Why Your Reps Aren’t Performing at 100% (and What to Do About It)

You’re looking at the dashboard. Pipeline’s healthy, activity metrics are where they should be, and yet… something’s off.

Deals are stalling. Energy’s low. Reps are showing up, but not really showing up. You’ve got good people—not underperformers. So what gives?

Spoiler: it’s not always about skill or effort. Sometimes, your team isn’t underperforming… they’re overextended.

Welcome to the quiet crisis most sales leaders don’t see coming until it’s already cost them millions.

The Hidden Drag on Sales Performance: Burnout

Let’s get this out of the way—burnout isn’t just a wellness buzzword. It’s a silent quota-killer. According to Gallup, 76% of employees experience burnout at least sometimes, and in high-pressure roles like SaaS sales, that number likely skews even higher.

But burnout doesn’t always look like breakdowns or rage-quits. It’s often stealthier:

• A sharp AE starts ghosting Slack threads
• Discovery calls get shorter (and flatter)
• Pipeline velocity dips just enough to notice, but not enough to explain

By the time it shows up in your numbers, it’s already baked into your quarter.

Salespeople Aren’t Robots—They’re High-Performance Humans

We ask reps to operate like elite athletes: consistent output, week over week, under pressure, with no real offseason.

But how many sales teams actually train, recover, and monitor reps like elite performers?

Top sports teams obsess over data like heart rate variability and recovery scores. Sales orgs? We get a quarterly engagement survey and call it “culture.”

If you’re not tracking sales rep mental health and morale with the same rigor you apply to pipeline reviews, you’re flying blind.

Burnout Doesn’t Just Kill Motivation—It Kills Revenue

Here’s the real cost:

• Reduced productivity: Burned-out reps are 63% more likely to take sick days (Gallup)
• Higher turnover: It costs up to 200% of a rep’s salary to replace them (Built In)
• Lost deals: A single missed quarter can set back your ARR goals by months

You don’t need more coffee or another sales contest. You need a system that can prevent sales burnout before it compounds.

What High-Performing Teams Are Doing Differently

Smart sales leaders are treating burnout like any other business risk—measurable, trackable, and solvable.

Here’s what they’re doing:

1. Normalizing Check-Ins (Without Being Weird About It)

Not every rep will tell you they’re struggling. But they might show you—if you know what to look for.
Some teams use tools like Lolo, a burnout prevention tool built for sales teams, to help reps log quick mood check-ins and track changes over time. No therapy talk, no pressure—just data that flags morale dips before they spiral.

2. Measuring More Than Metrics

Calls and emails tell you what your team is doing. But they don’t tell you how they’re feeling.
Burnout prevention starts with employee morale tracking—not just at the company level, but by team, by individual, even by manager. Lolo’s Prevention Score helps make this visible without turning sales into a therapy session.

3. Redefining “Performance”

Instead of only celebrating the top closers, leading teams reward consistency, self-regulation, and emotional resilience.
Not just who closed the most logos—but who bounced back from a rough month, helped a teammate, or stayed mentally strong through a tough cycle.

This isn’t soft. It’s strategic.

So… What’s Actually Holding Your Team Back?

If your reps have the tools, the training, and the talent—but performance still feels stuck—it’s time to look deeper.

The biggest threat to your number this year might not be a competitor. It might be unspoken burnout creeping through your team.

Start asking:

• Are we optimizing humans, or just outputs?
• Do we know when our reps are struggling—or only when it’s too late?
• What’s our plan for keeping energy high and performance sustainable?

Because no one hits 100% when they’re running on empty.

Final Thought

You don’t need to overhaul your sales org. You just need to treat burnout as a performance metric—not a side conversation.

Whether that means rolling out consistent check-ins, investing in mental wellness tech, or simply talking about it more openly, the payoff is real: energized reps, better deals, and fewer surprise churns.

You can’t always eliminate burnout. But you can outsmart it.

References

• Gallup. Employee Burnout: Causes and Cures
• Qualtrics. Employee Experience Trends Report
• Built In. The Cost of Employee Turnover

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