242: The Stress of Sales

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.

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”.  We have to switch our language to a positive view, so we say,

“I can better prepare for my customer meetings”.  The action step attached to this would be to

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.

There are also some handy stress management principles we can employ.

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 worry about it.

Often we are feeling stressed but have no one clear thing to concentrate on.  Call out the big problem facing us, by identifying it.  When we do that, our mind gets clarity and we can start working on solutions.  For example, we may not be making enough appointments with clients.  We have isolated the core issue so we now get to work on fixing it.  In this case, we can increase the call rate or contact rate with clients we haven’t contacted in a while and drum up some business that way.

Write down answers to four key questions:

1. What is the actual problem?

2. What are the causes of the problem?

3. What are the possible solutions?

4. What is the best possible solution?

This is so simple but it really works.  We get great clarity around where we need to concentrate our energy.

4.  Cooperate with the inevitable

We can accept that the thing we fear is going to happen.  Rather than continuing to worry about it, we accept that it will be the case and instead we can now concentrate on what we can do to mitigate it or reduce it.  This gets us out of victim mode and into action mode and that pivot is critical to moving ourselves forward.  Our mindset is powerful, so we need to exercise control over our thoughts.

Our expectations can lead us into stress when things we expected to happen don’t happen.  If we don’t expect anything from other people, when they let us down, we don’t feel any stress. This is because we had already discounted receiving anything from them. The client with whom we have a great relationship, buys from our competitor or doesn’t choose our solution in the pitch contest.  We shouldn’t take this rejection personally.  We know it is never “no”.  It is only no to the offer at this time, in its current construct, in this budget cycle, in this market.  We get busy serving the next client and don’t get depressed about losing one sale.  We live to fight another day.

These stress management principles are very practical.  The key is to change our thinking about the thing that is causing us stress. We know one thing for sure, the amounts of stress we are all going to be facing in the future are not going to get smaller.  Controlling our stress is a key skill set for success in sales and one we must master.

So how will you apply what your learnt today in your daily sales work?  Why not start by taking some other typical negative self-talk content and start creating positive versions, like “I am too busy to do all the followup” and change it to “When I plan my day, I can get the highest priority items completed”

Which of these stress management principles can you practice each day, to relieve the amount of stress you are feeling?  Remember, either we control our stress or it controls us.

We will only face increasing levels of stress in sales, so we must make the decision to master our stress management.