Get A Life 🙂
If you love what you do, it can really consume you at times. If you aren’t careful, your light will burn out.
I was in field sales management with the Fortune 500® company Aflac, for 20 years. I will always be proud of my relationship with them. Over the years, I have seen that company go above and beyond in so many ways to take care of their policyholders and their agents.
That alone would be enough to secure my admiration for them.
When you add to that, how much those years have meant to me and my family – you can easily understand why I say, “I bleed Aflac blue.”
The combination of knowing how our policies helped families in need during difficult times – and knowing how we could generate above average incomes and change our family’s future… created a feeling that what we were doing really mattered.
I often told my team…
“I don’t refer to what we do as a calling – because that term should be reserved for higher purposes. However, I do believe that what we do qualifies as a cause because it is such a worthy endeavor.”
But there is another phrase that I have said over the years that carried equal weight with my sales and sales leadership team. That phrase was,
“This is not our life. It is what we do for a living.”
– Jeff C. West
You should sell a product or service that you can become passionate about how it makes someone’s life or business better.
And you should do some serious soul searching and discover your personal motivation as to why you want to achieve success.
But you also have to guard against becoming too out of balance for long periods of time.
To avoid burnout in sales or sales management, you have to set boundaries. One of the boundaries I encourage is specifically planning the hours and days that you will work – and when you will stop working. You have to protect your family time and make it a priority.
Involve your family in your goal setting. Have discussions with them as to the rewards you will share as a family when you achieve your targets.
Then work… work… work…
And play… play… play
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