CJ McClanahan is an business coach and inspirational speaker and was wondering about how to keep your star performers forever and not have them leave when a new opportunity arises. The reality is that "the majority of your best people will eventually leave." The average length of time that someone stays with an employer is one to two years. They then move on to bigger and better things, such as starting their own business.

He suggests 3 key reasons why you should treat your top performers the same way you treat any other major investment, such as an automobile or your new house.

1. Investing in your employees will dramatically improve the overall performance of your company. As Zig Ziglar states, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. If your best team members recognize that you are just as interested in them as you are in the bottom line, they will produce more. Would your top performers be less likely to spend 45 minutes every morning on ESPN.com if they knew that you just spent $2,500 on a training class that will help them develop valuable skills?

2. Your best employees will stay longer in an environment where they are constantly being challenged and improving. The key to keeping the most talented individuals as long as possible is to diminish the powerful effects of the grass is always greener syndrome. One way of doing this is to ensure that they are continuously asking themselves Would I be able to learn all this great stuff somewhere else?

3. If and when they do leave, those employees who recognize how valuable your efforts were to their careers will provide you with two important benefits. First, they will be more likely to return and second, they will recommend their peers who will also tend to be top performers.