A career in sales can be simultaneously stressful and exciting. As the importance of the job increases, so do the difficulties. These days, prospects know exactly how to respond to sales tricks and are no longer afraid to consult the internet and research alternatives.

While a lot of salespeople can handle the pressure, some crumble under it. If you don’t take care of your happiness, your sales success can take a hit.

That’s why we researched the relationship between happiness and sales success. Is personal happiness actually important in your sales career?

How happiness leads to success

Robert Waldinger is a professor at Harvard and has been studying lifelong happiness for, well, his entire life. It has been the longest study on happiness ever and is still going on today.

The study started with boys from a variety of backgrounds: some poor, some rich, some in college and some on the streets. Researchers tried predicting the lives of the boys, who all had different dreams of becoming rich and famous. This turned out to be impossible, as their health, personal relationships, jobs and social status did not match the researchers’ predictions.

Surprisingly, Waldinger only came to 1 major conclusion from the 75 years of studying 725 different men: Good lives come from good relationships.

When these men didn’t have strong personal relationships and couldn’t count on others for support, their health declined and they were less motivated to continue pursuing a successful career.

Cultivate Happy Relationships

Based on Waldinger’s research, we gathered some tips for happy salespeople. These tips are all about becoming happy by communicating with others. Everyone can benefit from these simple practices.

1. Talk to a close friend or relative daily. It’s a break for your mind.
2. Don’t waste your personal social interactions on people who are emotionally draining.
3. Be open to meeting new people, but don’t force it.
4. Consider getting a pet. Man’s best friend can bring a lot of happiness - just make sure you’re able to take care of them properly.
5. Communicate with your friends or partner. Open communication is the best way of maintaining strong relationships.

It’s important and helpful to strengthen both your personal and professional relationships. Sales is a people-oriented job, so maintaining good customer relationships will increase sales reps’ personal happiness.

The Importance of Happiness

Shawn Achor, best selling author of The Happy Secret to Better Work, was a student counselor at Yale University when he drew some interesting conclusions about happiness. He found that students were happy to be at Yale during the first week of the semester, but their lives revolved around work and stress during the second week of the semester.

According to Achor, only 10% of your happiness comes from “external factors”. For these students, this was the prestige of being at Yale. Once classes actually began, 90% of their happiness depended on real-life factors such as homework and tests. In the end, it’s actual experiences that affect your happiness, not how others see you.

What does this mean for salespeople? When a salesperson is working on a large deal, they can become anxious about the work they need to do to actually close the deal. And when that deal closes? The pressure to do an even bigger deal arises.

Having this mindset makes happiness seem unreachable because you’re not enjoying your accomplishments and you’re bogged down by the pressure to achieve even more.

Be Happy in the Present

According to Achor, you could give your brain a happiness “advantage” by learning how to be happy in the present. He gives several tips on how to accomplish this.

1. Write down 3 new things per day that made you feel happy or grateful
2. Keep a journal of positive experiences and write in it for 2 minutes every day
3. Exercise every day for at least 15 minutes to clear your head
4. Spend 2 minutes a day meditating
5. Bring positivity into the world around you: compliment a coworker, reach out to a person you admire online, or spend some time volunteering

If you follow these tips, you will notice that you are happier, healthier, and more successful. Keep in mind that success is not the goal - being a happier salesperson is.

Our team at Badger Maps is rooting for you to be a happier and more successful salesperson. Part of becoming a happier salesperson is eliminating unnecessary and stressful factors from your life. Badger Maps helps you take back your time so you don’t spend it planning your sales routes, entering data into your CRM, or guessing which clients you need to see next. Learn more here: