Sales is not for the faint hearted, nor is running your own business. For those of us who run our own businesses and/or have careers in sales or sales management, we find we are often faced with stressful situations such as:

• Budgets to achieve in tougher markets.
• Challenging clients, staff, peers, bosses or suppliers.
• Changes that effect your competitive edge with products and services.
• New market competitors, products, ideas and innovations.
• Dealing with unethical people or business tactics.
• New system upgrades or old systems that don’t work well.
• Not to mention our personal lives and the many changes we face on a daily basis.

How do we manage ourselves in times of stress? If you are anything like me, you probably struggle from time to time trying to keep up with all these things and more. Many small business owners are often the main and possibly the best sales person in their business. They also often double as the general manager, HR manager and sales manager. How to fit it all in and keep sales coming in at what cost is the question.

While the topics of stress, depression and other health issues are getting more press today, these problems often remain hidden from view and never spoken about by top sales performers and business owners until it’s too late.

Why should good sales people burnout at all? It’s such as waste to have a sales superstar fall to a sales drop out.

What we know is that good consistent sales performers are usually resilient, focused and determined in nature and, in my experience, usually have a sense of ‘wellness’ about them. Their wellness shines through and is supported by good life habits such as:

1. Undertaking regular exercise.
2. Having a healthy diet.
3. Drinking alcohol in moderation or not at all.
4. Having a variety of other interests in their life.
5. Prioritising very well.
6. Not taking illicit drugs.
7. Continued self development.

However, even healthy sales people sometimes ‘hit the wall’ and ‘burn out’. An accumulation of things can happen and before you know it you’ve hit the wall. With too many things happening too quickly, you often do not stop to deal with them one by one.

If this accumulation of stressful events continues, then they simply roll you over and flatten you. Given a good sales person has the capacity to produce consistently well, we can often miss vital signs of our stressors.

For instance when sales are down, we can take on too much and over compensate for others’ lack of performance. If this happens over and over again it wears you down. I have experienced a major burnout on one occasion (more about that next week). It was not pleasant and very stressful. I am sure I am not alone when it comes to stress as a sales person or as a business owner

Now I am no expert on stress management, however I have been an avid user of many tried and true approaches to help me be at my best and ensure I am ‘sales fit’ and can still juggle my many duties.

Instead of resorting to alcohol, drugs or other harmful actions as others may do, I sort out my support network. That is why I thought it would be useful to provide a list of some of the services people can access before, during or after they find themselves dealing with stressful situations. Please find following a preliminary list of associations you may like to explore:

• Yoga classes and other natural therapies.
• Access to medical or psychological help with stress, depression or other mental health issues go to the government support network www.beyondblue.org.au or the Australian Psychological Society.
• Overcoming sleeping issues the drug free way.
• Qualified massage therapists go to Australian Association of Massage Therapists.
• Australian parenting website.
• For meditation, there are several different places to try.

Prevention in the best cure and hindsight is a wonderful teacher. Never forget nothing is impossible to fix and there is always an option out there to help you deal with any challenging situation. Don’t forget to ask for help there is always someone there.

I hope this helps.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Rona who took her own life recently. She was a beautiful, talented and accomplished mother, swimmer, academic, writer and friend. I will miss you.

Last week I explained that my blog is called Sell Like A Woman because there is an increasing body of research overseas showing that woman are often outperforming men in achieving sustainable results in sales and client relationships. And I promised you I would start to highlight, from my research, what successful sales women do especially well. So here is your first snippet.

Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus.

I asked 50 highly successful sales women across a wide variety of industries about the differences between male and female sales people.

There was a uniform feeling among all the women interviewed for my project that female sales people are better at establishing a long-term relationship with a customer, are better listeners and find it easier to identify emotions and respond with empathy. Here are a couple of quotes from some of the women in the research project.

“I strongly believe that female sales people start from a very different place to our male counterparts. We start with the relationship. Rather than darting in and offering quick fix solutions, we take a longer term and ultimately more strategic view of the potential value of each client to our company.

“We are willing to be more patient in bringing a client on board, if it will generate better results. I think it also fair to say that, from my observations, women do more of the detail/paper/leg work themselves (rather than delegating it to others), are much better time managers, and less caught up in ‘appearances’ – less ego driven. If I were a client, I would rather have a female rep looking after my interests.”

Another had this to say: “Big generalisation: women tend to be better listeners, and men are better at asking for the business. Women are more patient and men are more direct. Women like to build the relationship, when men like to ‘consummate’ the relationship with the sale.”

All of women interviewed responded in unison, believing saleswomen have certain advantages over men. This surprised me, given that up to date, still, a vast majority of salespeople are male, and sales as a profession is still considered a male profession.

The results of my research are consistent with other extensive studies done. Rosenbaum (1999) found that women have a real edge over men when it comes to complex selling, and in particular they surpass men with respect to the following competencies:

• Aligning customer/company strategic objectives.
• Listening beyond product needs.
• Orchestrating organisational resources.
• Consultative problem solving.
• Engaging in self-appraisal and continuous learning.

