A good sales rep who has gone quiet is the clearest signal, and it usually follows asking for something more than once without getting an answer. The rep who stopped pushing for the pay review, or stopped complaining about the system, has often already decided. Silence from a previously vocal rep is what managers most often misread as contentment.
That is what I hear when I ask people why they are talking to me, and the uncomfortable part is where it happens. It happens at businesses that are doing most things right. A salary review that gets deferred, a progression conversation that keeps getting pushed, a resourcing problem raised and raised again. None of it is malice. The person reaches a point where they decide they are not going to get what they need from that employer.
The signs people write about sit downstream of that.
What actually precedes it?
Someone gets tired of asking.
Run through your team and ask yourself one question. Who has asked you for something and not had an answer? A pay review, a change in scope, a piece of support, a path to the next role.
An unresolved request leaves more than the thing itself unresolved. An unresolved request can tell the person something about where they sit, and when it keeps repeating the silence can start to read as an answer of its own. That is where I have seen it go. It is a fixable problem while the request is still live and a harder one afterwards.
I have had the experience of being told by a manager that their team is full and settled, while talking to someone on that team who was open to moving. That is the sort of gap that opens up when the conversation has not been had recently enough.
What should a manager notice?
Changes that are worth a conversation.
Some things are worth paying attention to. A drop in energy or engagement. Someone who used to push back going quiet. Requests that used to come regularly stopping. Withdrawal from the parts of the job that are not strictly required.
Three rules go with that list.
None of it proves intent. People have quiet months, difficult periods at home and phases where they are heads-down. Reading a resignation into a bad few weeks can create the problem the manager is worried about.
Do not monitor anyone's private activity. Not their LinkedIn, not who they are connected to, not their profile changes. It is a poor use of your attention, it is none of your business, and if the person notices you risk turning a maybe into a decision.
Do not penalise someone for looking. People are allowed to consider their options, and punishment may push an unsettled person closer to leaving.
The useful response to any of these signals is the same. Ask them how they are going, and mean it.
How do you have the conversation?
Address it head on, and accept that people are human.
If you think someone is unsettled, say so plainly. Ask what they want that they are not getting, and be honest about what you can and cannot do about it. Suspecting something and quietly managing around it does not make it go away.
Some of the managers I deal with handle this without drama. They understand that people move on, they do not take it personally, and they are straight about their own constraints. When a manager cannot deliver what the person wants, say so honestly.
Sometimes the role is no longer working for either side, and a clean, respectful conversation gives both people a clear outcome.
One thing to be clear-eyed about. If someone has already resigned, you are in a different conversation with different dynamics, and that one is covered separately in counter-offers.
What is actually hard to replace?
An empty area, and then the time it takes to get the next person up to the standard of the one who left.
Knowledge walks out the door with the person. So does coverage. While the area is uncovered, the work does not pause and the market does not wait. Opportunities can get missed, and in this industry some of them may not come round again for a while. A project decided while nobody was calling on that specifier is one I would not count on getting another run at.
Think about what happens in your own week when you are away for a fortnight. The calls still come in, and some of what does not get picked up simply goes. Now stretch that out, with nobody's name on the area at all.
Then it compounds three ways. Relationships may go with the person, at least partly, and some took a long time to build. The remaining team may have to carry the area in the meantime, which creates a risk of its own with the people you would least want to lose next. And the replacement still has to ramp, so full coverage may not return on their start date.
So when you add this up, count the empty time, the opportunities that passed during it, the load on the people covering, and the ramp on the other side.
If you want to put a figure on any of it, the cost of a bad hire methodology is where I would start. Setting a pay rise against a replacement cost as though the two are like-for-like is not a calculation I would make.
What should be documented before anyone leaves?
Everything that currently only exists in one person's head.
This should be ordinary practice, done for its own sake. Account history and who the real contacts are. Live projects with their stage and next action. What has been promised to whom. Pricing arrangements and any informal understandings. Where each opportunity actually sits today.
When that is normal in a team, there is less riding on any one resignation, because the work is already visible to everyone else. When the CRM has been optional, every part of the handover is harder.
If you want a read on whether a role is set up in a way people stay in, talk through the seat with me. The other side of this, what a rep is weighing up before they decide, is on the paired page.