Empower sales without burning them out!
Wow, is there ever enough time in any marketer’s day to get everything done? Everybody is going to have moments when the requirements of the job seem overwhelming. But if that’s how it feels day-in and day-out, odds are your outcomes are suffering. Maybe it’s time to focus a little bit on avoiding burnout in this crazy sales environment
Marketing Week recently reported on two surveys of marketers in the UK that indicate marketers “risk burning out in the face of ‘excessive workloads,’ increasing overtime and inflexible working hours.
If you think that’s just reflective of life in the fast lane, you may have too narrow a view on the situation.
“When marketers—or anyone, really—push themselves too hard, errors are more common, efficiency plummets, and you struggle to come up with innovative ideas,” writes creativity consultant Katrina Pfannkuch in a post on the Kapost Blog. “It’s not a new problem, but it is an increasingly complex one as mobile devices and online tools make it easy to work 24 hours a day.”
Ah yes, mobile devices and online tools, both of which have been both a blessing and a curse when it comes to doing our jobs! A survey by ThinkingPhones found that “87 percent of employees think it’s okay to call or text co-workers/clients regarding work-related matters outside of standard business hours.” Furthermore, “26 percent of employees handle work-related correspondence on their mobile device within an hour of going to bed.” No wonder so many are burning out!
In many marketing departments, part of the stress is no doubt due to content creation deadlines. Some say that automated document creation solutions are the answer. Don’t believe it. Every year we see more technology and more automated services introduced, but I’m not sure many people realize a lighter workload from these innovations. In fact, many of these solutions may do more to increase expectations about productivity than to make the job easier.
“Marketing Automation has certainly opened up new doors, adding capabilities that we as marketers have been longing for,” digital marketing specialist Matthew Russo writes. “However, we expected to do more with less. We expected that “automation” would do the work for us.” As he goes on to observe, “marketing automation is not magic…Good people with good tools can do amazing things but your marketing automation system is still just that: a tool.”
So, don’t expect much relief from those tools. Instead, focus on some
If that’s not enough to lower the heat, check out 15 ways to stop deadline stress from beating you down.
When all else fails, check out our helpful Insights on Solving the Content Challenge.