How to deal with stress

Stress can be the unseen reason a good sales conversation turns awkward, especially when you are close to the decision. I dig into the moments when pressure starts to leak out as impatience, silence, anger, micromanaging, or that sudden urge to people please and why clients feel it immediately. When they sense you are under strain, trust wobbles, and without trust the deal slows down or dies. 

We look at practical stress management for salespeople, starting with awareness: learning your personal “tells” so you can catch stress early rather than getting swept up in it. I also bring in DISC personality types as a useful lens for understanding how different behavioural styles show stress and how that affects communication. Then we move into what to do before a face-to-face meeting: take a breath, take the pressure off the deal, and lean on clarity. Clear outcomes, clear next steps, clear owners, and clear timelines reduce anxiety and help you lead the conversation calmly. 

Sales is also leadership, so I talk about recognising stress in other people too, especially your clients. If they are overloaded, forcing the meeting can feel pushy and damage rapport. A simple, respectful reschedule can build goodwill and set you apart from competitors, while still keeping the deal under control. We finish with options for tough moments, including bringing someone with you and tag teaming so you can buy thinking time without losing momentum. 

If you want calmer meetings, cleaner communication, and more consistent results, hit subscribe, share the episode with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find it.

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Transcript

Why Stress Kills Trust In Sales

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do you ever get stressed? And do you know what the signs are that you're getting stressed? So some of them might be obvious. Uh, you might be feeling tense, um, you might stop communicating, you might get angry, you might start micromanaging. There are all sorts of ways that we express stress uh when we're feeling ourselves under stress. So I want to talk about that and how we manage stress because this has been prompted by a response somebody made to a post I put up about one of my podcasts from a few weeks ago about how clarity is really important in the communication part of selling. And selling, in my opinion, is primarily about communication. So if you're not an effective communicator, you're gonna struggle with sales anyway. But the next thing is that if you can't manage your own stress, you are definitely going to struggle. And this is another differentiator between the people who struggle in sales and the people who do really well. So top salespeople know how to handle stress, and where that starts is recognizing when you're under stress, because often when you're in it, you're not aware of it, you're you're you get caught up in the emotion. Stress is obviously an emotion, and you get caught up in that. And once you're in it, it's can be very difficult to just step back, look at what you're doing, and then start doing something different. But if you are stressed and you come across as stressed to the client that you're working with, so particularly when you're trying to close a deal, that can be really counterproductive because the person you're dealing with will pick up on the emotion that you're presenting and that will make them uncomfortable. And of course, most of us are not going to buy from somebody who is making us feel uncomfortable. There's an issue of trust, uh, which is absolutely fundamental. So you're likely to scupper the whole deal. So your ability to recognize when you're stressed and to manage it effectively is really important because and the hard truth about this is that if you can't do that, you will always stay where you're at. You're gonna stay mediocre, um, you're gonna you're not gonna be one of those top tiers of salespeople who from the outside look like nothing bothers them, they just sail through, it's all good. But in fact, inside they're human, they're just like pretty much everybody else, and certain things will stress them, but they have taken the time and they have the awareness to recognize what's going on, and then do something positive with it and do something about it. So, what are the signs that you're getting stressed? So I'm as I hope you know, I'm a disc practitioner, an extended disc practitioner,

DISC Personality Types And Stress Tells

SPEAKER_00 2:55

and one of the things that comes out when you do a disc profile, and this isn't specifically selling the disc profiles, so I don't think they're a problem. And if you're picking up a background noise, I do apologize for it, but where I am, they've just been building for weeks, so I'm getting stressed. And um, I guess that takes me on to the the different personality types. So, if you don't know, disc is about it's built around four primary types of person who exhibit certain behaviors, and pretty much all of us are will have a couple of those, will be more dominant in their personality than the other two. And what a disc profile does, it tells you which of those four aspects are dominant in your personality, and that gives you a lot of insight into not only what careers are good for you, uh, but how you communicate, where misunderstandings occur with other people, and also how stress tends to show itself in that type of person. So, how does stress show itself? And with its when it when we're talking about ourselves, maybe we're aware of it, but it's also good to just watch what we're doing. And if you're a manager or your leader, it's really good to recognize when stress is occurring in other people because it may not be immediately obvious unless you know the signs. So, with some types of people, and this includes me, I tend to get stressful show itself by me getting angry, I might be getting a lot less patient, and um, so that's a sign I look out for. Um, it may be that you become a people pleaser, or it may be that you start to micromanage, or it might be that you um just get really, really disorganized. So there are certain tells, certain giveaways that stress is going on. And I'm gonna start with self-management because I think that's the most important thing to do. Because even if you're managing other people, you need

