Healthy life habits are just as important as healthy work habits to ensure your success in any sales role!
Elite athletes will tell you – it starts with a strong base – your body.
Every major scientifically backed research article will back the idea that eating the right foods, in measured amounts with the proper sleep and daily exercise will provide anyone with the opportunity to excel in sports and life. However, lets start with your business team.
Salespeople are the elite athletes of the business world. They either produce or exit stage left quickly (50% turnover rate in rep jobs). Stress is part of the job and how they manage / focus it is the key.
The following are three healthy habits reps should focus on to ensure they are creating their best base to max their success. Yep, you are going to have stress, challenging clients / challenging bosses, unrealistic sales times lines, crappy software, reports to management that take forever, data entry for no reason and prioritization issues.
This is what you can do to help you take all of that in stride and max your sales day, every day….
1. Sleep – The myth of doing more by sleeping less is refuted by so many different articles I can’t even start to list them. Shoot for 7-8 hours of actual sleep – not time in bed with multiple screens (TV, phone, iPad – you get the picture). Track it with your sleep monitor and get into a rhythm just like our Neolithic forbears 10pm to bed 6am (sunrise as much as possible) to rise. 7 days a week is best 5 is great. Job one done.
2. Exercise – Do not have time? You are not being honest with your most important fan (you). Every half hour get up walk around the room do 5 burpees or whatever you feel like you can do and switch it up with pushups, leg lefts, bicep curls, triceps extensions – whatever it takes every 30 minutes for 1 -2 minutes. If you are at home you have no excuse not to do something and buying dumbbells (for example) allows you to easily do 10 reps of everything between calls. Whether your call goes good or bad you will get a great adrenaline pump prepping you for your next one. Next thing you know – egads you are more productive and have more energy in less time than it took to walk to the fridge select / prepare something and eat it. Congrats & Giddy Up!
3. Cat Naps – Yep you heard me. Your cognitive speed as a salesperson is paramount – especially in high pressure sales deals. All the sales research backs a strategically placed 20 minute nap to recharge your sales battery and mental acuity– ideally after lunch. This creates a one two food (energy) and mind (reenergized by optimizing the disk drive so to speak) punch that revs up your afternoon. Long story short by taking that 20-minute nap directly after eating you lock in the mornings knowledge and give your brain a chance to reload and reboot for the afternoon sales charge. Its research backed and all you need to do is be strategic about implementation, especially if not at your home office (and Do Not Hit Snooze after 20 minutes – that backfires – do not do it).
There you have it. So many other things you can add to the top salespeople health list that can help anyone based on their current environment. I challenge you to try this for 30 days. Then tell us how you did.
David is a Director at Sentia, a next generation sales enablement technology company. Dave’s passion for helping people with their sales, marketing, business strategy, startup growth and strategic planning has taken him across the globe and spans numerous industries. You can follow him on Twitter @intlmktentry LinkedIn or on Sentia Says