimum in France. 3. 3 ### The empty seat, both ways Output lost while nobody holds the seat, minus what colleagues absorb, minus the loaded pay you no longer spend. 4. 4 ### Hiring and onboarding Outside costs (agency fee or job ads, training, equipment) plus the internal hours of everyone involved, at their loaded hourly cost. 5. 5 ### The ramp-up curve The replacement is paid in full but reaches full output only after a few months. A steady curve loses half of the output over that period, a slow start two thirds, a fast start one third. 6. 6 ### Pipeline, accounts and the manager Meetings or deals lost in the handover, customers who follow the rep, and the manager’s extra hours. Then the yearly cost: one departure × team size × attrition rate. ## Severance and notice: what the law says A summary for a United States or French employer, checked November 2026 against official sources. Information, not legal advice: your contracts and any collective agreement can change the amounts. - ### United States: severance is a choice There is no requirement in the Fair Labor Standards Act for severance pay; it comes from a contract, a policy or a negotiation. For a single departure, notice is a custom, not a federal requirement: the WARN Act only covers plant closings and mass layoffs. [U.S. Department of Labor, Severance Pay](https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/severancepay) - ### France: statutory severance After 8 months of continuous service, a dismissed employee is owed at least 1/4 month of pay per year of service up to 10 years, then 1/3 per year beyond, partial years pro rata. [Service-public.fr, Indemnité de licenciement (checked June 5, 2026)](https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F987) - ### France: mutual termination (rupture conventionnelle) The payment cannot be lower than statutory severance, whatever the length of service. Since January 1, 2026, the employer also pays a 40% contribution (up from 30%) on the part exempt from social charges. [France Travail, Rupture conventionnelle en 2026 (September 7, 2026)](https://www.francetravail.org/accueil/actualites/2026/rupture-conventionnelle-en-2026-quelles-nouvelles-regles-et-impacts-pour-employeurs-et-salaries.html?type=article) - ### France: resignation notice The law does not set its length: the collective agreement, the contract or local custom does. An employer who waives the notice on its own must still pay it. [Service-public.fr, Préavis de démission (checked July 8, 2026)](https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2883) ## Common mistakes when pricing turnover - ### Counting the empty seat’s salary as a loss You stop paying the rep the day they leave. The loss is the margin the seat would have produced, minus that pay. - ### Counting revenue instead of margin A deal you did not close did not cost you its full revenue, only the margin it would have left. - ### Forgetting the ramp-up The new rep is on payroll from day one and at full speed months later. It is often one of the two largest lines. - ### Counting interviews twice If interview hours are in hiring, do not add them again to the manager’s time. - ### Ignoring promotions A promoted SDR is good news, but the seat still has to be filled and ramped. In the Bridge Group data, promotions are 16 of the 40 points of attrition. - ### Using a generic 2× salary That figure is the top of a range covering every job. Your number depends on what the seat produces and how fast you replace it. ## How to reduce the cost of sales rep turnover Two ways: fewer departures, or cheaper ones. The second is often faster. - ### Shorten the empty seat Keep a job description and an interview scorecard ready, keep in touch with the runners-up of the last hire, and start hiring as soon as the notice is handed in. - ### Shorten the ramp-up A written 30-60-90 day plan, call reviews from the first week, call lists ready before day one. - ### Protect the handover Calls, notes, next steps and open deals logged in shared tools, so accounts do not go cold when their owner leaves. - ### Keep reps longer A comp plan they can hit, less admin, a visible path to the next role. The calculator tells you how much each point of attrition is worth. ## Related tools and guides Before the hire, during the ramp-up, and to keep the reps you have. - [Sales Rep ROI Calculator The other side of the coin: when a new rep pays for themselves.](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sales-rep-roi-calculator) - [30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan A ready-to-use plan to shorten the ramp-up.](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/30-60-90-day-sales-onboarding-plan) - [Sales Job Description Generator Post the replacement’s job the day the notice arrives.](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sales-job-description-generator) - [SDR Interview Scorecard Structured interviews that end in a decision.](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sdr-interview-scorecard) - [In-House vs Outsourced SDR Calculator Hire again, or hand prospecting to an agency?](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/in-house-vs-outsourced-sdr-calculator) - [SDR Variable Pay Simulator A comp plan reps can hit is a retention lever.](https://skipcall.io/en/tools/sdr-variable-pay-simulator) - [How to reduce SDR turnover Why SDRs leave and the retention playbook.](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/reduce-sdr-turnover) - [SDR onboarding plan The first weeks of a new SDR, step by step.](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/sdr-onboarding-plan) - [SDR interview questions Questions, role play and red flags.](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/sdr-interview-questions) - [SDR salary in the US Base, variable and OTE benchmarks.](https://skipcall.io/en/blog/sdr-salary-us) ## Your inputs never leave your browser The calculation runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type, pay included, is sent to Skipcall or anyone else, and nothing is stored. The page address stays clean while you type: the share link is only built when you click “Copy link.” To check: once the page has loaded, turn off your connection and change a value. The results keep updating. ## A calendar full of meetings starts with a call. [Get started now](https://app.skipcall.io/signup) [Book a demo](https://skipcall.io/en/demo) **No commitment** · Number live in 2 minutes ## Frequently asked questions **How much does it cost to replace a sales rep?** It depends above all on what the seat produces, how long it stays empty and how long the replacement takes to ramp up. With the calculator’s default SDR example, about a third of annual pay; for a closing rep with a long ramp-up it can reach a year of pay: test it with your own figures. Gallup’s general estimate for all jobs is one-half to two times annual salary. **How do you calculate sales rep turnover cost?** Add up the cash costs (severance, agency or job ads, training), the internal hours valued at their loaded cost (interviews, onboarding, manager), and the margin not produced during notice, the empty seat and the ramp-up, plus any pipeline lost. Subtract the pay you do not spend while the seat is empty. Multiply by the number of departures a year for the yearly cost. **How do you calculate the turnover rate of a sales team?** Divide the number of reps who left over the last 12 months by the average headcount over the same period, then multiply by 100. Example: 3 departures for an average of 8 reps is 37.5%. Count a rep promoted out of the role as a departure for that seat: it has to be filled and ramped all the same. The calculator has a small helper that does it for you. **What is the average SDR turnover rate?** The Bridge Group’s 2025 report puts median SDR attrition at 40% in 2024, with half of teams between 21 and 57%. That includes 16 points of promotions, which still empty the seat. **How long does an SDR stay in the role on average?** 1.9 years on average according to the same Bridge Group report (2025), the highest since the early 2010s. **How long does it take a new SDR to ramp up?** 3.0 months on average in the Bridge Group 2025 report, the lowest since 2010. Closing reps on long sales cycles take longer, often about as long as one sales cycle. **Why does the calculator subtract salary during the vacancy?** Because you do not pay a seat nobody holds. Counting the lost output without that saving overstates the cost, sometimes by tens of thousands of dollars. **How is this different from the Sales Rep ROI Calculator?** The ROI calculator looks at a new hire: when they pay for themselves. This one looks at the other end: what it costs when they leave, and what your attrition costs each year. **Is my data sent anywhere?** No. Everything is calculated in your browser and nothing is stored. The share link carries your inputs in the address, and it is only created if you click “Copy link.”