Calming Yourself Before The Client Meeting

SPEAKER_00 5:01

to recognize in yourself where the problems are. So once you recognize, once you know what your own tells are for stress, what do you do about it? Well, when it comes to sales, it is really, really important that when you're going in face-to-face with clients, that you are managing the situation, that they they have trust in you. If they feel that you're stressed or under the pump, depends on the relationship, but a lot of times they'll be a bit more wary of you, that you're likely to undermine trust. And so it's really important that as a general rule, you just manage that. So the thing to do is first of all to recognize it. Secondly, I think I always take a deep breath. The next thing is to just recognize that you don't need to make this deal. So try and take the pressure off by not making this deal critical. Look, it might be really important to you. Um I've certainly worked on deals that have been very big or just strategically really important. So obviously, those situations build in their own pressure. But when it comes to face-to-face with the client, it's really important to energetically get out of that really stressful um environment that you find yourself in. So just take yourself out of it, deep breath, relax, and it it's it actually works almost in the way that the more you don't care about the sale, the more likely you are to get it, if that if that's not simplif oversimplifying it. But the thing is, if you if you appear emotionally that this doesn't matter to you. So, in other words, just stay and relax, deep breath, calm yourself down, go through step by step, use the process, go through all of the things that have got you this far. So it is clarity, it's a big part of that. It's being really clear on okay, what do we need to do now? What are the elements of that that need to get done? Who is responsible for it? When do they need to get done? Um, how are we doing? Are we behind track? Are we on track? Where are we? But really focus down into the essential steps within that meeting, and so that you're clear of what the outcomes are from that meeting. When we have a meeting, there should be clear outcomes. So we don't have a meeting unless we know why we're there, otherwise, what's the point of it? So that I very strongly recommend is something that you do. And it may be a case of getting in the if you're driving there, get there early, or if you're public transport, whatever it is, just get there a bit early, listen to some music if that works for you, go for a walk, whatever you have to do, to just calm yourself down and get into an emotional space where you are more relaxed. And when you are more relaxed, that allows you to focus more on what needs to be done. You can take the meetings through because the chances are you'll be running it, or at least subtly running it. Um, and you make sure that you cover everything that needs to be covered and that you get the you set up the outcome that you are looking for for that meeting. So that's it from a sales perspective. I'm gonna touch on the um the man the management side of it because the leadership management is something that is

Reading Client Stress And Rescheduling

SPEAKER_00 8:26

also important. Um, and and this isn't just if you are a manager or or a leader with your own group, it's also when you're as a salesperson, when you're dealing with clients, you're basically leading them. So you need to be able to recognize stress in those people as well. Because if your clients are stressed when you go and meet them, this might not be the time to have that meeting. And I have scrub meetings with clients because I've recognized that that they're stressed out, something's going on, and and I know that if I'm trying to get a deal moving through and they're stressed, the chances are that's not going to go well. And in fact, that might definitely have a negative impact on the sale because they may well feel that I'm sort of pushing through and I'm not conscious or even interested in what's going on for them. So the simple thing to do is just say, look, um, it looks like you have a lot going on at the moment. Would you rather that we just reschedule this meeting? That takes the pressure off both of you. And if they say, Yes, let's reschedule, two things happen. One is you have stepped away from being in an environment that is not going to help you close a deal. And with most people, they'll be quite grateful that you have recognized what's going on for them and you have been proactive in taking the pressure off them. You're again for me, the key to selling is to be there for the client, it's consultative selling, it's being a problem solver for the client. And if the client is stressed out and you're insisting on having a meeting that clearly they're not going to be focused on, then that's not really working for the client. So when you approach it that way, when you put in a bit of flexibility, when you allow the client to just reschedule, um they're more grateful to you. You're probably you may well be the only one doing that. Other salespeople might come in and try and drive ahead with whatever the meeting is about, um, if these are your competitors. So you want to stand out from them. Obviously, you need to stay in control of the deal, so you don't want to let things slip for too long. But you do need to recognize what's going on in the going on in the moment for your client. So I guess to recap all of this, um, stress is something that we deal with every day. Um,

When Stress Helps And When It Hurts

SPEAKER_00 10:52

and we all have times when we get really stressed. It might be that things aren't going well, it may be that the orders aren't coming in, we're not getting new clients. Um, it might be we have things going on outside of the office that are having a really big impact because they're just constantly there. Um, I mean, that's called life. We we things happen, and they're not always things that we would choose to have happen when we would um choose to have them happen. So it is really important, first of all, to do a self-check and recognize when your stress levels are at a point where they are now becoming counterproductive. So, for a lot of people, a little bit of stress is helpful because it keeps them focused. I remember talking to a senior manager at um a big multinational company actually on one occasion, and he had come back from holiday in France, where apparently they stressed the vines to help them grow, and he felt that that was a useful way to treat his people. Not sure I totally go along with that, but anyway, that was an approach. Um, but the thing is, we're going to have stress, so some people respond well to some stress. Um, I think that again depends very much on your personality type and your behavioral type. So, again, disc just to plug it again, is a really good thing to do. So, you can find out more about that on my website, uh, which is www.salescraft.training. When you do recognize you are stressed, then as I've said, the first thing to do

Backup Plans Tag Teaming And Closing

SPEAKER_00 12:25

is to look at how you manage it. Can you self-manage? If you can't, the next stage then is to either rearrange if and I'm talking primarily about meetings here, face-to-face meetings, either to rearrange the meeting yourself and just ask if um if if it's possible to do it, or if that's not a possibility, maybe see if there's somebody who can go in on your behalf or or at least go in with you, uh, because sometimes if you have another person there, um that can work. And what I've often done with people I've worked with, we've sort of tag teamed. If one person's getting stuck or needs a bit of thinking time, I would say to them, ask me a question. Um, and um which might be Graham, what do you think about that? Well, Graham, do you have anything to add? Something really simple like that. I know that okay, they need thinking time, so I'll just take the ball and talk to the client and just run it for a bit until they're in a point at a point where they're ready to get back in again. So there's various ways you can handle this. But as I've said, the the key thing about it is yes, stress is most definitely a factor. Uh, yet we all have to deal with it. It is harder to deal with than it is to talk about dealing with it, that's for sure. But it is really important that you recognize what the symptoms are when you're getting stressed. When if you're a leader or a manager, your people are getting stressed, and when your clients are getting stressed, and to manage those situations. And I think you'll find that when you do that, you will definitely find that sales progress much more easily, and it's actually a much more pleasant experience. So that's it, just talking about stress. I felt that was worth um a few minutes to um to talk about that, and I hope you found that useful. Um, if you did, please remember to like and subscribe, and um, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. So bye for now.