9 Ways to Focus on your Sales Team’s Wellness

In 2021, prioritizing your sales team’s wellness is no longer a choice. Increasingly, companies across all industries are recognizing that wellness and productivity go hand in hand. Focusing on your employees’ mental and physical health results in a focused, motivated team. Most importantly, it leads to resiliency, one of the main keys to success in sales. If their well-being is emphasized, your reps will be able to bounce back from setbacks and weather the ups and downs that are unavoidable in sales. Sales is a high-stress job, so you should do anything you can do to restore balance and calm to your team on a daily basis.

At Attention, we help sales leaders to train their reps faster and more effectively. Our software uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to give your team live feedback and help them course-correct, saving you valuable time as a manager. 

1. Celebrate their Wins

A great way to encourage your reps, boost morale, and develop wellness in your sales team is to regularly celebrate their performance. This means not just the big things like meeting or surpassing quotas, but also the small wins, like a successful sales call. Feeling that your work is valued and appreciated is crucial to feeling fulfilled and happy at work, especially in a context like a sales company, where rejection and failure are a part of daily life. You can recognize successful work in a variety of ways, from giving out awards to a simple shoutout or high-five. Bigger wins should be celebrated publicly, as people thrive on public recognition, while minor successes can be cheered on during one-on-ones. The important thing is that your reps know someone is paying attention and feel acknowledged and appreciated.

2. Rapid Communication

Communication is an essential aspect of your sales team’s well-being. As a manager, you should keep track of how different team members are doing, so you can identify if they are approaching burnout for instance. There are multitudes of ways to communicate rapidly in today’s sales world, including tools like Zoom and Slack. You can also get your team together for quick stand-up meetings in the morning, which can be a great opportunity for quick check-ins and for keeping your team’s morale levels high through short pep talks.

3. Fitness Challenges

Regular exercise is a great way to maintain motivation, wellness, and mental balance in your team. You could consider having group exercise classes, incorporating exercise apps, or even having weekly or monthly fitness challenges. The key is to keep these activities, optional, fun, and low-pressure. You will be amazed at the difference encouraging exercise can make on your reps’ mood and motivation levels, as well as their closeness as a team. 

4. More Breaks

It may seem counter-intuitive, but one of the best ways to make your team more productive is to incorporate enough break time. Working for overly long, uninterrupted stretches makes people much less focused and productive than they could be and ultimately leads to wasted hours, low motivation, and burnout. Incorporating regular breaks keeps your team mentally fresh, and leads to more intense and productive bursts of work and higher energy. 

5. Focus on High Impact Tasks

A great way to prevent burnout while also getting better results from your team is to make sure they are prioritizing high-impact activities. Reduce the time they spend on unimportant tasks that do not lead directly to more sales. Salespeople waste an astonishing amount of time a month on activities that do not directly contribute to getting more sales. You should cut this down drastically and make sure they are focused on tasks that bring in revenue. 

6. Reduce Turnover

Teams with high turnover are inherently stressful. If your company is a revolving door and you are constantly cycling through new reps and firing them, the impact on your company culture will be drastic. The threat of losing their job will keep your reps in a state of stress, and the constant personnel changes will prevent any lasting sense of building a team. To avoid high turnover rates, you should tighten up your selection and onboarding processes to make sure you are hiring reps with the right capabilities who will be a great fit for your company culture. Learn more about the most important traits for a successful salesperson here.

7. Build a Robust Company Culture

Building a culture is one of the most important aspects of running a sales company, and should not be taken lightly. One important element is to have a central vision for your company, and a mission you build your processes around. You should define a set of values that you want your team to maintain. A solid company culture has to be nurtured, and you should keep building a sense of belonging to a team and being aligned to a guiding mission. Learn more about building and nurturing a great sales company here.

8. Standing Desks

Sitting for prolonged periods of time is unhealthy, and breeds inertia and lack of motivation in your sales teams. You will be surprised by the difference a simple measure like switching to standing desks can make. If your reps work standing up, they will feel more dynamic and energized throughout the day.

9. Incorporate Mindfulness

Research has shown that mindfulness is far more than a new-age fad and that it definitely has its place in a productive sales company. Regular mindfulness practices have been shown to boost employees’ output by raising their energy levels and mental clarity. You can incorporate this by scheduling regular ten-minute team meditation settings, and by implementing various mindfulness apps.

When we're feeling drained and uninspired, it's hard to be productive. However, with these wellness tips, you'll be able to tap into your team’s potential and maximize their productivity. After your team’s success, give them a pat on the back and celebrate with them. Giving your salespeople more breaks will help to maximize their productivity in the long run. And be sure to incorporate mindfulness into your routine. It may sound like a lot of effort but when you see how much these simple tactics boost creativity and mood levels, you'll realize it’s more than worth it!