Attention Women: If You Are Talking, You Are Selling!

By Susan L Kasson

As someone who has spent many years in sales and sales management roles, I know sales like the back of my hand.

And I also know that selling - particularly for women - is incredibly stressful. Meeting quotas and avoiding the "I'm only as good as my last sales numbers" trap can be a constant struggle. It's common to find many top women sales performers are quietly and secretly struggling with overwhelming stress, and desperately searching for help when it comes to achieving a work-life balance.

However, lost in all of this talk about women, sales, and stress is the fact that women outside of traditional sales roles are also engaged in sales roles - whether they realize it or not.

Take, for instance, CPA's. On the surface, women who enter accounting may believe that "it's all about the numbers." But in reality, numbers are just one part of the overall picture. The reality is that CPA's have to sell their ideas all of the time. They have to sell ideas to colleagues, to clients, and sometimes even to governments and regulatory bodies. For CPA's, selling is a daily reality.

Another good example is lawyers. On the surface, women may think that practicing the law is really about knowing the ins and outs of statues and case law and other things that comprise jurisprudence. But in reality, women lawyers are selling ALL the time. They're selling the arguments to clients, judges, juries, other lawyers, and even to their colleagues and partners.

And what about doctors? And chefs? And editors? And a host of other jobs that, on the surface, seem to be about anything but sales? Yes, you guessed it: ALL of these jobs involve sales in one manner or another.

Basically, if your job involves talking, it involves selling. Actually, even if your job doesn't involve talking because you're on a computer much of the time sending emails and other messages back and forth, you're selling, too - whether you realize it or not.

And that brings us back to where we started which was admitting that selling can and often is very stressful. Even if you don't have quotas to reach, as a women who sells you still need to use your selling skills to do your job and get desired results. And that, as mentioned, is very stressful.

So what can you do? Well, if you're like me, you can let the stress eat away at you from the inside, develop a stress-related disease, and then fight and claw your way back to better health.

Or, you can take the easier route - and the one I recommend! - which is to find a professional coach who can help you reduce your job-related stress, so that you can enjoy the professional success and personal satisfaction that you're entitled to.

In fact, knowing what I know now, there probably isn't a wiser investment you can make with your time or your money than to get the stress relief help you need now - because, as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!