Anxiety in sales is not optional – it’s part of everyday life. That’s why overcoming anxiety in sales can be your secret weapon to sales success.
Sales is largely a mental game, however most organizations only teach sales reps how to hone their craft, while the mental part is largely ignored.
This is one of the many reasons David Weiss and Ehrin Lovria Weiss Ph.D. started the PsychAndSales podcast and why I started the Sales Health Alliance.
In this podcast we discuss various Mental Health in Sales topics like:
- Sales as a Mental game
- Dealing with Micromanagement
- Thriving in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overcoming Anxiety in Sales
One key topic we cover is overcoming anxiety in sales. This is important because when anxiety overwhelms us, we can lose touch with our purpose and our sales motivation will suffer.
Think about it… When was the last time you persevered through stress, discomfort and pain for something meaningless?
Probably never.
We usually quit, give-up or invest minimal effort.
This is why meaningful work is so important to resilience and why sales is getting it SO wrong. We keep trying to engineer emotion out of our sales teams.
Instead – we should be doing the exact opposite. We should be investing more time and effort into improving our Emotional Literacy to teach ourselves how to put our feelings into words.
This is how we can start working with our sales anxiety, rather than against it.
Meaningful work is rooted in emotion. This means we have to be emotionally connected to our work if we want it to matter to us. We need to care about our company vision and what it means to the world. We need to care about our customers and do our best to serve them each day.
Only then can we have a deep understanding of our purpose each day.
Far too often we lose sight of our purpose and the difference we’re making in sales. It gets lost behind the sales anxiety, machine-like sales metrics and rejection we face each day.
To make matters worse, we’re scared to talk about how we’re feeling with our teams and leaders. We fear being labeled lazy or the “weak” link on the team.
Only when we create space for emotions to be shared, openly discussed and learned from – will we reach peak performance in sales.
Check out the podcast below for more strategies to improve Mental Health in sales.
About The Author
Jeff Riseley is currently the Founder of the Sales Health Alliance and Mental Health Advocate. With over a decade of sales experience – Jeff understands the importance of Mental Health in achieving peak sales performance.
Jeff combines his sales (Sales Knowledge Institute) and Mental Health expertise to improve sales performance through a mix of sales mentorship and mental health best practices. His strategies have helped sales teams improve their sales process, while helping them become more motivated, resilient and better equipped to tackle stressful events within sales.
He is currently delivering these strategies through on-site workshops, coaching and speaking engagements. To explore working with Jeff contact him at [email protected]
