“I found joy outside of success, and I think that’s super important.” – JoBeth Hanak in today’s Tip 1013
How do you get out of a rut?
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JoBeth Hanak on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from JoBeth Hanak. JoBeth has been in sales for almost 6 years, successfully moving from being a #1 personal trainer to a top rep in SaaS sales. She’s been successful in full-cycle closing roles and, recently, started an enterprise BDR role selling dispute management software. Here she is:
JoBeth Hanak: Hey, it’s JoBeth and I’m going to talk about how I got out of my first sales rut. For me, just like, a little bit of background, my first few years I was in sales, I was on fire. I was constantly at the top, and I was very confident in my abilities. And to be honest, that became part of my identity with my friends outside of sales. They knew me as like, “h, she’s super successful in sales and does awesome things.” But eventually, I got to the point to where inevitably I went through the really normal experience of having my first rut, and I feel like, for most people, the natural reaction is to be like, Okay, I’m going to double down. I’m going to start working super hard. I’m going to stay super late. This can’t be happening. I must stop it right now. And just this terrible stressful feeling, and that’s how I responded to this at first. And whenever I was talking to one of my friends about it, about how terrible my life was going, how stressed out I was having a hard time sleeping at night. She pointed out that I was making a lot of blanket statements about myself that had nothing to do with who I was as a person and everything to do just with my current work situation.
And that’s kind of whenever I realized that my life and identity revolved around my job and success, whenever work wasn’t going well, my life was not going well. I think a lot of this came from a deep, deep, deep fear of failure that I’ve constantly, in other situations in this one had to come back and start to figure out how to work through. So what I did this time, this was in early 2019. I started to leave work every day at five and just completely would turn off my work brain. I would go to a cycling class at 05:30 P.m. And hang out with friends. And I started to really build an identity and start to learn more about myself outside of success. I found joy outside of success, and I think that’s super important. I went through a lot of other times since then, where it’s been really rough, namely the pandemic. And honestly, they were rough times, but they weren’t as bad because I had other areas of my life where they were happy. And so whenever work wasn’t going well, I could lean deeper into my hobbies or my friendships or my relationship.
I think that’s where I would start, obviously, you do have to be hitting your activity metrics and whatever. But for me, the first step is always to make sure I’m in a good headspace. Because during this time, I also went back and listened to my calls, and whenever I was doing well, I sounded pretty normal, pretty great. And whenever I listened to demos, whenever I was feeling really bad. Like you could totally hear it in my voice.
So for me, before I start addressing any other sales skills or anything like that, that could be holding me back, I’m going to go back and make sure I’m taking care of myself. I’m getting enough sleep, enough exercise, and enough positive things going in into my life. So I was not just depending on my sales and on my career to bring me fulfillment. So I hope that helps. If you’re going through this, I’m happy to talk to you. I know it can be pretty lonely. So, yeah, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. And thanks for having me on here.
Scott Ingram: The other way you can get out of a rut is to connect with JoBeth on LinkedIn! Even if you’re not in a run we’ve got a link for you to connect with JoBeth at DailySales.Tips/1013
Once you’ve done that, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!