Burnout in BizDev: Reignite Your Doer-Sellers

Burnout in biz dev isn't a personal failure, it's a system failure. And nowhere is that more obvious than our good friends, the doer sellers, the people expected to act like a full business unit on top of their actual job. So today we're breaking down why burnout happens, and more importantly, what leaders can do about it. Let's talk about it on the podcast.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Breaking Biz Dev. I'm Mark, that's John, and we're gonna talk a little bit about our frazzled, burned out, beat up business developers out there who might be feeling a little, a little burnt out, John. Well, you know, and on top of the kitchen sink, all of their job responsibilities, no wonder they're all burned out, right? Yeah, for sure.

I come from, the world of proposal professionals in professional services and, burnout is a topic of conversation for sure, uh, for people who are in charge of developing these really big, complex, deadline-driven, hair-on-fire proposals that, sometimes can make or break, a really fantastic new business opportunity. But we don't spend a ton of time talking about the business developers, you know, beyond the proposal creation, just everything these people need to be doing. not just the proposals, right?

The conversations they're having upstream, creating new business opportunities, et cetera. So, yeah, burnout is real. It definitely, uh, exists in business developers because what you pointed out there is that those people have to wear a ton of hats. We did an episode, it was one of our early, early episodes, Mark, where we talked about, we beat up job descriptions in prof- in professional services.

And, uh, I remember going through that exercise, and one thing that surfaced from that conversation was the fact that a lot of these experts, their responsibilities were more on the doing side of things. You know, they went to school to be an architect or an engineer or an accountant, and, um, that's where they practiced their craft. But in order to grow within the firms that they were in, they needed to take on sales or marketing, business development responsibilities, but that wasn't in their original job description.

That was just kind of like by de facto, if you wanna grow, this is, these are the kind of responsibilities that you need to lean into. so it wasn't really their first job per se, oftentimes it's not called out explicitly in those job descriptions, so the, the, the expectations aren't clear and set up front. Um, and a lot of times as those people progress in their careers, lo and behold, you know, they're successful at doing the work, And they get promoted, and someone says, "Congratulations.

Now it's time to go find and win some new business." So, um, yeah. So that's, right, I think that's close to the, you know, that's probably the top of the list, is that, you know, it just, it's not what they got into this for, for They didn't sign up for that, all those biz dev responsibilities, no. Yeah.

sales and marketing is stressful, um, because a lot of the work and the outcomes generated are outside of your control, but within your influence, and so that can be really stressful, right? When you're not in complete control of the outcomes that you've signed up to deliver. one of the main things I try to do is integrate a, an organized process for sales inside of professional services firms. But, since the buyer-seller sort of dance, right?

That relationship is dependent on two parties. the seller can do as much as they can within, a process that they're trying to lead, but obviously the buyer's involved as well. yeah, if you have an unwilling dance partner, being able to lead, having control in the situation can be elusive and frustrating, right? I think that's, you know, to use an example, right?

I talk to, I talk to a good number of people who are just, you know, looking for every, every trick, every tactic they can get to just have someone call them back, There's pressure on both sides. There's no real break for their work, right? So on one end, you know, you're overloaded with client work and you're delivering on that, but as soon as the client work wanes a little bit, you don't get to relax. It's sell, selling time, your total billable hours have gone to a certain point.

We need you to go out and sell. I think our friends doer, uh, doer sellers get the short end of the stick as you say that, another one that comes to mind for me that's related to it is just the, endless pursuit of everything notion, which is just, you know, you gotta always be running after the new business. You gotta always be, you know, what's our, what's our old cliché, right? Always be closing, right?

You just always gotta be charging, charging at it. Now, people need to be selective, and people need to be smart about what they're pursuing. But, um, a lot of times individuals can feel that. They can feel this sort of endless pursuit of every opportunity out there.

So, I did a little research, Mark, and there is a white paper that I found called "A Systematic Review of Managerial Burnout and Personal Crisis," and this is by Sage Publications. There's a link in the show notes if you wanna go check it out. If you're watching this on YouTube, we'll pull up this visual on the screen. This body of research lists out some different causes of burnout, and this is looking at it through a managerial lens, but I think that it's worth kind of taking what they've put together and applying it through a business development lens for our listeners.

this diagram has causes of burnouts on the left, and there are three main buckets. There's work demands, there's organizational factors, and there's personal factors. So these are all things that lead to burnout. So for our conversation today, we'll focus on the work demands and the organizational factors.

Everyone's got personal stuff going on. that'll sit aside on the outside for right Sure. Sure. Um, so if we break down some of these work demands, high task demands, non-traditional working hours, conflict ambiguity, lack of resources and support, and then stress.

So those are the five causes of burnout from work demands. Now, as I'm g- as I'm walking through here and I'm thinking of our doer-seller friends, I'm like, check, check, check, like all the way down the list. For sure. For sure.

