Feeling overwhelmed in your sales job?

You’re not alone. This survey done by Uncrushed shows that over 67% of salespeople interviewed feel they’re close to burnout ??.

It’s clearly not abnormal to be feeling this way — but the question stands: Why are so many salespeople feeling this way? And more importantly — how can we fix it?

Why salespeople are so overwhelmed

Sales jobs often culminate in the perfect storm of work stress: long hours, pressure to obtain results, frequent travel, endless administration tasks, demanding managers, competitive colleagues and a frantic pace that puts a strain on client relations. 

My team and I know this because we’ve all been salespeople or working with salespeople too, and are very familiar with how easy it is to feel like you’re spiraling. We’ve interviewed hundreds of salespeople (and garnered our own experiences) to understand why and how salespeople are struggling in order to create the perfect formula for change.

 Most salespeople note these pain points (among others)

?? It's virtually impossible to follow up on every lead or potential client.

?? Staying organized is tough, and takes too much time.

?? The tools offered (like CRMs) are mainly helpful in tracking our performance, and not much on time management.

?? Multitasking is causing stress, anxiety and burnout.

?? Manager woes: stress, pressure, strain, and conflict.

My run in with burnout 

Burnout happens to the best of us. These days, I’m the CEO of tech company Kara with a healthy work-life balance. I’ve learned a lot over the years about how to manage stress at work. As a working mom, I had no choice but to prioritize my personal life just as much as my professional life. Much of it comes down to time-management, as well as access to AI tools that make a career in sales easier — including the app Kara.

But it wasn’t always this way. I’d been in the top five salespeople at every company I’d worked at, putting in over 70 hours of work per week. Now, I use technology to help me with time management, which helps me balance my work life while still enjoying my free time.

After facing burnout, I decided it was all about working smarter. In order to do this, I need to shift my focus to human tasks like building relationships, strategizing, problem solving and creative thinking. This meant I needed to outsource my CRM admin to an assistant that could get it done quickly and accurately. But what human could make this happen? No one seemed to make the cut. I needed a robot. These days, we call those apps. 

Take back control with AI technology 

AI-related technology provides the ability to streamline and support repetitive tasks, making sales processes more efficient. 

Using AI improves the quality of CRM data while automation and mobile technology simplify and reduce salespeople’s interactions with the CRM throughout the day. AI assistants can open up space for a new kind of manager-salesperson relationship and a new way of thinking about productivity in sales.

While managers rely on CRM data to make accurate sales forecasts for their companies, filling in the CRM adds hours of mindless, unpaid administrative tasks to salespeoples’ already massive workloads. All that time filling in the CRM is time someone could be out in the field, working on client relations and sales. 

And let’s face it: we all want to earn. CRM technology seems tailored to companies and managers, rather than the salespeople themselves — those who need to be interacting with the CRM the most.

Kara is the fix

You’re clearly aware of problems that salespeople face, and how AI can help. My team and I made it our life’s work to figure out how to fix these issues, gathering data and using personal experience to figure exactly what type of AI might best address these problems and in turn, helping salespeople to work more productively.

Enter Kara.ai ??

Kara is an app that syncs seamlessly with CRMs. We all know that CRM systems are often lacking when it comes to the needs of salespeople. While they do track performance, they don’t help users stay organized or efficient. CRMs seem to benefit managers more than salespeople, and that’s where Kara comes in to help.

Kara helps salespeople take back control of their professional lives with increased communication and time management. The app uses up-to-date, weekly resorts that focus on objectives and automatically feed directly into your CRM. The app syncs with your calendar and to-do lists so that you can work on time management and prioritize key tasks in between meetings. Custom analytics will show you where you’re focusing your time and efforts, helping you to make the right choices for your business and yourself. It allows you to reorganize your priorities and decide where you need to focus your time.

Successful salespeople should feel good, especially at the end of the day when they’ve accomplished their tasks. This is why our app celebrates its users with bright colors and confetti. Setting goals and checking them off as done is a positive thing.

Our goal is for Kara’s users to be less stressed, more successful, and happy. And isn’t that what we all want as professionals (and as humans)? To be stress-free, successful, and happy? Now that’s an actionable goal worth manifesting.