Relighting The Fire – Recovering From Sales Burnout
Ian Brodie | February 2nd, 2009 - 3:23 amMy Candle burns at both ends
it will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “First Fig”
Burnout – the experience of exhaustion and disinterest – is a debilitating condition in any role, but it’s particularly damaging for those in sales roles. In other professions it’s possible to soldier on at 70% and just about get the job done. But selling is very much a “confidence game” – and a salesman lacking in energy and enthusiasm wil get 0% results.
Worse still – perhaps the most powerful mechanism to help employees recover from stress and burnout, a supportive work environment and social system – is often unavailable to salespeople. Many salespeople rarely interact with peers or others in their organisation. They’re out on the road or meeting prospects. With the exception of occasional meetings with their sales manager, they just don’t have the kind of work environment conducive to providing social support to mitigate the effects of burnout.
Burnout can often be a vicious circle. Lower energy and enthusiasm leads to poor results. Pretty quickly, self-defense mechanisms can set it – with the salesman beginning to blame luck, a poor product, bad marketing, anything but themselves. Soon, results get worse and cynicism sets in. If only the salesperson had better leads or a better product….but they don’t. The salesperson feels more out of control, more stressed – and sales drop again.
Now I’m no psychiatrist or therapist – and I wouldn’t presume to hold the answer for anyone in the painful throes of burnout except to say that if you’re suffering – get help.
But what I can do is offer some thoughts on how I’ve got myself out of bad patches where I’ve begun to drift into burnout mode.
There have always been two things that have helped restore my energy levels and my enthusiasm – no matter how bleak things are looking.
The first is learning. I’ve always been motivated by learning new skills and gaining new understanding. Reading a high quality sales or marketing book or listening to an audio will often inspire me – or at the very least interest me to try the techniques or ideas from the book. Often this little trigger is enough to set me on a positive spiral.
The second is to help others. I find that when mentoring or simply giving advice my cynicism drops and I often rediscover my motivation for selling. Motivating others seems to work to raise my own motivation levels – it’s as if I’m secretly listening to myself and taking everything onboard in a more powerful way than if someone else had been saying the same things to me.
Of course, different things will work for diferent people. You might find these methods work for you if you’re beginning to feel burned out. Or you might find that you can discover something in your history that works better for you. Either way – try something.
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2 Responses to “Relighting The Fire – Recovering From Sales Burnout”
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I’m having a problem with sales burnout related to working too much. I’ve been in sales for over 10 years and been very successful
at it.
I recently changed over to retail sales and did very well the first month, but then the boss fired one of the salesman and didn’t rehire, leaving the rest of us to work 6 days a week, with sometimes seven, eight, nine or ten days working before we get that one day off. I am so exhausted and tired of being there that it has affected my sales.
When trying to talk to the boss about this, all he really said was that if I can’t handle it, I should let him know.
Any sales job I have had before worked us no more than 5 days in a row, recognizing that salespeople need a break to ‘recharge’.
Do I really need to just quit, or is there something more diplomatic that could be said to the boss? Or am I entirely wrong in this?
Retail sales can be very, very challenging, in part because of the schedule involved. Unlike most B2B sales positions, retail companies are often open 70-90+ hours a week, and since sales coverage is required, it falls on the shoulders of the sales team to work an unconventional work schedule (hooray for you if you are able to work out a set schedule with your manager that requires no more than five days in a row…it’s possible to do in some companies, but impossible to do in some retail companies, too).
It sounds to me that you are getting burned out because of the schedule. Whether your manager will pave the way for an adjustment to your schedule that will make it more reasonable (particularly in the number of hours worked per week), this is up to him/her, but while most people can work a crazy schedule for a while, it gets old after a few months or weeks for almost anybody.
You’ll have to figure out how your boss is likely to respond to you saying “I can no longer handle this.” If you think your manager will respond favorably, then do it. If you suspect your manager will react negatively, then it’s possible you may have to move on.
I like to see employees and managers strive for mature, effective communication about issues that arise. Yet, I know there are some managers (and some employees) who won’t respond positively to this.
Best of luck Roxy.