The Carrot Dangler
The never-ending, monotonous feeling of a real-life Ground Hog day. Just imagine chasing that dangling carrot, day in, day out, week in week out. You never get to catch and grip that earthy nourishing vegetable in the palm of your hands, it’s just a ‘phantom’ vegetable.
Sales can be a job or career, depending on what stage of life you are at. It’s a serious fluctuation of emotion. One moment you are living in the most euphoric moment, after closing deal of the month, basking in the glory from your colleagues and taking praise from all angles, and the next, you’re in the slums, wading through the deep, dark quotes of hell, frantically worrying where the next months’ sales are going magically going to appear from.
This is what you’d think, and yes, that’s correct, hard work is usually the answer, but it doesn’t stop the little sales demon popping into your head on a daily basis, and filling it full of anxious, self-doubting and negative thoughts about your rapidly diminishing pipeline of potential future clients.
This is what people on the outside do NOT see, or understand, in all honesty. The differentiation in feelings, from the top of the sales rollercoaster in the clouds, where it’s all dreamy, to the very bottom, at the complete other end of the scale, from an ‘outsiders’ point of view, is unfathomable and incomprehensible.
The mental strain is sometimes very hard to deal with.
Imagine starting a fresh sales job, brand new. You initially have the excitement of meeting the team, almost the ‘honeymoon’ period of a relationship, well it is a relationship, but without the romanticism. You’ve also got a new shiny desk, new computer, new products to learn, and this is all encompassed within a state-of-the-art building – you get the picture.
The learning curve starts; day-by-day you will pick up something new and you’ll soon begin to understand the company ethos and their MO when it comes to conversing with clients and their goals and future plans.
Months start to go by, where you’ll be reaching your target, even sometimes surpassing it and subsequently welcoming praise from your ‘superiors’ or for a better word/phrase, other human sales colleagues who are in charge of a small group of people.
The feeling of reaching your target, and beating it, is fantastic, but salespeople, by their very nature, will naturally have those underlying intrusive thoughts; questioning their own ability, self-worthiness and really asking themselves if they are cut out for sales. The sense of achievement when said targets are reached, is such a dopamine hit, this is what keeps us going.
“You’re only as good as your last month.”
That’s a bit of a ‘cut-throat’ comment from what can only be described as a ‘bad’ sales manager, but it sadly has some truth to it. Sales isn’t about hitting a couple of targets and then just disappearing into the clouds, merely sitting back with you feet up, it’s about turning up day after day, week after week, working hard, being persistent, being perseverance, being tenacious, being relentless at times, and most of all, being consistent.
The power of consistency, in ALL aspects of life, is paramount. In sales, it’s a must, and that sometimes comes at a ‘mental health’ price.
The Relevance To Mental Health
’m sure you already can see the effects this would have on a person’s mental health.
It literally rips your emotions to shreds, I mean, it’s not all doom and gloom, and a lot of people love and thoroughly enjoy sales, but this type of employment can contribute to the detriment of a person’s mental health.
There is no regulation, in terms of ‘feelings’. In sales, you are either performing or you aren’t, it’s as simple as that. There will be a transition period whilst you ‘get up to speed’ and learn the ropes at a new employer, but once you’re a fully fledged member of the team and you’ve embedded your own little personality and quirks within your sales team, there’s no turning back.
You might get one of those incredibly vibrant orange safety rings thrown at you from time to time, for support here and there, but a company will only help you so much before they do like your parents did all those years ago, and remove the stabilisers from your first bicycle.
It’s then time to either crash into the neighbours beautiful E-Type Jaguar across the street (sink), or cycle away whistling harmoniously down the road and living happily ever after (swim).
Sales can be brutal.
Mental health is fragile.
Be careful.
Choose wisely.
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