How Salespeople Can Cope With Stress, Anxiety & Burnout - With Liz George

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Liz George.

Liz George is the founder of the Liz George Wellbeing Centre and a qualified CBT Therapist and Councillor. She helps sales professionals who work in a very stressful environment to manage their stress and anxiety levels.

Why you've got to check out Liz's episode:

- Discover how Liz helps highly effective sales people working in a highly pressurised environment and how they struggle to manage their stress and the emotional impact that selling can have on their lives.

- Understand the common struggle that Liz's clients go through often leading to burnout from prolonged and unmanaged stress.

- Learn about the common mental health problems and physical symptoms of stress and what coping mechanisms these people may turn to, as well as the impact this can have on their performance at work.

- Why you should talk to someone, whether this is a trusted friend, a family member, a GP or a professional who is specifically trained to deal with stress specifically.

- Get access to Liz's 'Essential Guide on How to Boost Your Emotional Wellbeing From Today' and the significant positive impact these five things can do to your mental and physical wellbeing.

Resources / Links

https://lizgeorgewellbeingcentre.co.uk

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to the Flow And Grow Expert Interviews. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business.

Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And today I'm joined by Liz George, who is the founder of the Liz George Wellbeing Center and the qualified CBT therapist and counselor. So, Liz, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Liz George: Oh, good morning, Tom is really good to be here and thank you very much for inviting me.

Tom Bailey: I really appreciate your time. So, whereabouts are you in the world right now?

Liz George: I'm actually in London, in South London, a place called Crystal Palace where the football ground is.

Tom Bailey: Yes. I know it very well. Incredible. Thank you so much. And let me now get onto the subject of Liz in more detail. So, Liz helps sales professionals who work in a very stressful environment to manage that stress and the anxiety levels.

The title of today's episode is How Salespeople's Can Cope With Stress, Anxiety, And Burnout. And Liz is going to show us how to do that in just under seven minutes.

Liz George: I certainly am. Tom. I'm looking forward to it.

Tom Bailey: No pressure at all. So, question number one for you today is who are your ideal clients?

Liz George: Well, typically my ideal clients are highly effective salespeople who are working in a pressure and a sales environment, but typically they haven't figured out how to manage their stress and the emotional impact that selling can very often have on their lives, especially the work-life balance.

Tom Bailey: I want you to think about these stressed out salespeople. What is the biggest challenge that they currently face in their life?

Liz George: Many will be struggling with feelings of burnout, which is very common when working in sales industry. And this burnout can be best described as an emotional, sometimes physical state of distress, which can be caused to a period of prolonged and unmanaged stress.

And very often they will be feeling a buildup of. Pressure in their work, which may also be impacting upon their home life. And they may be afraid to talk about it to anyone, the fear of being judged negatively.

Tom Bailey: Great. So, you've got this pressure at work when they're not hitting the targets, we've got the impact that the home life being bottled up. What, what are the kinds of impacts is typically hasn't somebody physiologically or psychologically.

Liz George: Well in their life, stress can cause many psychological and physical problems. So, for example, many common mental health problems like anxiety and depression are a result of stress. And also, there's the physical symptoms such as a constant feeling of being exhausted. Those sleepless nights. Which costs can affect someone's ability to focus or concentrate and business people and sales professionals who are stressed may start to drink a lot more as a way to cope or eat more or less or smoke more. They may not be taking care of themselves or getting any regular exercise and in their business, or work-life of course, stress can really hinder their performance and at worse. People can end up losing their capacity to carry out their jobs and assigned off work by their GP with work stress.

Tom Bailey: Cool. So, if anybody listening resonates with any of these points here, what's one piece of advice that you might give to them to really help them solve this problem.

Liz George: Well, one important piece of advice would be if the pressure is building up, you're starting to feel stressed and overwhelmed talk to someone, whether that's a trusted friend or family member, your GP, but if you don't feel that you can talk to any of these, reach out to a professional who is specifically trained to help you deal with your stress effectively, but whatever you do, don't suffer in silence because this is a really big mistake.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, of course, completely understand that. And obviously you've been doing this for a few years now, so I'm sure you've built up a library of content and resources is there anything in particular what you want to give away to somebody to help them solve this challenge.

Liz George: Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. I do have a full library of resources. The essential guide, actually on how to boost your emotional wellbeing in five easy steps from today, you know, these five strategies contained within this free resource. When it implemented would make a significant positive impact on sales professionals, mental health and wellbeing.

Of course the other thing is, and this is available from my website as well as an opportunity to book a free 20 consultation call. If people are struggling with a problem with stress, they can actually book a call and I will give them advice, free advice on how they can manage that and they can get the free resource and also book a call from my website and that's www.lizgeorgewellbeingcenter.co.uk.

Tom Bailey: Great. Thanks. And the lizgeorgewellbeingcenter.co.uk. that you can get hold of that resource, the 20 minute call and obviously navigate across to that. Now we'll put the link in the show notes and you can go and download that guide today. So, moving on slightly to a slightly different topic, what would you say is your greatest value that you've ever made over in life or business? And what impact did it have on you?

Liz George: I would say that going through a stressful time in my own life, when I actually spent the first eight years of my career working in a pressurized sales environment as PA to sales director, you know, when I was working very long hours, which meant I had absolutely no work-life balance.

I became depressed and I reached a breaking point, which was when I visited my GP and he signed me off with work stress. But I suppose the biggest mistake or failure, if you like was I let stress carry on for too long. And when I look back Tom, at that stressful time in my life, I wouldn't have allowed myself to carry on and deal in the stress.

It just so happened that their stressful time then became a catalyst for me making a career change. And that was the point at which I retrained to do what I do now. And so of course, I now consider myself really lucky to have a career that I feel passionate about helping sales professionals too. Cope with managing stress and helping them to break free, free from anxiety, stress, and burnout.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic. It was always meant to be. So, the last question from me today is what is the one question that I should have asked you that will also bring some great value to our audience today?

Liz George: Well, the one question you could have asked would have been, could I give the listeners three top tips for managing they stress?

Tom Bailey: Please do.

Liz George: Okay, well, firstly, it's going to be really important to be flexible with your demands and expectations you placed upon yourself. Secondly, stopped saying yes to take on more work when you really want to be saying no and certainly make time for yourself each day. And that might be starting with something small.

For example, incorporating into your routine. Something for you. It may be some exercise or a breath. A brisk walk, but these are a great way to distress. So, if you implement these three tips starting from today, it's really going to make a significant difference and positive difference to your stress and anxiety levels.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Some incredible tips to end on. Thank you so much. And thank you again for your time today, Liz. I really appreciate you being here for this episode.

Liz George: Thank you so much for having me, Tom today, it's been an absolute my pleasure. Have a great day.