“So remember, the more calm you are, the better you are to be able to show up for others.” – Carole Mahoney in today’s Tip 838
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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 Carole Mahoney. Carole has been called the “Sales Therapist” by a Harvard Business School professor where she coaches Entrepreneurial MBA students on sales. She has been featured as a top 15 Sales Influencer by LinkedIn, a Woman to Watch in Sales by Sales Hacker and a top sales coach by Ambition. Here she is:
Carole Mahoney: You know, my family and friends often tell me that I am a special kind of crazy for being an entrepreneur and a salesperson. But did you know that 72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues, at least according to the Institute of Mental Health.
Did you also know that two and five sellers, though, also reported that they struggled with mental health issues, which is double with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention report for the general workforce, at least according to a survey from the Sales Health Alliance of surveying 300 sales professionals, which might not be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the 21st century is a knowledge-based economy that requires us to use our brains. So we rely on our soft skills to be creative, to think critically, and to actively listen.
Mental health issues affect our productivity and our ability to think, which means that it affects our ability to sell with our buyers. Now, being both an entrepreneur and a salesperson, I can completely admit that mental health issues like anxiety and depression with a side of ADHD and maybe some PTSD thrown in on top for good measure, these are things that I have struggled with and had to learn how to overcome. Sometimes, though, even the voices in my head couldn’t agree on which one of us was more messed up.
Now, at its worst, my mental state, or lack thereof, impacted my closest relationships with my husband and my kids and my business suffered and my physical health took a nosedive. But now, now I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m closer to my husband and my kids than I have ever been before in business. Business is booming. And the one thing that changed. Is that I started to put myself first, I know it seems crazy, right? Especially since the whole motto and mission is not about me. But I realized that if I’m going to show up for others, I have to be the best version of myself to do that.
Now to do that. There are three things that I recognized help me to turn it around and maintain my mental health.
First, I needed to nail down that morning routine and not just during the week, but also on the weekend, so that means for me that I get up at the same time, which is early enough so that I can sit and watch the sunrise with my first cup of coffee, followed by a shower, some yoga, and a healthy breakfast. Nowadays, where I drag myself out of bed at the last minute or run around, we’re never days where I felt in control of anything. My heart never stopped racing.
Now, for you to get to the point where you have a consistent morning routine will probably also mean that you need to have a consistent bedtime routine. For me, that meant dinner no later than 7, no TV after 9:30, and be in bed by 10. And yes, even the days when I would travel, I would do my best to stick to this routine. Besides, like my nana said, nothing good happens after 10 p.m. anyway.
Now the second thing that I needed to do is I needed to remind myself of what my value was and that it wasn’t based on my bank account level or the number of followers that I had on social media or the size of my business. I also had to remind myself of the fact that being uncomfortable is normal. It’s all part of this process that we call life. You see feeling uneasy or uncomfortable or anxious about things. It’s not a judgment that you’re not good enough or you don’t know enough. It’s a normal physiological reaction to doing something that you’ve never done before.
Finally, the third thing that I had to do was make a conscious effort to maintain my relationships because my relationships are my support network, it’s so easy for us to get wrapped up in our own world and in our own head. So whenever I think of someone, no matter how random I take, that is the universe’s cue to tell me that I need to reach out to them, to text them, or email them. You see, when we turn our attention to others, it creates the social connection that lowers our anxiety and our depression. It helps us to regulate our emotions, which leads us to have higher self-esteem of ourselves, more empathy towards others. It can even improve our immune systems.
Now, by doing these things, I started to see that downtime was an investment in my productivity, not guilty treat. And now my dog knows that those daily walks are playtime for both of us.
So remember, the more calm you are, the better you are to be able to show up for others.
Scott Ingram: For more from Carole. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter to be the first to get her science-based sales tips, which is where I originally found today’s tip from Carole. We’ll have links for you at DailySales.Tips/838.
Once you’ve clicked over there. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!