Dealing with Sales Burnout

Ways to handle a burned-out salesperson

1. Change the nature of the job. For example, make them the company's go-to expert in a particular field, product or type of customer.
2. Put them on a dedicated task force set up to solve a specific problem or hit a concrete goal.
3. Get them involved in training young or new salespeople.
4. Bring them into the process of interviewing and screening new sales candidates.
5. Give them responsibility for high-level or especially tough sales.
6. Make them the team's "problem-customer fixer" for the other salespeople.
7. Assign them as a personal assistant to salespeople whose performance is slipping.
8. Have them carry out a piece of market research the company actually needs.
9. Let them run a sales meeting, or present a topic at one.
10. Give them more flexibility in their role.
11. Provide "status symbols", such as their own parking spot, a set seat of their own, a desk closer to the manager, or a bigger, roomier office...
12. Offer recognition and prestige rewards: for instance, sending a gift to their spouse for concrete achievements, paying for a membership at one club or another, inviting them to visit headquarters and maybe even sit down with a very senior executive, adding them to an advisory team for management on certain issues, letting them speak in front of new salespeople or at a gathering of veterans, publishing their success story in the newspaper or in an internal newsletter that goes out to all the branches, and so on.
13. Give them opportunities for personal growth, such as sending them to outside professional seminars or courses, or offering them personal career counseling.