One of the ones, I think it was the third one that you kind of mentioned there, the, the role conflict and ambiguity is one that just screams out at me is just that, one can find, oneself in a place where you're not exactly sure what hat you need to or should be wearing at a particular moment. So, you know, we've all had that where it's, we're getting pulled in six different directions. We're needed to do six different things, so lo and behold, nothing actually happens really well, right?

maybe some things get done, whatever else, but yeah, that's often the result of it. non-traditional working hours. a lot of times business development doesn't happen during traditional working hours, right? you're talking with a prospect in the evening times because that's when they have the bandwidth to be able to have a conversation, um, or you're putting together proposals at night because tomorrow's the deadline, right?

Or tomorrow's that, that key conversation, and that's on top of all the work that you have to do servicing clients, so that one's, that one really stands out to me too. Yeah. There's a ton of, uh, very specific marketing activities that often happen outside of working hours, right? It's the conferences, it's the networking events.

Um, you know, it's, it's the, it's the informal conversations you're going to have after hours with a connection, a collaborator, a prospective client, whoever else, you know? It's for sure, yeah, that starts creeping into your evening, and that adds to it. I wanted to touch on just a couple of the organizational factors before we kind of talk about what the solution is. ethical aspects and job insecurity.

Those were the two kind of sub-buckets underneath of the organizational factors that lead to burnout. The, obviously the lens I would look at, at, at anything related to ethics, for a doer seller, you know, in the whole world of business development, is that you can find yourself in a difficult, conflicting situation where you're trying to match, your new business development activities with individuals and firms who are of like mind, where you are, your values, your ethics, everything else, the way you've, your worldview is similar.

you're constantly trying to develop these mutually beneficial, mutually respectful relationships with, you know, your prospective clients. and that's hard because sometimes you have to make really difficult decisions, you know, to pursue or not to pursue, or if an opportunity just seems, too good or too tempting to walk away where there are clearly, sources of conflict. that came to mind for me when the whole ethics, you know, word sort of popped up. What came to, what came to mind for you?

mind for me was, sales managers pushing, controversial scopes of work or trying to deceive prospects and, and, and forcing that onto the people who are having the conversations. Yeah. jacking up prices unnecessarily could be another example. Lost leaders, bait and switch.

There's a bunch of terms you can kind of throw out on the table there and, we've talked about lost leaders in the past and, and some people see them as a viable technique or tool to use when they're working with particularly new clients. but I've always maintained that, any type of a lost leader situation sets the wrong type of precedent and creates the wrong type of rel- relationship from the get-go with your prospective clients, right? If, you know, if you're offering up a lost leader, which is, you know, a low dollar bid on some work to be done in hopes that the relationship will grow into the future, and at some point you'll be able to charge them, you know, whatever you would normally charge.

Unfortunately, being a low-cost, you know, provider who's offering a lost leader just establishes that, you know, you're gonna do this forever, there's a very clear conflict there, for sure. And the other one you mentioned was job insecurity. So, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. that one kind of really jumped out of the page for me because, uh, if, especially if, compensation and, you know, your position in the firm is related to sales performance or revenue performance, that's constantly weighing on you as an individual, I need to meet quota," or, "I need to hit my number," whatever that is, in order for me to keep my job. short of that, individuals can have variable compensation based on, you know, you know, revenue generation performance. And even if it's not sort of base compensation, if it's discretionary, if it's a bonus structure or whatever else, in the world of selling, it's really easy to understand the type of mindset you're going to s- sort of start to adopt if you're not performing well, right?

You're gonna start scrambling. You're gonna start scrapping. You're trying to, say yes to everything that walks in the door. You're out there, and you get into this sort of push, push mindset where, you're just, spraying and praying, right?

And that's the, you're hitting up every contact you have in the entire planet for the next, next job. so yeah, that starts to grind as well, You're listening to breaking biz dev the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms, And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts and now back to the show. So these are some of the causes of burnout that this, um, Sage Publications put together. Again, the link is in the show notes. And, part of this, this f- diagram that we're looking at, the next column over, you've got the antecedents, the causes.

The next column over is what they call moderators. Mm-hmm. And this is, um, an intervention to address and manage those different causes before that leads to burnout, Yeah. right?

And so, like this, this brings us to our next segment of the podcast episode today, and how can business development leaders leverage that and under- understanding what causes burnout, how can they reignite team energy? How can they m- re-motivate their team and help reduce burnout on their team? So that's gonna be what we're gonna talk about in this next segment. Yeah, good.