To help us come to grips with these and other competencies that make for good sales success, I will focus on a specific competency each week in my blog and this will give you the opportunity to explore how you use each competency in your work and sales careers – and how it affects your sales performance. Think about it like fitness training – bit by bit over time.

I welcome your feedback and findings.

Sell Like A Woman is purely about raising the level of consciousness of what qualities really make for great sales people (men and women alike) in the 21st century. So maybe we can begin to help managers clearly identify and articulate what they are looking for.

Some of you may be wondering why my blog is called “Sell like a woman”. First, Sell like a woman is not a feminist manifesto nor is it a male bashing exercise.

The creation of the title was inspired by an increasing body of research overseas showing that woman are often outperforming men when it comes to achieving real and sustainable results in sales and effective sustainable client relationships.

This led me to begin my research project and the book I am now writing, also called “Sell Like A Woman”. I have always been curious about women and their success in sales and wanted to explore the concept here in Australia and develop some Australian-based research as well.

So late in 2006 I found 50 highly successful sales women across a wide variety of industries. The information, stories and insights I received from these women were inspiring and fascinating.

In the beginning, I didn’t realise how profound the process would be for me and for many of the women on the project. It allowed us all the opportunity to connect with and learn from each other, to bring to the fore the real qualities that make for good selling and healthy relationships.

The ideas, experience and stories told by these women give great insights into what makes them and others like them successful, resilient, inspirational and most of all “real” when it comes to realising a sustainable fulfilling career in sales.

I cannot pre-empt how you may feel after reading this and subsequent posts, however many of the people, especially women, I have begun to share the research and findings with have felt vindicated, liberated and relieved.

Finally there was some evidence that gave legitimacy to how they chose to work and sell. They said the findings felt right and aligned with their experiences and results. The findings spoke to them in a truthful way that finally aligned with how they felt selling should be, and was for them.

You see for many of them, they were selling well, achieving excellent sales results and had excellent customer relationships, however, the prevailing paradigms for selling and the messages they were getting from management, training and the so called “sales gurus” were not matching how they felt they should sell.

Many of the qualities that distinguish these high performing sales women were often put down to nothing more than luck – ‘she was just lucky to get that sale’ or at worst ‘she slept her way to the sale’ etc.

Let me tell you there is no luck, tricks, secrets or having to sell your body when it comes to having successful legitimate careers in sales as a woman. Many managers now specifically want women in their sales teams. They are recognising the power of women in sales, yet many remain oblivious as to why sales women are often their star performers.

Like many people, I have always been curious about what makes “great sales performance”. This is a perplexing question that has been asked and attempted to be answered by many people over the years.

Also, are great sales people born? (most people believe this to be true – but it’s not). What does it take to be an elite sales performer, and can anyone learn how to sell well?

Many people have looked for one magic quality, one key ingredient that distinguished top performing sales people from all others – a magic ingredient with which only the special are anointed.

Here are some of those qualities that have been espoused as the one and only magic ingredient:

• Not call-reluctant.
• Resilient.
• Extroverted.
• Persuasive.
• A good talker.

The trouble with taking a singular approach to defining high level sales performance is that it assumes there is a one-size-fits-all approach to sales, and only those people with that ‘special” quality can sell. This is certainly not the case.

This singular approach minimises and trivialises the complexity that is inherent in effective selling and disregards the constant adjustment needed to meet changing industry standards, market conditions, competition, corporate strategy and culture, personalities involved and so on.

Just think about how the role of “sales” has changed in your industry over the years.

If we wanted to try and isolate one quality above all others I would have to highlight trust.

Great sales people have always known that their success lies in being able to sell based on trust, transparency and doing what they say they will do.

But how do you build trust? That involves many qualities working in an integrated fashion. Effective selling is an integrated system that uses a variety of skills, behaviours and knowledge. Based on study findings from here and overseas, our research into sales competencies has revealed some interesting findings.

While traditional competencies such as basic selling skills and account management are required, they do not differentiate top sales performers from poor or average sales performers.

A US longitudinal study released in 2001 by Bernard Rosenbaum, “Seven Emerging Sales Competencies” revealed nine sales competencies: seven emerging and two traditional. The findings cut across all industries, contradicting the assumption that successful sales practices vary among different industries.

Highest performing sales people develop and use the seven emerging competencies despite the fact they may not have been modeled by their managers – many managers still do not fully recognise these competencies.

Although essential to performance, the two traditional competencies showed little differentiation between high and low sales performers. Successful sales people are not constrained by traditional practices, but work instead in ways they have found best.

The seven emerging competencies are:

• Engaging in self-appraisal and continuous learning.
• Listening beyond product needs.
• Orchestrating internal resources.
• Aligning customer/supplier strategic objectives.
• Establishing a vision of a committed customer/supplier relationship.
• Understanding the financial impacts of decisions.
• Consultative problem solving.

The most interesting finding was that gender differences in sales competencies were found, with women rated significantly more highly than men on five of the emerging competencies. The author suggests this is reason to have a gender-balanced sales team.