What are the top warning signs that an inside sales rep is burned out?

Here some of the signs that I've seen that let me know that an inside sales rep is burnt out:

1. After a run of consistently hitting goal, missing goal (usually coupled with excuses that didn't exist before). This happened to one of my reps in 2010 and I had to let her go and now she's doing well in OUTSIDE SALES for a men's magazine publisher.
2. Excessive sick days or coming in late. I once had a guy who was a top producer at hotjobs.com who came to work for me and he was "sick" so often that we almost had to let him go for job abandonment.
3. A general lack of energy. As a sales manager, you can just smell it and see it. They mope. The complain about the product. The other sales reps make comments to you as a sales manager about this rep. In 2010 I had a rep who had over 10 years of experience and the reps to which he was tied to (who had 1-5 years of sales experience) were coming to me telling ME that this guy needed a kick in the butt.

Inside sales is an audio activity, so the burnout signs often are audible first. For example …

• Inflection decreases: pronunciation and enunciation become less accurate.
• Modulation suffers: variations in pitch and pace diminish and you may hear a repetitious boredom instead.
• Speech affectations show up: “y’know,” “like,” “no problem,” and such. (An inside rep recently called me “dude!” Flattering, but no-sale.)

Also …

• The rep slips back into describing the product or service rather than explaining how the prospect or customer might benefit. You will hear too many nouns and adjectives and too few verbs.
• The rep will miss “buying signals” and keep talking rather than asking the person to take the next forward step or place the order.
• The listen-talk ratio, which ought be to be about 70/30, evens out or reverses.

Net: detect burnout risks with both eyes and ears! As Chris suggests, burnout prevention and/or repair can take a number of forms, and perhaps we will discuss them separately.

Some great suggestions.

Here are few others-

1)Not proactively soliciting feedback-
If they care enough about the job, they will want to know what they can do to get better.

2)Reacting poorly to constructive criticism-
Defensive teleprospectors are not fun to manage. As much as we try to encourage their creativity, if they can't handle a little constructive feedback then it is may be time to cut-bait.

3)Not proactively taking suggestions from trainers and applying it to their calling efforts-
I'm assuming your training team consists of your top performers. Since they are speaking from their own success, your potentially disgruntled teleprospector needs to check their ego and apply the suggestions they receive to their calling.

4)Not executing on your companies call strategy-
Any inside sales team I have been a part of has their own approach regarding how to best to navigate through a company. If your reps aren't following this, you need to have a discussion.

Prospecting levels drop by 50% the reps average.
Their presentations contain less passion.
They become disruptive to others.
It's written on the face and in their body language.

By the tone when they speak on a phone. Not excited coming to work and maybe on medical leave often. Very negative about the target audience they are supposed to call or not positive about the business environment they are in.

(tongue in cheek)

4. They start their pitch with "To hear this pitch in English, press 1"
3. When told "Your price is too high", they respond with "Your mama!"
2. When an female prospect answers the phone, they open with "Hey Babe"
1. When they are overheard saying "Hi, do you have Chef Boyardee in a can?"

Ok, seriously.

- They stop coming in early or staying late if that was their pattern
- They start disappearing mid day for "doctor's appointments" (interviews)
- Dials per day drops more than 20% for more than a couple days in a row (everyone has a bad day once in a while)
- They sound bored on the phone...you can hear the boredom

Agree with many of the other points made about how to identify when a Rep that is burned out:

1. Drop in production and activity levels
2. Coming in late, leaving early
3. Disengaged attitude

However, there are earlier signs that, if addressed, can help reduce burnout:

1. Increased frustration levels - Your Rep's requests for help/guidance are turning into excuses or desperate pleas, such as "I can't make my quota unless I get this from you".
2. Attitude shifts toward the negative - Your previously optimistic and creative Rep has a" we've tried that, it doesn't/won't work" attitude about new ideas.
3. Incentives don't seem to be motivating performance - if you are offering spiffs or special incentives (assuming they are worthwhile), yet see little change in behavior, your Rep or Reps might be getting burned out.

Now we need a thread with ideas of what to do to prevent burnout!

We see it very clearly when it happens from a few different data points listed below:
1. Frustration or push back when performance reviews are conducted. Veteran Reps are faced with fight or flight when pressed into the corner and they typically come out swinging if they are fatigued and burning out. They don’t know how to communicate or want to communicate fatigue or if they are making other plans silently. It’s a hard thing to self reflect and to realize when something has run its course but red flags that go up can be frustration, push back, late to meetings, etc
2. Metrics: You just can’t hide activity anymore. It’s easy to track trends in most CRM tools these days and we can see it fairly quickly you need to take corrective action. Self correction usually doesn’t tend to work. Good management and good mentoring or motivational speeches only go so far!
3. Deflection: I remember where we lost a solid veteran of 5 years after a dismal few months and he became very good at deflecting questions and focus the last few months of his tenure. A constant deflection was put up by him and he was great at deflecting to relieve pressure off of the data points that at the time mattered the most, i.e. results and overall daily performance!

I agree with all of these asnwers. I have found that you can overcome this by changing their goals and rewards to give them a new motivation. Additionally, physically moving their seat to one they might be coveting really has also worked.

I vividly recall one person that I took off the phones for half a day over a 4 week period and we gave her tasks, things to do to accomplish something different, and it worked for her.

Often it is outside influences that contribute to the burn out and knowing your team and their own needs and motivations will help you here.

But burn out is burn out!