53% of salespeople want to switch jobs soon – here’s why

In today’s newsletter, I’ll share my take on the fact that more than half of remote salespeople want to change jobs soon. I recently ran a poll on LinkedIn, and with more than 300 participants, 53% of them said they wanted to change jobs soon.

I’m not surprised.

Remote sales jobs are hard, and they require a set of skills that are mostly acquired through experience. I’ll share 3 reasons why more than half of remote salespeople want to change jobs, and a few ideas if you’re in this situation.

Let’s dive in:

Reason #1: Remote is lonely

Remote isn’t for everyone. Even if you want to work remote and have the freedom to organize your day as you want, you may not have the skills to be successful with this job organization.

When selling remote, you’re disconnected from the life of your team, and Slack messages or virtual team events won’t replace this human connection that we all need.

For some people, it’s great news. Personally, I couldn’t work in an office and be forced to hang out with people I didn’t choose to hang out with. But for a lot of people, this social interaction is the only one they have (that’s what happened to me when I moved from Montréal to Berlin back in 2015).

This leads many people working remote to think about switching jobs soon. They may be looking for a more flexible organization, with a mix of office work and remote work.

Reason #2: Return to office mandates

Some people are absolutely not interested in coming back to an office. They fought hard to acquire the skills they needed to be successful working from anywhere, and they have no intention to change the way they live.

There’s only one problem. They work for someone else. And this someone else has every right to impose idiotic policies and rules. Many companies have a vested interest in getting employees back into an office. They have long-term rents, they can micro-manage employees better, and get more control on how they spend their time working for them.

This forces many remote salespeople to look for a new job quickly, even if they’d like to stay in their current job.

Reason #3: Changing market conditions

This one touches everyone, not only remote salespeople. The SaaS world has taken a massive beating in 2023 and 2024. Over 400,000 employees have been laid off since the beginning of 2023. The trend is slowing down, but the power has shifted in the advantage of employers.

Why would they keep offering lavish offsites, mental health days, and remote work, when they can force everyone back into the office to work harder and help the company survive?

Tougher market conditions and technological advancement mean good remote employment opportunities are harder to come by.

What to do about it?

Now, you may think there’s not much you can do about this. You should consider yourself lucky to have a remote job and pray for it to stay that way.

Newsflash: you’re 100% sure to lose your job at some point.

Long gone are the days when you could find a good company, stay employed for your whole career, and leave with a comfortable retirement plan. That’s especially true in sales.

Here’s what I recommend you do instead; start building a portfolio career.

A portfolio career is a substitution to traditional employment. Instead of working full-time for a company, you take on one or more contracts so you can decide when, where, and how to work.

Be careful here–I’m not advising you to leave your full-time job and ditch the financial stability it brings you. Instead, focus on closing a first side gig. If you can close one, you can close another, and another one, until you decide you’re done working for someone else.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris