242: The Stress of Sales

<p>When we are under stress our concentration and productivity levels are much lower than normal.  Sales has to be one of the most stressful occupations on the planet.  It is an emotional roller coaster, where we go from one meeting feeling elated, to being totally depressed after the next meeting.  We are swinging in the breeze between making our target and missing our target.  Our boss is giving us a hard time when we are behind on the numbers.  If we are on commission then we are not making enough money to live on or provide for our families. These realities add to our stress levels.  We have to know how to manage our stress, because we know that too much stress can affect our health and our work.</p> <p>One place to start is with our self-talk.  We need to switch our language away from the negative to the positive.  For example, the negative view would sound like this: “I feel hopeless at persuading customers”<strong>. </strong> We have to switch our language to a positive view, so we say,</p> <p>“I can better prepare for my customer meetings”.  The action step attached to this would be to</p> <p>write down the likely objections from the customer, before you go into the meeting and have your response properly prepared.  The act of preparing better for the client meeting will help you to relieve your stress.</p> <p>There are also some handy stress management principles we can employ.</p> <ol> <li><strong>Live in day tight compartments</strong></li> </ol> <p>We put pressure on ourselves by allowing sales disasters of the past to drag us down.  We also add additional pressure by projecting what could go wrong in the future.  We imagine we can’t make enough sales, so we don’t have enough money and our partner leaves us as a result.  Actually none of this has happened, but we worry about it nevertheless. Instead of that, don’t allow the past worries or future worries into your today.  Just focus on what we have in front of us.  We should always plan for the future, but we don’t have to dragoon it into today and wo