Your best salesperson resigns tomorrow. She carries 40% of your number. How much of your pipeline walks out with her?
You thought having that one salesperson you could always rely on was a strength. It can also be one of the most expensive concentration risks in the business.
And it hides well. Because while she is there, the numbers look fine
The risk is invisible right up until the resignation letter. Every quarter she delivers, the concentration looks like dependability rather than exposure. Then she leaves, and 40% of the number — plus the pipeline, the relationships, and the customer knowledge behind it — leaves in the same week.
A 10-minute test
You can tell concentration risk from teachable skill by looking at where the deals came from. Pull last year's closed-won by individual salesperson and run this.
The Source Test
Take your top performer's deals
For each one, write down how it entered the business: inbound, referral, marketing, her own network, or company outbound. One label per deal, based on where it actually originated — not where it was eventually logged.
Do the same for one average performer
Same exercise, same five source categories, for someone delivering closer to the team median. This is your comparison group — it tells you what "normal" sourcing looks like in your business.
Compare the sources
Look at where the difference in performance actually comes from. The pattern in that comparison is the whole answer — and it points to two very different situations that require opposite responses.
If she wins from her own network, ask a different question
Network-sourced revenue is revenue you do not own. If your top performer wins disproportionately from her own network, the deals are riding on relationships that belong to her, not to the company. That changes the questions worth asking:
Who owns the next expansion conversation?
When she leaves, does anyone have standing to grow those accounts — or does the relationship leave with her?
Who can call that customer tomorrow?
Is there a second relationship inside each account, or a single point of contact that is now a single point of failure?
Who understands why they bought?
The buying rationale, the internal politics, the real decision driver — is any of it documented, or does it exist only in her head?
If she converts shared deals at 2X, that's different
A higher conversion rate on comparable deals is a skill, not an advantage of access. Now look at deals where both salespeople worked similar opportunities. If your top performer converts those at twice the rate, that is not a network effect — that is something she does differently in the selling itself.
Find out what it is. How she qualifies. How she progresses deals. How she handles commercial conversations. Then make it teachable to everyone.
One produces results through advantages only they possess. The other produces results through behaviours the company can learn
Only one becomes organisational capability
The distinction determines whether her performance ever belongs to the company. Individual capability produces results through advantages only she possesses — her network, her relationships, her personal reputation. A sales system produces results through behaviours anyone can be taught: qualification, deal progression, commercial conversations.
Only the second one automatically becomes organisational capability. The first stays locked to a person, which is why it feels like a strength right up until it becomes a resignation-shaped hole in the number.
If performance walks out when the person leaves, you built individual capability, not a sales system
The goal is not to lose the star. It is to extract what she does that is teachable, document what only she currently knows, and build a second relationship into every account she owns — so that her leaving is a setback, not a cliff. A star inside a system is the best of both. A star instead of a system is a risk you have not priced yet.