Sales stress, distinct and intense, marks the beginning of a career journey unlike any other in the sales industry.
Inherently high-pressure and focused on results, this field finds its professionals often navigating a fine line between motivation and burnout. When challenges arise, the compounded effects of a high-stress environment on a role already demanding in nature can profoundly impact mental health.
A lot is riding on your performance. From the financial well-being of your family to the success of your company, you’ve got a lot of people depending on you to meet your sales quota.
So what happens when you don’t? How do you deal with the stress of letting yourself and your team down?
It's no surprise that there are right and wrong ways to deal with this stress, and most salespeople don’t handle it well.
But before we get there, let’s talk about what stress really means because it might not be what you think.
Stress Means You Care
At best, stress is uncomfortable. At worst, it’s downright painful, so no one will blame you for thinking of it as wrong. I know I used to—at least until a chance encounter with some random guy in a t-shirt.
Plastered across his t-shirt was a simple sentence: Stress just means you give a fuck.
I love that. If you’re stressed about something, it means you care. It means it matters to you. Sure, the feeling of stress itself isn’t good, but the fact that you’re stressed is a good sign.
Because “giving a fuck” is the most important part of sales success.
But too much stress can lead to major issues, so let’s talk about what you can do to manage, reduce, and even eliminate that stress (while continuing to give a damn.)
9 Sales Stress Management Tips
At its core, stress management means emotional management.
The more capable you are of recognizing, realizing, and managing your emotions, the more control you have over your time, energy, and focus. Once you get control over your time, energy, and focus, there isn’t any room in your life for stress.
So, before we discuss specific stress management techniques for salespeople, let’s consider the five basic things every human being needs to do consistently to reduce stress.
Wait.
Some of you want to scroll past this section because “you’ve heard it all before.” That may be true, but you need to hear it again. Just because the information isn’t “new” or “sexy” doesn’t mean it isn’t important.
In fact, without the first five principles below, the sales-specific stress management techniques I cover later won’t work. So consider the first few tips a quick but necessary review of what you should already be doing.
1. Go to Sleep: Work Will Still Be There in the Morning
I get it: Silicon Valley idolizes workaholism, and there’s this unspoken pressure that if you’re not working, you’re failing. It isn’t true.
You’ve probably heard the stories of hyper-successful entrepreneurs who only sleep 3-5 hours each night, right? They’re the exception, not the rule. If you need sleep habits to look up to, how about these:
- Elon Musk sleeps 6 hours each night
- Tim Cook sleeps 7 hours each night
- Jeff Bezos sleeps 7 hours each night
Go to bed. Work will still be there in the morning. Besides, you’ll probably get more done in 8 hours of rested productivity than 12 hours of sleep-deprived dabbling and be better able to handle sales pressure.
For more on the importance of sleep in stress management, check out this article by the American Psychological Association.
2. Eat Well
We’ve all got that one meal we know isn’t good for us, but we can’t resist. You know the one: You’ve convinced yourself it helps you relax and unwind, but really it just leaves you feeling like shit. Stop doing that to yourself.
I’m not saying you can’t eat junk food; I’m just saying it shouldn’t be a staple of your daily eating habits. Ditch the fast food a couple days each week and eat something that leaves you feeling (healthfully) energized instead.
For more on foods that help with stress management, check out Health’s "12 Superfoods for Stress Relief."
3. Break a Sweat
You can’t spend your entire workday in front of a computer and your entire evening in front of a TV. You’ve got to carve out at least 30-45 minutes each day to be active.
I don’t care what that looks like for you: Lift weights. Take a martial arts class. Go for a jog around the office. Do whatever you want, as long as you break a sweat.
This balances out your body chemistry so you not only feel less stress, you’re better equipped to handle the stress you do have.
For more on the effects of exercise on stress, check out "Exercising to Relax" by Harvard Health Publications.
4. Take a Break
You may be getting enough sleep, but are you taking enough breaks during the workday? I don’t care who you are: You can’t possibly work at peak productivity from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. daily.
If you find yourself doing that, pause and ask yourself, “What are my most and least productive hours?” Then stop working during your least productive hours and use them for exercise or a healthy meal instead.
For more on the importance of taking breaks, check out Buffer’s "The Science of Taking Breaks at Work: How to Be More Productive By Changing the Way You Think About Downtime."
5. Clear Your Mind
Meditation means different things to different people. However you define it, make time for it.
Pray, sit along the beach, feed ducks at the pond, or do yoga. As long as it clears your mind, calms your body, and allows you to focus on the here and now, it’ll help you let go of current stress and equip you for future challenges.
For more on the importance of this practice, check out our article on 3-minute mindfulness.
6. Ask Yourself Why
You know you missed your quota, but do you really know why? You can’t solve a problem until you understand it, and the best way to really understand something is The Five Whys.
The process is self-explanatory: Ask “Why?” a minimum of five times until you uncover the underlying source of a problem. Most salespeople stop at one “Why?” and it looks something like this:
“Why didn’t I meet my quota this quarter?”
