Your Professional Sales Life is Your Personal Life

Life sometimes has a way of intervening in your plans. Work comes with its own set of challenges, but your personal life can often be interrupted by events that take your time and your emotional energy. Dealing with personal issues can take you out of your sales game and destroy your results.

Here are few ideas about how minimize the effect of personal issues on your sales game.

Why You Can’t Segment Your Life

As much as we like to think that we have a work life and a personal life, we don’t. We have only one life, and work is part of that life. There isn’t a “work you” and a “personal you.” This is true no matter where you are and no matter what you may be doing.

There are no clean lines that mark the boundaries between personal and professional, even though it is easier to recognize this as a truth in others. When we encounter the stressful events that life throws our way, the fact that there are no lines becomes excruciatingly obvious.

The result of life’s interruptions on your effectiveness in sales can be disastrous. It can result in your being distracted, emotionally exhausted, missing commitments, producing poor results, and in some cases, much worse.

How Not To Allow Your Sales Results to Be Derailed

Ask for Help: Your work is important. While dealing with whatever life has decided to throw at you, you need to make sure that dealing with it doesn’t jeopardize your work. This begins with asking for help.

You are not alone. Ask for help from your manager, from your mentor, or from your team. Ask for help completing the tasks and keeping the commitments that you may not be able to keep, and make certain that your clients and dream clients are taken care of appropriately.

Ask for Time: Sometimes you need to take some time to get back on track. Ask for the time you need. Not asking for the time you need and remaining at work can sometimes cause bigger issues.

Deal with Things: Problems don’t age well. If you have the help, and if you have the time, deal with the issues that you need to deal with so that you can get your life back in order. Once you deal with the things, you can try to get back to doing your best at work and making your numbers. (Too many people let problems linger too long; you are better served to deal with them as quickly and effectively as you can).

Wherever You Are, Be Present: It’s not easy to maintain your focus when things are out of sort. Wherever you are, be it at work, on a sales call, or dealing with whatever you have to deal with, be present there. Try your best to focus on achieving the outcomes you need, be they sales-related or personal.