Self Esteem in Sales and Why you Should NEVER Sell Your Soul

Something that really interests me and something that I've obsessed with over my years in recruitment is: why do some people have unbelievable, high-earning. incredibly enjoyable recruitment careers while others don't?

A thread that I often talk about when we discuss this question in the office is self-esteem. What I really want to talk about is how self-esteem affects people's careers far more than they'd ever think.

Now, what I'm not going to talk about is the whole deep-rooted, psychological characteristics that relates to how people have low self-esteem. I want to relate self esteem to a sales context.

I believe two factors really affect self esteem for a sales professional.

1. How we allow ourselves to look and physically feel.

2. How we allow other people to treat us and what we do and don't tolerate.

I've found that at year end, people tend to lose a little bit of self-esteem. I've seen it both in our own business as people have pushed towards year end and I see it in a lot of other businesses as people chase those numbers.

It's very easy to allow a little part of ourselves to slip away. It's really easy to get to a point where you're chasing a deal and trying to get it put to bed before the end of the quarter. And we allow clients to talk down to us or to say something to us that we wouldn't ordinarily allow.

It's very easy to get to a point where we swallow that little voice in our heads, suck it up and say to ourselves 'it's going to be okay because in reality, I've got to hit my number and that's all that counts.' But the thing is, every time we allow somebody to do that to us - and you're going to think I'm being unbelievably melodramatic - a little piece of us dies as a professional.

Now, I want to try something out with you here, a little experiment if you will. So let's assume that as salespeople we're made up 100,000 pieces of soul. Lets just say that every time we're on a phone call or every time we walk into a client meeting, or every time we deal with a customer where the customers eating down the phone whilst we're talking to them and we don't say 'excuse me if you'd mind perhaps eating a sandwich a little at later on'. Or every time a customer decides to light a cigarette and walk outside to talk whilst you're on the phone or every time a customer talks down to you or every time a customer refers to you as 'just a sales professional'. Let's just assume that every time that happens we lose two pieces of soul out of a hundred thousand.

Let's extrapolate that, let's say that happens and we lose maybe a little piece of soul a day. Let's assume that that's five times a week, 50 weeks a year, over 10 years of a career, 20 years of a career or 30 years of a career. How much soul have we got left?

You see when we're in our earlier stages of our career, life's pretty easy. We're full of energy and full of beans and we're pretty hard to break down. But, over 20 or 30 years, my experience is that people typically hit their late 30s or early 40s and that's when you first start to see career slumps happening and it usually coincides with a loss of self-esteem. Those little chunks that people lose are usually the difference between what I call the slump and the swagger. In fact, the chunk of soul that I often see people lose at that point is more often than not the difference between whether you would or wouldn't recommend to your children that they pursue a career in sales.

I think that's a great question to ask yourself as to whether you've really maintained your self esteem in your profession - 'Would I really, right now recommend my children that they pursue a sales career?'

If you're saying no, it's more than likely you've lost that little bit of self esteem.

When I was training new consultants for our own business I often said that the job is a little bit like a battle between the land and the sea. The sea is always trying to erode the land and the land is always trying to stand firm and not allow itself to be eroded. And what I always tried to get across to our younger consultants is that a large part of success as a salesperson over the length of their career is being able to stand firm and not allow the day-to-day grind of the job, the rejection, the slights, the insults to erode away at them so they wake up one morning and without realising it, have lost a significant part of themselves.

I'd like to illustrate some examples of where people take a little piece of our soul during the course of the working week.

1. Rude Clients.

For me, if the client is rude, I'm not interested, I don't want to work with them. And you might say 'that's easy for you Jonathan, you're earning good money, your career's going okay', but my view is the moment you allow someone to be rude to you at work, you've effectively said to yourself that you're a lesser person. And 10 years of that or 15 years of that or 20 years of that is going to destroy your career.

2. Weekend Calls.

Another example that I find really frustrating is clients who want you to call you on a weekend.