That, that first segment isn't, designed to be a, the sky is falling ride. Hopefully there's, there's some things in there that resonate people are nodding and saying, "Oh yeah, that's a, that's a reality in my life." but yeah, this next part is, um, how can individuals and organizations start to address that? moderators in this, this, in this publication, in this diagram, so these are individuals, or they could be teams, I suppose.

could be someone internal, could be someone external. But these are people who can help these doer-sellers kind of manage their burnout, manage all these different causes, provide systems and structure so that we reframe these causes into learning moments. And I think that's kind of like the big mental shift here and when I saw this and we were kind of like thinking through this, Mark, it dawned on me that this is a lot of, of the work that you do with your clients and coming in and helping and coaching, um, different sales teams.

What are some ways that you've seen in your work with clients, maybe s- like before there was stress or burnout, but then afterwards it becomes a little bit more easier to manage? Yeah. Well, you know, what's top of mind for me there is, is, when I show up, I want people to be looking at the work I do with them individually and their organization as an opportunity, not sort of a, a thing they have to do, right? that's critical from the outset, is that I want this to be a want to rather than a have to.

Yeah, I want people to opt into this, so that's super powerful. So just that initial move is really, really important. So it gives people some amount of choice and agency in, in all of this. So, you know, from the start, I want people to kind of understand that they're in control of this, and they can opt into, you know, this, this effort that's going to hopefully build their confidence, with selling their, selling their services.

Sure. I mean, that's, that's top of mind. There's layers of other things as well, but that one's just getting people to kind of opt in initially and just leaning, you know, leaning in the right direction, I think is good at the start. you bring process and structure to those engagements as well, and I'm sure that that brings clarity and reduces anxiety.

that touches on a couple things. It's, you know, it's creating and establishing a process and also kind of setting expectations, for, behaviors. Um, so those two things are critical because with doer sellers in, you know, oftentimes technically oriented careers, you know, these are left-brained individuals who think about things a certain way. the lack of process and the amount of ambiguity that exists in the world of marketing and selling is fundamentally problematic, right?

So, um, if you introduce the concept of, uh, yeah, sales is structured and it's got, a one, two, three ABC process, people can start to put it in the boxes and, you know, visualize the frameworks and the processes and, get their heads wrapped around it. Like, "Okay, what do I do here? Okay, great, that's done. What do I do next?

Okay, great, that's done." So when we start to bring that framework and structure to it, those technically minded individuals can start to break it down like they would anything else, uh, and organize it, um, how they need to in order to, to make it make sense. And I can see how that would lead to less burnout, less stress, less anxiety because especially if you're managing that on like a weekly basis and you're looking at the like weekly activity as opposed to like the 28th day of the month and you're like, "W- how, where's our number and why aren't we hitting quota," right?

But if you can point to the CRM and all the activities and you can say like, "Well, you know, I made these... Here's all the activity. We're hitting all the markers." I mean, that's defensible to a manager too.

you bring up the point of having a CRM and, you know, whatever tool organizations want or need to use in order to keep themselves organized kind of on the new business end of things. every firm needs it, small firms, large firms. You know, I've worked with, professional services firms that are just a handful of people all the way up to firms that have hundreds of employees. all of them need that sort of structure on the front end.

And, and if it's a CRM, great. If it's some other tool, then fantastic. But yeah, you need to list and, update and tend to that information on the, the front end of things, just to keep your new business opportunities kind of organized. Um, that doesn't solve everything, you know?

I, There's always an X factor in everything and, you know, the process and organization, takes care of some of the anxiety and some of the unknown, but it always ex- you know, it's always gonna exist because you're dealing with another party, right? You're dealing with a buyer, right? And buyers can be, uh, unpredictable Some are better than others. And I talk, I think I talked about this in the, in the past.

I don't know if we've done it on the, on the podcast. Maybe we have. You know, good, good buyers, bad buyers. I don't know, did we ever wander through there?

We may have. just the difference between working with someone who's a good buyer and a bad buyer. You know, a good buyer is an individual that respects a process, that understands that steps are required, that will participate and walk with you as you move from from the maybe to the contract. A bad buyer is someone who wants to grab control of the process or not have a process at all.

lots of ghosting, poor communication, et cetera. So, I mean, there's those people out there. Hopefully you can weed those, weed those folks out. But yeah, the process and structure starts to clear the fog a little bit from the, from the process, for sure.

I guess just out of my own curiosity, once you've, like, helped install those processes, when do you s- do you see, like, a noticeable shift in anxiety? Is it after they become comfortable and get some reps with the process itself? Or, like, where do you see, like, the, the impact taking hold? Well, um, it's probably down the road a little bit because you have to start treating the process as sort of this, just this foundational piece.

because really what one of the, the behaviors or characteristics of individuals that is most important in, you know, new business development is some level of agility. And some - The, that, what some level of agility means is that yes, you, you, you have to kind of move, you know, a, a little bit left and right and up and down or whatever else with the process. You have to speed up and slow down. And, sometimes that feels like, you know, that you start to lose the process and lose the steps and, But having a foundational understanding and having practiced and improved with sort of a foundational sales process helps you then be agile inside of it.

