Keeping balance pays off

Do you have balance in your life?

We all know that sales have not been coming easy these last six months or so for many of our industry sales professionals. So as a manager of salespeople what are we to tell our people?

Should we tell those people that are working 8 hours a day to increase their hours to 10 or 12 hours. Using my modern math skills and some logic it might stand to reason that this would be a way to guarantee a sales increase of 25 to 50 %. But a funny thing happens when you keep working long hours, you lose some of your effectiveness!

At the end of those real long days your mind is not quite as sharp. You are not clicking on all cylinders and therefore you are really not getting the bang for your buck.

So what lessons should this teach all of us?

A quick easy take away that I get is that working smarter makes more sense than longer!

A second lesson that I have learned is that I need to know when I hit that "wall" where my effectiveness is waning. Taking this one step further I need to make sure that when I realize this that I take some time for myself to recharge my battery.

Having balance in your life is one of the most important traits for any salesperson to remain successful over a long period of time.

It is critical for managers to note this fact and watch for signs that a rep is overextending themselves or putting too much pressure on themselves. If the rep is not able to recognize this on their own someone else has to point it out because there is high likelihood that the rep can become depressed due to the fact that more success is not coming with all their extra hours and the long hard work.

Having balance to me means allocating time to your family and friends. This is a must! Does anyone know any workaholics? Perhaps you are one, yourself?

If this is the case you can overcome it by first admitting it and then working hard to create the balance necessary to stay sharp and live a healthy life style.

Don't forget exercise and hobbies! Having outside interests and working to maintain them makes navigating the balance beam of life much easier!

The moral of the story...make time for yourself and you will find one of the great ironies of life...it will not cost you success...it just might be the thing that makes you a success!

Try it...I guarantee that you will like it!