The Surprising Truth About Sales Anxiety.

You may be like my buddy, Mike, who doesn’t wrestle much with anxiety. Not at all, to hear him tell it. Go him! And you, perhaps.

But I wrote the entire first chapter of my book, "The Anxious Salesman," about that gnawing little demon because anxiety appears so often in the lives of sales people, heck, just people.

You might think that the way to feel less sales anxiety is to make more sales. Well, duh! But that’s hardly a permanent fix, nor is it always true. Do you ever feel anxious even when your pipeline is full and your quota is crushed?

In my book, I don’t refer to anxiety as a gnawing little demon but rather a pesky tagalong whom I tolerate because he’s tough to ditch permanently. Be it days, weeks or months, he inevitably reappears in the form of agitation, disquiet, or tension in the body - often in the solar plexus.

One step that I typically take to ditch my tag-along is to isolate the source of the anxiety, which always comes from only one of three places or a combination of each...

There is often no distinct line between these sources. They can morph and blend into one another, and there are always only three: biological, situational, or existential. The biological source means that sleep, nutrition, or exercise (and for some people therapy and medication) will create the space through which one can move towards greater calm.

Certainly, psychotherapy and medication are important tools in providing relief if one has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. But neither therapy nor medication is a panacea. Clinical interventions, be they medical or therapeutic, serve only to create more internal and external space from which to act.

It is within this space that one must still do the hard work of managing mindset and behavior, both of which impact the other.

Sorry, no magic pill. Although some would have you believe there is.

Think of clinical intervention performing like a football lineman who creates openings through which a quarterback must still run a play to advance the ball, sometimes for a big gain, other times for a sack.

Whether the source of my angst is obvious or mysterious, the best way I have found to ditch this pesky tag-along is a four-part mantra that, ironically, my army drill instructors taught me during my M-16 rifle qualification test.

If you’d like to learn how to translate this weapon firing maxim into anxiety relief, you can buy the book or sign up for a free training available to you now, right here.

To the championship coach inside of you!

Sheldon