So that's, you know, I'm kind of saying two things at once is that you have to, you know, you have to riff when you need to riff, but you have to lean on the process. But the process needs to be established initially first, right? You have to, you have to s- put that in place. You have to see people practicing it and improving it.

And once they start to do that, then they start to see that they can in fact be agile and kind of on their toes if situations change. So it's more, more or less of, of a container rather than a rigid process, For that's important because within a container, you're giving the autonomy to make decisions and to be able to move left and right, the agility, like you said. And I wanna tie that into, there's another image here from that same research study on managerial burnout. And again, it has the causes on the left, and in the middle, there's a crisis.

Something happens. And If you have a good moderation support in place, that can lead to self-improvement. To your point about, like, going through the motions, learning and being agile within that process, you're gaining experience, you're learning, you're growing. Maybe you fail and you learn from that, and the next time you're faced with a similar situation, you know how to react.

Uh, whereas on the flip side, if you don't have that moderation support, whether it's a consultant like yourself or someone internally, a mentor internally, or someone who can help you out, then that leads to burnout. So it's a really critical function, Based on this research and based on the work that you do, my own experience as well, without a, a good moderator to help show you the way, a Sherpa to guide you, you're gonna burn out. Yeah, there's a, there's an element that you, whether you said it or you hinted at it, that is, practice, creating this, this place for people to practice.

and it's funny, there are so many, law firms are called a practice sometimes, right? An architectural firm will be called a practice, right? But they don't live up to that, that name because they believe that everything they do needs to be perfect. meaning that this isn't practice.

And practice to me says, it's, going to the golf range, right? It's batting practice. it's, throwing some clay on a wheel and messing up the first 100 times, right? So that's practice, right?

People don't look at new business, opportunities or efforts as practice, but they need to be. Sure, there's stakes involved. Absolutely, right? But everyone that's been good at it or people who have become good at it practiced at some point.

I mean, heck, I know that, I was not good at all of this years ago, for sure. But I saw this as an opportunity for me to learn and to grow, and, that element of practice is critical. So I think that's an interesting component in this it's good that we mention this, right? So this is one of the, you know- mitigators or moderators in this whole situation is that, you know, creating, creating this place to practice and the mindset, right?

And the mindset to practice is like, "Hey, yeah, first time, not gonna be good. Second time, maybe a little better. Third time, maybe better. 20th time, maybe a good bit better."

there's a safe place to practice, and there's always this sort of, you know, there's an opportunity to improve and to grow and to, you know, just be better. So yeah, that's good. I like that one. let's recap a little bit, some causes of stress and burnout, work demands, we've talked about that, organizational factors and personal factors.

We talked about the role of moderators, containers and individual autonomy and agency, and giving our f- our doer-sellers a safe place to practice, whether that's putting together proposals, having conversations with prospective clients, whether that's running marketing campaigns. Um, it's important to give these folks a place to practice. So let's close, Mark, with a little bit of a go and do. we've got some reflection questions and I think as we read these, think to yourselves, about your own organization.

So first of all, do you have a structured business development process? We've talked about it in the past, John. There's a ton of stuff out there, and I think there's probably the vast majority of professional services firms haven't applied the same rigor and organization to the new business end of things as they do their service delivery, right? So service delivery, they'll have some codified step-by-step project management, you know, service delivery process or manual or whatever else, but they won't have anything on the front end.

So good one. All right, this next reflection question: Have you set clear expectations to your doer-sellers on their roles and responsibilities? again, the vast majority of firms will just say, "Everybody go do it and throw everything you can in the big pile, and hopefully by the year end will, you know, hit the number. And that's not clear at all from an - Because we're t- you know, there's individual contributors out there who are, you know, either, either contributing or not contributing, right?

So it's just everybody go do everything you can is that sort of endless pursuit of everything, and that's not, that's not great. So yeah, think that one through. Go to that networking event, drum up business, put it in the CRM. Let me know, let me know when it closes.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So are those expectations realistic too? You know, those expectations you put up. Um, and then finally, have you provided enough training or guidance for your team?

Yeah. you can set clear expectations, but if you don't show them how to do it or give them enough reps and practice, um, or guidance, then that will lead to burnout. people need to, you know, either lean on internal experts or external experts, uh, to help them, to help them improve and grow for sure. Okay, John, I think we've, uh, we've, we've burnt through burnout, um, taken it out back and beaten it up, uh, and I don't know, hopefully this is, hopefully this is helpful.

I hope people found this insightful, and if you did, let us know. We love to hear from you guys when you reach out to us on LinkedIn. so drop us a note, tell us if you found this episode helpful, and until next time. Until next time, John.