Burnout: The "I'd cry if my body had the energy to support functional tear ducts" phase of a career in sales.
It takes a personal toll on reps, and the sum of those "personal tolls" often has major ramifications for teams and broader orgs.
Tactfully managing it on individual and macro levels is essential, so we surveyed over 300 sales leaders for their perspectives on how to approach it.
A lot of sales orgs are more reactive than proactive when identifying burnout.
When asked about how their orgs identify burnout risk, 43% of respondents cited reactive methods — performance decline (21%), exit interviews (11%), or waiting for reps to raise concerns (11%).
I try to avoid over-the-top, melodramatic metaphors when writing about sales, but this kind of calls for one. Here we go:
Burnout is a plague, weakening the function and fluidity of an otherwise sound sales process.
Healthy sales orgs minimize burnout, and reactive identification is like waiting until symptoms become debilitating before treating the disease.
Our results indicate that nearly half of sales orgs go that route, with only 16% of our respondents monitoring burnout systematically.
Leaders are undervaluing career advancement clarity.
When asked about career path clarity, 21% of respondents said they offer reps a sense of possible next roles without direction on how to reach them. 16% said they promote top-performers without an explicitly defined career path, and 12% say they have limited growth opportunities or vague advancement criteria.
That adds up to 49%, versus 42% who offer conversational clarity or a detailed progression framework.
Most sales professionals are interested in career growth (shocking, I know.)
Nobody wants to be Salesyphus — rolling the professional boulder up the hill only to find it back at the bottom at the start of every quarter.
Still, career mapping appears to be a pretty common burnout-inducing blind spot.
What can you do with this next-level, revelatory insight?
For reps: ​​Don't expect the system to catch you falling. Build your own early warning indicators — energy levels, especially scary Sunday scaries, irritability spikes — and take them seriously before your numbers do the talking for you.
For managers: Stay interviews beat exit interviews. Ask why people stay before they decide to leave. By the time you're learning about burnout on someone's way out, you've already lost.
For leadership: Audit your last ten promotions. Could a current rep have predicted (or at least understood) each one based on available information? If not, your career progression framework exists in your head, not in your organization.
"I'm here to write this newsletter and chew bubblegum — and I never buy bubblegum anymore. No one does."
Jay Fuchs. Managing Editor, The Science of Scaling Newsletter
The data in question
We sourced the data we used here through Panoplai: If you put a gun to my head and said, "Recommend the panoramic research platform that best reconciles accessibility and utility with effectiveness and sophistication, or I shoot," I'd say Panoplai and not even be worried.
How does your organization primarily identify burnout risk before it becomes turnover?
- Systematic monitoring — regular burnout assessments, stay interviews, and early warning systems - 16%
- Manager intuition with check-ins — leaders watch for signs and have conversations when concerned - 29%
- Performance-triggered — only address burnout when metrics decline noticeably - 21%
- Exit interview discovery — learn about burnout after people quit - 11%
- Reactive only — respond to burnout when reps explicitly raise concerns - 11%
- None of the above - 12%
How does your organization primarily identify burnout risk before it becomes turnover?
- Systematic monitoring — regular burnout assessments, stay interviews, and early warning systems - 16%
- Manager intuition with check-ins — leaders watch for signs and have conversations when concerned - 29%
- Performance-triggered — only address burnout when metrics decline noticeably - 21%
- Exit interview discovery — learn about burnout after people quit - 11%
- Reactive only — respond to burnout when reps explicitly raise concerns - 11%
- None of the above - 12%
Team Dynamics