Are you addicted to your sales targets?

By

Siddhartha Rastogi

1. Do you get a kick when you close a big transaction?

2. Do you feel high, when you are rated the best salesperson by your CEO?

3. Do you constantly keep thinking of newer methods to get more business every day, every minute?

4. Do you like to brag about your wins and successes with your friends and peers?

5. You never believe in the outcome and remain focused on closing the sale. It’s ultimately about YOU!

6. Your colleagues and juniors hate you, whilst your seniors take your tantrums as you deliver numbers for them.

7. Your definition of high includes drinking and making merry with friends and peers and you putting them down.

8. You believe empathy and humility is only meant for Weak People.

If you agree with three out of the 8 statements or you have affirmative answers to the above questions, then perhaps you are suffering from SALES Addiction.

In my previous article, I spoke about the Worklife balance and how this worklife balance is a myth. Most people believe winning deals and transactions make them successful, which in turn gives them happiness. If that was the case, the painters, artists, social workers, scientists, military personnel and the men in uniform would have only been thinking about themselves and that would have been enough to keep them going.

But that’s not the case.

The Human Mind and body produces 5 essential chemical compounds, which helps regulate their mood, and are critical for their survival. These are:-

Cortisol

Dopamine

Oxytocin

Serotonin

Endorphins

The most effective amongst them is Dopamine, which has the fastest positive result.

As per the dictionary definition –Dopamine is defined as “a compound present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including adrenaline”

Dopamine is the compound which is responsible for all secret cravings, spikes, pleasures, addiction, etc, giving instant results.

Let me explain this by using few examples.

• You go to a casino and start gambling, you win your first bet and feel high instantly, that’s dopamine. It pushes you to keep placing more and more bets, until you are broke and thrown out of the casino.

• You are taking a puff of a cigarette or a snort of cocaine, as the puff or snort goes in, millions of molecules surge through your bloodstream and set a neurological chain reaction, altering the reality of the mind, giving you a high. This spike is driven by Dopamine released in your nervous system.

Similarly, when you pitch a product or a service to a prospective client and the client readily agrees, dopamine is released. But the challenge starts when, in your next pitch, the client seems to be disinterested and declines to buy your product or services. The mind instantly starts scheming and you change your behavior of connectivity with begging, convincing, forcing or lying as you want that kick to hit you again and again. You believe you are doing this for your firm or for your company, but it’s your need of Dopamine which forces you to act irrationally.

The same experience is felt when you post your picture on social media sites and you receive 500 hits or likes, it gives you a high. On the other hand if nobody noticed your picture, comment or tweet you feel let down and start seeking quick alternatives to give you an instant high.

For sales people the need for dopamine is so high that they ignore failure. In fact failure to sell or failure to convert the opportunity makes you stronger as it develops a sense of commitment and increases will power. Most professionals, who are not successful in their current roles or current jobs, instead of learning and improving find the easy route of jumping the job or quitting and lying in their prospective interviews.

When met with a series of failures across jobs, it leads to depression, anxiety, anger and feeling of suicidal. 

Thus, the only way to stop this addiction or release of dopamine is by helping others when you are successful in your job and especially leading the way for your juniors and not sucking up to the seniors.

For sales people who are not getting success in their role, they need to revisit their basic premise on which they are selling. Selling has the basic underlying principle of:

“Consideration of Buyer’s needs FIRST”

Risk of not practicing this philosophy is, sooner than later when the winning streak is broken and need of dopamine will be so high, top sales people will shift to other forms of addition like alcohol, drugs, sex, adultery which is much easier to achieve.

Siddhartha Rastogi

Siddhartha was born to a learned middle class educated family in Semi Urban India. His father was an extremely honest man who because of his honesty had to pay the price in corporate world. Mother is a determined woman who ensured that children are being well taken care off. After a few years of birth, doctors called Siddhartha, a slow child having flat foot. He would fall more than he could walk. Determined mother ensured all therapies for her son to come out strong to fight the world. Siddhartha joined swimming when he was in 6th standard. Seeing other children of his class, he jumped in 10 feet deep pool and learnt swimming on his own, the very same day.

From that day there was no looking back. He topped his city in 12th and went to score highest in his B school exams. During his profession as banker, he became youngest branch manager of a MNC bank managing their biggest wealth branch in the country. There he found love of his life and got married. His love of his life emerged in the form of his daughter who completely changed him for good.

Siddhartha Rastogi is Director for a boutique Investment bank in India.

Siddhartha is a forward looking thinker & writer who has written a book on decision making. 8 Simple steps to effective decision making.

He writes on various social and current issues via his blog and can also be found on twitter.