Turnover math for the CFO

The sales leader wants another SDR seat, and the model that lands on the CFO's desk prices it the usual way: a salary, a tooling line, a start date. The row is wrong, and not because the salary figure is off. It is wrong because it prices the seat as if the person stays, and in this role, the person does not stay. This post is the spreadsheet version of that sentence, written for the person who has to sign the requisition.

Turnover is a rate, not a risk

US SDR turnover runs 34 to 40 percent annually, roughly three times the all-role average. Median tenure sits under two years, and one new hire in five is gone within ninety days. At those levels, treating departure as a tail risk is a modeling error. It is a rate, and it belongs in the plan the way depreciation does: certain in aggregate, uncertain only in timing. A five-seat team at these rates should expect to run about two replacement cycles a year as its normal operating condition, not as a bad year.

The cost per event

Each departure costs $78,000 or more once the full sequence is priced. Recruiting fees and screening time to refill the role. The vacancy itself, which quietly out-costs the filled seat because the pipeline the seat existed to produce simply stops, the arithmetic we ran in the empty seat post. Then a new ramp at full compensation, four to six months to full productivity, the months you pay for twice. Model the cycle over three years and perpetual replacement adds $52,000 to $99,000 per seat per year on top of everything the requisition already listed.

The rows the model should carry

• The loaded seat. Not the salary. The real figure is roughly $10,000 a month once base, variable, benefits, tooling, management time, and amortized ramp are stacked, the full build from the three-year seat post.
• A turnover reserve. The annual rate times the cost per event, booked as an expected cost, not noted as a risk. For most teams this is a five-figure line per seat per year.
• A ramp allowance. Each new or replacement seat produces well below capacity for its first four to six months while costing full freight. The revenue plan should inherit that lag explicitly.
• A vacancy assumption. Weeks of zero coverage between a departure and a productive replacement, repeated at the turnover rate.

Run honestly, the three-year expected cost of the seat lands far above what the requisition implied, which is why finance keeps discovering this category in the actuals instead of the plan.

The row we sell instead

A CommandVA seat is $3,499 a month, published, month to month. The turnover math still exists, but it sits on our side of the table: if our rep leaves, the recruiting, the retraining, and the continuity are our cost and our contractual problem, while your price does not move. Three of our seats run $10,497, about the cost of one loaded in-house hire before its turnover reserve is even funded. The full model with every input exposed is on our math page, built to be audited. If the requisition is on your desk right now, book a strategy call and bring the model. We will add the missing rows together, and if in-house still pencils for your situation, the spreadsheet will say so and so will we.