What Doesn’t Kill You…
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you have probably picked up that I am fairly family with “the program”. I have never been in any 12-step program such as Alcoholic Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, but I have enough friends and family members who have been in these programs to know the secret handshakes so to speak.
That is why it is impossible to ignore the correlation between people who work in sales and addiction. I will admit to being pretty addicted to coffee. I do not mean that like “I am so hooked on coffee lol. I mean I drink over a quart of coffee per day and suffer from severe migraine headaches if I ever forget.
There is a line by Frederic Nietzsche that says “What doesn’t kill you gives you a whole bunch of unhealthy coping mechanisms”. Sales definitely does this and more.
Let’s understand the reason for coping mechnisms to begin with. Your brain, as evolved as it is, has a tough time differentiating between an awkward conversation with your boss and a live tiger staring directly at you. The only response it has is triggering a response in the amygdala to prepare for something to go down.
Because many of our job, especially within sales, has a certain constant hum of anxiety, we are constantly on edge. Our amygdala thinks we are always feet away from a tiger that can attack us whenever it gets bored.
There is no surprise that because of this pressure, many salespeople need an escape. They need some way to turn off the air raid siren in their amygdala and be able to reset.
As salespeople, especially those of us in a commission only environment, many of us are always a bad week away from near disaster. We are always on that tightrope, and we need something to help us balance ourselves out.
Studies have looked into a link into sales and alcoholism, but there has not been anything very conclusive yet. One of the best I found was by Lowe, Ayres, and Bowen of Western Kentucky University titled An Investigation into the Roots of Salesforce Alcoholism. This study into 180 Business students found there was a possible link between alcoholic behavior and considering joining the sales field. Here are the concluding comments from the study.
“As often happens, we know very little about a large and costly problem. We are unsure of the number of alcoholic salespersons. We wonder is position demands cause alcoholism in salespersons or if alcoholic or alcoholism prone individuals gravitate to such positions. The results of this preliminary research suggest the possibility of a gravitation view. There is little doubt of the need for both academic and industrial research on salesforce alcoholism.”
Whether it is that salespeople are attracted to alcohol and addictive substances or addicts are attracted to sales, we do not really know. However based on this work we can start forming assumptions and take a look ourselves.
I am not telling you to quit drinking cold turkey. In fact that can be dangerous in some cases. Just look at it as what it is, a coping mechanism. Alcohol and substances do not turn off the siren, they turn it down for a little while. It is like putting a towel over the speaker.
Simply be conscious, and do not be afraid to ask for help. Ask yourself if the behavior is really helping or hurting, and it can be a little of both. Just figure out when the solution starts creating more problems.
If you feel like this may apply to you, reach out to someone or try to quit for a short period of time (21 days works well).
Coping mechanism, even those that are not perfectly healthy are fine, but you need to make sure they are not hurting your life in other areas.
Just know you are not alone. There are tens of thousands of fellow salespeople in the same boat. Some are floating along fine, some have capsized. The same amount of pressure can feel different to different people.