By now, we’re sure you’ve heard about the trend of “quiet quitting,” a movement popularized on TikTok that refers to employees mentally checking out and, essentially, only doing the bare minimum at work. Often, quiet quitting occurs as a result of employee burnout, poor work-life balance, and a lost sense of purpose at work.
A silent side effect of the Great Resignation, quiet quitting is largely due in part to the amount of extra work employees take on when coworkers resign. Currently, 83% of employees have taken on up to 6 new tasks outside of their job description to manage coworker resignations. This additional workload has only added to existing frustrations, and leads your employees to quit quietly. Likewise, 69% of salespeople report feeling burnt out. Has this been affecting your sales team?
When your sellers quietly quit, productivity plummets — and it’s much harder to meet, much less exceed, targeted revenue goals. So, when quiet quitting has become so trendy, what can you do to keep your sales team engaged and motivated at work? Below, we’re sharing our top 4 tips to prevent quiet quitting. Take a look!
1. A Consistent Sales Training Program is Key to Prevent Quiet Quitting
One of the many reasons sellers are experiencing unprecedented levels of burnout is due to their desire to grow. Often, when employees have been in their role for an extended period of time, they begin to feel stagnant — in fact, 51% of millennials (a majority of the workforce today) want to learn new skills at work. One way to prevent your sales team from quiet quitting lies in a consistent sales training program. With continuous training, your team habitually learns new skills and stays abreast of trends and best practices in an ever-changing industry, preventing the feeling of plateau.
In addition to preventing plateau, a training program helps keep your team ahead of the competition. For instance, providing additional training on sales negotiations will improve their win rates and average deal size. This helps sellers recognize their progression and growth within their career and keeps them engaged in their work.
2. Boost Sales Effectiveness by Improving Your Tech Stack
A major factor leading sellers to quiet quitting is due to the continued repetitive tasks they perform day-to-day, adding to their already heavy workloads. In fact, 39% of sales professionals report feeling overworked or exhausted. By automating time-consuming administrative tasks with a sophisticated tech stack, sellers are able to spend time on more value-adding activities, such as connecting with leads or selling to new prospects.
Consider this: CRM automation (think Salesforce) eliminates the need for your sales reps to input data manually. With the right tech stack, instead of reps manually inputting each lead’s contact info into the CRM, it updates automatically. Your sales reps can now spend that time on revenue-generating tasks, like sharing impactful content in follow-up emails and simply spending more time with leads and prospects.
3. Create Growth Opportunities for Your Sales Team
When you don’t provide opportunities for your sales team to grow in their career within your company, sellers can quickly begin to feel trapped and frustrated at work, leading to quiet quitting. If an employee views their current position as a dead-end job, they’re much less likely to remain motivated or strive to improve. By focusing on continued training and promoting from within, you emphasize to your employees that you value their contributions and want to help them succeed.
For example, create a clear structure for promotion within the organization through succession planning. As you promote different team members, the entire team knows who will step up to take on new responsibilities and keep the organization flowing as usual. Now, as reps expand their skill set, they know that they’re progressing in an organization that wants to promote them — and they’re much less likely to opt for quiet quitting.
4. Establish Open and Honest Communication Across Your Team
Sometimes, employees choose quiet quitting because they don’t feel comfortable addressing concerns or questions with their sales leaders. This makes it seem as if the problems they experience at work will never dissipate, so quiet quitting becomes the most logical solution. By creating channels for open, honest communication between leaders and team members, you make sellers feel comfortable to bring up any problem they’re experiencing with management. You could create this communication through consistent, one-on-one meetings with your employees, anonymous suggestions through HR, and more.
Consider this: an employee feels as if the current process for assigning leads to reps doesn’t provide the same opportunities for every rep. Without open communication, this frustration could lead to quiet quitting. However, with open communication channels, such as weekly check-in meetings, your rep communicates this frustration. You’re then able to perform a deeper evaluation of the lead assignment process and make any necessary changes to improve seller satisfaction and team morale.
Final Thoughts
The phenomenon of quiet quitting is a direct result of dissatisfaction at work. When employees feel stagnant and unmotivated, quiet quitting becomes the only answer. By creating an environment in which your sales reps are learning new skills, communicating issues, and feeling as if their career is progressing, you can prevent quiet quitting among your team members. SFE Partners sales can help.
Start implementing sales processes and structures that can prevent quiet quitting among your team and contact SFE Partners today.
