How to Create a Healthier, Happier Career in Sales By Anthony Alfieri

Sales is an incredible profession, if you have chosen sales or sales has chosen you as your career path you have a unique opportunity to transform the quality of your life and become an elite professional. Despite the stigmas around salespeople and a career in sales, the profession itself offers us an incredible pathway for personal and professional development, not to mention the economic upside available for those that take full advantage of the opportunity in front of them.

I know the title of this article is “how to create a healthier, happier career in sales” and the first step in the journey is to step back to fully appreciate and understand the opportunity you have as a sales professional. If you are reading this today and don’t currently believe your sales job is a great opportunity you will never be healthy or happy in the role unless you make a shift in your perspective and attitude towards your work, company, and current situation.

Every situation is different and depending on yours it may be time for a change, your current company or team has a toxic culture or a host of other very real challenges. However, unless you are putting your best foot forward and are focusing on the variables you can control day in and day out as a sales professional it is easy to fall into the trap of blaming your territory, team, product or service and everything else in-between for your current dissatisfaction with your role and current level of performance.

In my sales career, I have been on 5 different sales teams at two different companies in three different states, selling B2B products and services that have ranged from as little as $1,300 in annual contract value to $500,000 or more. From transactional one-call closes to longer more complex sales cycles involving enough stakeholders internally and externally you could roster a professional football team. I have been blessed to work with and learn from some incredible sales professionals, ladies and gentlemen that have consistently produced incredible results, from local sales reps to major account and enterprise sales reps alike. From my perspective, I have seen some common threads in all of the reps that had seemingly found a way to make a successful career out of sales, including myself.

One perspective that is unique and worth sharing is that everyone had their own definition of success, fulfillment, and happiness. Because they had clarity in regards to their personal and professional goals it was much easier for them to feel satisfied and fulfilled in their roles. Regardless if they were a presidents club rep or someone that consistently produced, but never blew it out of the water for much more than a quarter at a time. They were dictating the rules of the game for themselves and not living in a state of reaction to their environment and external influences. A core performing sales rep still earns far more than the median income and with the right money management skills can live a life unrestricted by finances over time. All this to say if you are stuck in the comparison game and measuring yourself against the people at the top of the leader board, maybe it’s worth taking a step back to define what you are trying to accomplish with your career.

Personally, I love to raise the bar and set targets that are uncomfortable. However, that is what keeps me engaged, excited, and growing which all ties back to what I value most and by default makes it much easier for me to maintain a happy, healthy career, from the mental, emotional, and physical aspects. If what serves you and your family is different than what serves someone else why would you even start to compare? (I know we love our leaderboards and think all sales reps are hyper-competitive so it is easy to fall into that trap) However, if your primary drivers are not presidents club, recognition, and everything else typically associated with the “leaderboard” that is okay.

My own philosophy on creating a healthy and happier career in sales is broken down into 6 buckets:

1.??????Health - our level of energy, how efficiently the systems of our body work together, is the physical governor of our lives. As a sales professional, you are always on stage, in front of your customers, prospects, and coworkers and your “performance” will determine many aspects of your career. If you are battling your own biology due to health challenges, you might be able to muster the energy to produce impactful results at work, but you will pay for it elsewhere. Our health is a thread that can create power across all aspects of our lives or challenges, it is no small feat to master your health, it is a worthy endeavor that pays dividends worth far more than money.

2.??????Identity - how we see ourselves and what we believe about who we are, this impacts everything we do, how we do it and why we do it. If you are a salesperson and are struggling with that because you see yourself as something else (or your parents/friends see you as something else or maybe wanted you to have a sensible career as a doctor or lawyer). A shift in identity will have a massive impact on your day-to-day life and long-term career potential. Embracing the incredible impact you can have on your company, your customer’s businesses, and your own future with a career in sales is a great way to start shifting your identity and creating internal alignment.

