4 Relaxation Tips for Sales Representatives

By Holly AllenderReduce Your Stress, Be More Successful
Stress is part of our lives, in good and bad ways. There’s no getting away from stress. We experience stress when we don’t meet our goals or a customer is yelling at us. When someone surprises you with an award for exemplary sales, although good, is still considered stressful. How we choose to react to stress may make the difference between getting a sale or going overboard emotionally. Below are tips to help you identify stress and how to relax once your stress level rises. By reducing your stress, you will be centered and focused. This will help you in meeting your career goals.

1. Recognize Stress

Just like understanding the needs of your customer or how your competition operates, get to know your stress. Figure out what triggers it and when you lose control (or are about to!). What about your day causes you to flinch, procrastinate or dread? All of these feelings are triggers and can drain your energy, leave you unfocused and muddle your communications. They indicate that you are experiencing stress.

2. Appreciate Yourself

You are the face of your business, and you have quotas to meet. You face customers every day, and they aren’t always the nicest people out there. However, you thrive on the challenges to meet the needs of your customers, out-witting your competitors and meeting (or exceeding) your sales goals. If all this didn’t fit, you’d be doing something else. Look at what you’ve accomplished today, this week, this month and this year. List everything you’ve done. Be impressed with your efforts and congratulate yourself! You don’t give yourself enough credit.

3. Get a Life Outside of Work

You are not your job. It is something that you do and rather well during the day. After work, get involved in any activity that has nothing to do with what you do during the day. I call them anti-work activities, like exercising, hobbies, reading, hiking, walking, gardening and so on. As long as it isn’t related to what you do every day, it will allow you to switch gears. Your mind will relax, and you will be refreshed for your job when you return. Your subconscious will relax so that when you’re back to work, it will be ready to support your creativity and help you think more clearly on your feet.

4. Drop Everything and Relax (DEAR)

Set aside time every day to drop everything and relax. This could mean that you meditate, scream, go for a run, or a walk—anything to relax for a few minutes. I used to set a recurring appointment on my calendar. This prevented others from scheduling meetings (although they tried). Those fifteen minutes were mine, and I guarded them carefully