Sales Team Burnout: Reframing common risks into workable solutions

I’ve sat through countless corporate sales training sessions. Each inked another anagram on my brain so I wouldn’t forget their “winning sales formula”.

Entice. Survey. Product. Re-open. Invite. Thank. Yes, I sold countless Esprit logo t-shirts to preppy teenage girls back in the 90’s. (self included!)

Whether I was selling Esprit logo T’s, Viagra to GPs, or spinal hardware to neurosurgeons, sales training always had one thing in common: the focus was always on the customer.

Sure, it seems obvious. The customer was the buyer of the product, & it was a sales process. I get it.

The customer was the person we had to please. No, hang on….Entice.

BUT…should the initial sales training priority be the customer in today’s litigious age? An age where the standards of workplace well-being are being defined, along with imminently, the consequences for not meeting those standards.

Burnout amongst sales professionals is rife. Gartner Inc. recently published survey results of 908 sales professionals:

  • 89% experience burnout throughout their careers.

  • 59% claim their leaders don’t understand what motivates them.

  • 67% believe their leaders are disconnected from their reality.

The very nature of the traditional B2B sales role defies the neuroscience of well-being: extrinsic success measures, high-stress quota requirements, tedium, unpredictable income, hypervigilance, rejection & emotional churn, time & travel demands, along with compromised boundaries to accommodate customer “wants”.

Each is a risk factor for burnout in its own right. Yet sales professionals are being asked to absorb multiple risk factors daily while delivering commercial results, delighting customers, & maintaining their well-being under compromised circumstances.

Here’s my question for employers to consider:

If you’re asking your sales team to wear a daily backpack of weighted burnout risk factors,

what tools are you arming them with to ensure the parachute opens should they fall?

After coaching countless exhausted, burnt-out and teary-eyed sales professionals, I’ve noticed a trend.

Few were aware of the burnout risk factors they carried each day; all were desperate to escape; none felt they had any option except to “suck it up & soldier on”; none felt their leaders understood their daily reality; none felt empowered with tools to prevent them from sliding into burnout.

My situation was no different. In 2017 I felt the same way. (read my story excerpt here).

Learning became my antidote as I set out to understand how I ended up in such a pickle and to answer the question; Surely there is a better way?

“When organisations invest in the whole health of their employees through strategic training and development, they create a condition for sustainable success.” T. Duncan, Training Industry.

After seven years, this is where I’ve landed.

If we align the way we sell with evidence-based well-being strategies, human performance excels, and we drive commercial results.

What does this look like?

In my mind, a module of sales training has been missing.

One that is:

  • integrated into an employee onboarding experience

  • draws awareness of burnout risks & addresses them head-on

  • defines & embeds a self-care mindset in teams

  • offers a practical toolkit for overcoming daily challenges

  • enables teams to confidently practise self-care in both corporate & customer workplaces

For the past five years, I’ve been developing & practically applying a set of self-care mindset tools for sales professionals.

Each tool is designed to reframe burnout risks into workable solutions that maintain customer momentum, sustain performance & drive commercial results.

What burnout risks does the self-care mindset toolbox address?

  1. Cynicism

  2. Hypervigilance & lack of boundaries

  3. Undulating motivation

  4. Disempowerment

  5. Absence of purpose

  6. Overwork tendencies

  7. Tedium & stagnancy

Learning is one of our brain’s four core needs. The process in itself supports our mental health.

A professional development plan focused on supporting the whole person in the context of their role, rather than their “prescribed” job alone, strengthens & sustains human performance.

Job performance will follow.

Peta

Coaching Sustainable Selling | Corporate Speaker

Founder of Momentum Mindset - Sustainable selling solutions

Mental Health Speaker for Beyond Blue

Author of My Beautiful Mess - Living through burnout & rediscovering me

“Working with Peta has provided me with so much clarity around my own actions & how I positively impact the relationships I have with customers. To have her expertise as a mentor has been invaluable & not something available to me by sales & training manager in corporate organisations.”

Past Participant, Momentum Mindset


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