3.??????Values/Beliefs - what we value or believe, big picture and granular, these are the internal conversations that shape how and why we make decisions, influence our perspectives, and determine much of how we act or behave in different situations. Closely linked to our identity it is our core values and beliefs that either enable us to grow and prosper or create limitations to what we even consider a possibility for our lives. In sales I would challenge your top performers’ sales skills are only slightly better than their core performing peers, it is their values and beliefs that drive them to the top. Additionally, those who are clear on their values and beliefs tend not to ride the emotional roller coaster of sales for as long or as often as others. When it comes to health and happiness inside the day-to-day of a sales career learning how to manage the ups and downs effectively is like a superpower, well-crafted values and beliefs act like a compass that can help us weather any storm. Staying focused on our guiding principles instead of getting lost in the abyss of rejection, objections, and other temporary yet challenging defeats you will face day to day in sales.

4.??????Attitude/Focus - our mental disposition, what we chose to focus on consistently, typically driven by the questions we ask ourselves about any given situation or event. A career in sales will quickly school you on what you can control and what you can’t control, if you don’t learn this lesson quickly and embrace consistently focusing on what you can control it will get miserable quickly. You will get this test daily in sales, like clockwork as you work to fill your pipeline and close deals there will be variables that impact your deals and your pipeline that are out of your control. If your attitude towards failure, loss, and or mistakes is not healthy and you are a sales professional your day-to-day is a grind, if you are focusing on and dwelling on the misses, the clients that aren’t calling you back, or the deal you forecasted that fell apart. You are not going to be happy most of the time and at least internally your thoughts won’t be healthy. The best way I know how to manage this portion of sales is to keep your activity high so you never really “need” a deal to go through, it is far easier to stay detached from the outcome when you have a full pipeline and the ability to walk away from low probability deals. Not to mention, it is far easier to maintain a good attitude and healthy focus when you are ahead of your number, when you are ahead it almost automatically puts you in a proactive state. However, the ability to control your attitude and focus even if you are behind will impact your ability to get ahead and stay ahead.

5.??????Money Management - one of the threads in our lives that can tie everything together or represent the cord that pulls everything apart (much like our health), a career in sales means you are going to have variable income, managing, budgeting, and planning with variable income can prove to be challenging especially if your fixed expenses are higher some months than your potential income depending on your performance. A healthy focus on increasing your income over time while keeping your fixed expenses low, saving, and investing as much of the difference as possible is a tried-and-true way to put yourself in a great spot. For me personally, I find it very powerful to fully understand the cost of my family’s wants, needs, and forecasted annual expenses including savings/targeted investment amount, so that I can build a plan to hit those numbers by selling to my family’s needs/wants and not against a quota. Your family’s needs/wants are far more motivating than “quota” and because you are including wants it also will make you stretch, whether you are single or have shared finances it is great to understand how much it will really cost to do what you want on top of your fixed expense. Sales gives us the opportunity to hit those numbers through performance, that is an incredible blessing.

6.??????System & Process - the “how” or our consistent approach to accomplishing any task or goal, we don’t typically think about our lives or careers in terms of system and process, but we all have one whether we have consciously designed it or not. From how you run your day, week, and month to how you run your actual sales process all the way from identifying an opportunity to onboarding a new customer and the long-term account manage. System’s and processes create consistency, unrivaled visibility into results (and potential areas of improvement), give us the ability to scale our activity as individuals/organizations, and they are repeatable. Another way to think about system and process is thinking about creating healthy habits that drive you towards your desired outcome in a manner that is easy to follow and understand.

Improving any one of those six buckets can and will improve your career as a sales professional, from your overall health to your level of fulfillment and happiness. They are all connected and very much have an impact on each other, if I had to pick one above all else I would always recommend investing in improving your health first and foremost. From my perspective, it serves as the foundation you build the rest of your life on!

Finally, if you have read to the very end the real secret to health and happiness in a sales career is of course sand bagging, deliver revenue in perfectly proportioned bit sized chunks across 12 months and never miss you forecast!

"How to Create a Healthier, Happier Career in Sales"?- Published By Anthony Alfieri - March 22nd, 2022