It's okay, maybe they're wanting to get a deal done and I can completely understand why people would want to work with that. I have to be honest I have a personal rule that says if a client wants to call me at a weekend, I'm going to take the call because it's got to be important. But equally I think there's a part of you that dies when you do it, because you've effectively said to that client 'my weekend in my time isn't important, it's okay to call me when I'm on holiday because you're more important than me'.

And 10, 15, 20 years of that is going to start to erode you. That is the sea washing away at the land of your sales success. I get it, we've all done it we've all worked a deal whilst we're on holiday, we've all closed the placement on Sunday afternoon with the client whilst we're sat at Sunday dinner.

But they're the little bits that drag away our self-esteem that mean that when we're 40 or 50, we've lost that little bit of rugged durability that carries us through those later years of our career.

3. Calls from the Pub.

What about the client who's a little bit drunk and insists that you talk to him whilst he's in the pub in front of his mate? Every time you do it, a little piece of you dies and gets chipped away at.

I could sit here all day and go on and on about different examples, the real question is what do you do about it and how do you make sure that throughout the course of a 10, 20, 30 year sales career you maintain that level of self esteem that you need in order to be strong and durable through those later years - from graduating University all the way through to retirement?

Stage 1

Stage 1 of maintaining your self-esteem throughout the course of a lengthy sales career is self-awareness.

It's knowing and being aware of the fact that the day-to-day grind of your sales career can, if you're not careful, chip away at you a little bit.

Stage 2

Secondly and this is going to be a controversial one, be prepared to earn 5 grand a year less. That's right, be prepared to earn 5 grand a year less. And what I mean by that is be ready to walk away from a client or a deal where actually your self-esteem is on the line. Don't be afraid to say sorry this is not how I work.

Trust me, the guys who last, the ones whose careers go from age 21 to 55 or 60 are the ones who are prepared to walk away from a client who is chipping away at them or slighting them or allowing them to lose that little bit of soul and self esteem.

The reality is, being prepared to walk away from a couple of deals in order to maintain your self esteem and keep your chin up in the end over a 20-year period it'll more than make up for itself I guarantee it.

And I've seen thousands of salesmen come and go and I know which ones have great careers and which ones don't and the ones whose careers lasted from age 21 to 55, 60, 65 are the ones who maintain their self-esteem all the way through and who are prepared to say to a client 'stuff it. I don't need you I don't have to take that from you'.

Stage 3

Next up, see the signs during the course of a working day. Ask yourself as you pull up the drive on a night at the end of a tough day on a day where you might wonder if you've sold a little piece of your soul, before you walk through the door of your house ask yourself again - 'Would I tell my kids tonight that a career in sales in one they should go for?'

If the answer is no, then you don't have to make radical changes and you don't have to go falling out with your entire client base. What you do have to do and what I find that often works very well in those whose careers that have really, truly stood the test of time is to steel yourself that night and accept that you sold a little piece of your self-esteem in exchange for a piece of business.

Then, get up the next day, remember that actually all you have to do is be polite, be professional but be prepared to say 'listen I'd rather you didn't eat down the phone whilst we're having this conversation' or be prepared to say 'I'll tell you what, I appreciate that you're in the pub tonight and I appreciate you've had a couple of beers, but why don't we have this conversation when you're a little bit more focused on the conversation tomorrow?'

It's not difficult, you don't have to be an arrogant idiot but the people that I find whose careers last the longest are the ones who don't sell their soul in those moments in time. The ones who don't tolerate the guy chewing gum down the phone or smoking or referring to the more asking them asking them to refer to the client as Mr. - they're the ones that I find a really successful.

I hope you manage to keep your self esteem together and I hope you've found this article insightful.

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Watch my latest A Pint with JG episode where I rant about why it's so infuriating when candidates complain about how hard their job is and forgot about the extremely privileged position they are in.

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