This post about Sales Success: The Missing Ingredient was originally written by the Founder of The Sales Health Alliance – Jeff Riseley, for one of their partners UNCrushed.
The stigma around mental health in sales is typically greater than any other function within an organization. Achieving sales success requires individuals and teams to master their Mental Health.
I know this because sales has been my life for the last 10 years and I’ve seen it firsthand. There is the belief that salespeople can never be weak, depressed, sick or miss target. If they want success– they must be infallible.
Any sign of vulnerability is often viewed as a direct sign of weakness. It is hard to be honest when your career is so closely linked to your performance. When salespeople fall behind their forecasts, there is a tendency to forget that they are a colleague and are treated more like a number on a dashboard. They are pushed, pulled and stretched to perform with little consideration of this stress on their wellbeing. Empathy towards their personal struggles is overlooked because the company must meet target– no matter what.
Where My Struggle Began
I experienced this myself in my first sales job. My daily metrics consisted of making more than 200 dials and having at least 2.5 hours of talk time. I also had a monthly revenue target and if I missed my daily metrics or monthly target I would likely be fired. The office was a revolving door of salespeople, who were either being fired or quitting because they were burnt out.
Going for ‘after work’ drinks happened almost every night, if not starting early during the lunch hour. It was here when I started to become aware of my mental health. Aware of the overwhelming power declining well-being could have on my life.
On a nightly basis my anxiety would spiral out of control. If I had a bad day at work, missed target or had a deal fall through it would be even worse. At night, I was totally alone with my thoughts and they would keep me up all night worrying about losing my job. If I did manage to fall asleep, I’d usually wake up drenched in sweat. When I didn’t sleep it would only make the spiraling worse the next night. It would be an endless dark tunnel of self-defeating thoughts that I couldn’t shut off- no matter what.
Losing Perspective Makes It Hard To Achieve Sales Success
I would lose perspective on my entire life. Totally unrealistic scenarios, like ending up homeless or disowned by my family, became absolute certain outcomes in my mind during these nights. I thought everything would depend on whether or not I would make my sales target. On several occasions the spiraling resulted in severe panic attacks that led to trips to the hospital with heart palpitations.
The worst part about these times was that I felt like I couldn’t talk about these mental health challenges with anyone. Hell I didn’t even know what mental health or anxiety meant at the time. I felt totally alone and had no idea how to regain perspective. How to balance with my mental health after stressful moments throughout the day.
As a result, this led to frequent ‘after work’ trips to the bar where I felt like I could vent and decompress. However beneficial a pint with friends can be, it is rarely conducive to solving emotional and psychological problems.
Anxiety Medication
When it got bad enough, I spoke with my doctor who recommended I try taking daily anxiety medication, which I tried for about a month and a half. I hated it, because it totally dulled my emotions. The emotional highs were never as high and the lows were never as low. I just felt lost in a low frequency haze. I wanted my passion back, the good and bad, because I believe that’s what makes salespeople great. As a result, I stopped the medication and became addicted to learning about anxiety and mental health in general.
During my sleepless nights, I’d read every article and book I could find to understand what was going on in my head. The more I learned, the better equipped I became. I’d try every technique I could find to reduce anxiety and sleep better.
Slowly, overtime, things started to improve and I started to develop the right tool kit that worked for me. I spent a lot of time focused on mindfulness, learning how to be truly connected with my intuition and emotions. Being in touch with myself enables me to connect fully with my customer, allowing me to pick up on even the slightest changes during a sale. Remaining fully honed in on my intuition is like a superpower, and ultimately what I believe is the real ingredient for sales success.
Achieve Sales Success By Becoming Aware Of Your Own Mental Health
That’s the most challenging part about Mental Health is there isn’t a one size fits all and everyone is different. To be successful, you need to become obsessed with trying new things and learning how to focus on the things you can control in your life. Life and sales, in particular, is unpredictable. It’s totally unrealistic to think I could make everything perfect. That was one of the biggest things the perfectionist in me had to learn.
Over my career, I’ve had countless conversations with other salespeople who have experienced very similar battles with their mental health. Sales is one of the most demanding professions out there. It’s also one of the most important functions within the organization. Salespeople pay the bills, keep the lights on and determine the success of a company. Yet, they are often offered little support from the organization to navigate the stressful situations that come with the territory.
That’s why I have started The Sales Health Alliance to create mental health training programs for salespeople that do exactly that.
We teach practices to help reduce short and long-term disability claims, absenteeism and presenteeism within sales. Motivating our work is a sincere desire to help people become healthier human beings and ultimately to create a more empathetic world. Drawing from our personal and professional experience, we have created a program that we hope can change lives. We hope to meet and work alongside you on this journey.
If you’re interested in exploring the mental health workshop for your sales team or organization please view our offerings here.
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 Mentor Alliance) 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]