“Because I didn’t make enough cold calls.”
As far as they’re concerned, that’s the end of that. The problem was call volume, so in the future, all they have to do is make more cold calls, right? Maybe, but let’s run this through The Five Whys to ensure.
“Why didn’t I meet my quota this quarter?”
“Because I didn’t make enough cold calls. Why?”
“Because although I was doing my 100 cold calls a day, I wasn’t reaching anybody. Why?”
“Because most of the numbers I had weren’t valid. Why?”
“Because I bought 100,000 leads off a website to meet my quota, and the leads were poor quality. Why?”
“Because the goal I set for myself this quarter couldn’t be reached with the leads provided by my company.”
And there it is. Suddenly, it’s clear the problem had nothing to do with call volume and everything to do with an unrealistic goal. (But if call volume is the culprit, technology can help. A predictive dialer, for example, can help sales reps drastically increase their call volume and reach rates!)
Before we move on to step two, let’s take a quick look at some of the most common root causes of missed quotas:
- Unrealistic goals: You set goals for yourself that are either unattainable or can’t be reached with the strategies and resources you have in place.
- Inaction: Your heart wasn’t in it this quarter; whatever the reason, you failed to take the necessary actions to succeed.
- Poor-quality action: You took action, but the actions weren’t backed with the necessary knowledge or experience to produce results. You did the right things but in the wrong way.
- Market: The market shifted in some dramatic and unseen way. Maybe the economy crashed, or a competitor swooped in and stole your customers.
- Company: Your company made meeting your goal impossible. Maybe they set an unreachable quota or got caught up in a major PR debacle.
You have complete control over the first three and practically no control over the final two. But whatever the root cause of your situation, the simple act of knowing it is often enough to reduce your stress dramatically.
Hey, sales whiz! Unlock the power of great sales manager training strategies through insights in my article.
7. Own Your Shit
Ninety percent of the bullshit in sales comes from stressed salespeople trying to cover up the fact that they aren’t hitting their numbers.
You’ve probably seen it too: Someone suddenly calling in sick to meetings, engaging in fewer conversations, dropping off email strands, and eating alone. All in the hopes that if no one notices them, no one will notice their numbers.
Shockingly, it rarely works.
So many struggling salespeople will blatantly lie about their numbers (although usually with good intentions). They think, “Alright, I will tell everyone my numbers. That should buy me a couple weeks to overperform and make up the difference.”
In this case, “overperform” usually means an unethical shortcut like:
- Upselling unqualified customers
- Spamming an email list
- “Borrowing” a couple of prospects from a colleague
But that never works either, not in the long run. All you’re doing is digging deeper into a hole that’s becoming increasingly more difficult to climb out of.
Don’t sabotage future business to resolve present crises.
Once you’ve identified your problem, confront it. Own it. Your team’s gonna find out eventually anyway, so it may as well come from you. And the sooner you’re honest, the sooner you can get help. Speaking of which ...
8. Ask for Help to Fix Your Shit
You’ve identified the problem. You’ve owned the problem. Now, you need to solve the problem or, at the very least, prevent it from happening again. At this point in the process, you may already have the knowledge and clarity to fix it yourself. If you do, great! Get started.
If you don’t, get help from someone who does.
Your teammates don't want you to fail unless you’re in a hostile and competitive sales team. So look at the numbers and find out who crushed it this quarter, then ask for their advice, guidance, or mentorship.
Research published in the Psychological Bulletin showed that the effect of burnout on perceived work stress can be mitigated if employees have more control over their own work and receive support from colleagues or superiors.
If no one on your team can help, reach out to your sales manager. If they can’t help, find a successful salesperson outside your company. If even that isn’t enough, there are countless resources online to troubleshoot whatever challenge you’re facing, such as:
Rest assured: Whatever sales hurdles you’re facing, someone else has already overcome them, and they’re probably more than happy to help you do the same.
9. Go Hiking
A lot of reputable research indicated that spending time away from electronics and walking in nature increased the capacity for creative problem-solving by 50 percent.
Participants in this experiment went four days without using their phones while trekking. Their brains were free to concentrate on the task at hand because they were removed from the continual distractions of a wired world.
People often go hiking by choosing the most popular and well-known destinations that are recommended by professional trekking agencies. For instance, the people who have experience climbing Everest keep such unforgettable memories in their minds that when they get back to their sales workflow procedures they become highly stress-resistant being full of energy after active rest.
Most Sales Stress is Caused by Being Afraid to Face Your Failures
So, if you don’t hit your quota this quarter, don’t panic. You know what to do: Identify the problem, own the problem, and fix the problem.
Once you’ve taken full ownership and responsibility for something, there isn’t much room for stress. That’s not to say you’ll eliminate it, but that’s alright. Because remember:
A little stress just means you give a fuck.
Videos more your style? Watch as I break down how to deal with stress when you miss your quota.
