Keeping your focus throughout the day is vital in sales, perhaps more so than in other positions. In a sales role, you need to be ready and willing to contact prospects at the best time, whenever that time may be. Unfortunately, we all know how difficult maintaining your edge can be as the hours drag by. Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to make keeping your focus easier throughout the day. In this article, we’ll discuss three methods for staying sales focused in the afternoon that should make work just a little easier.

Start Focused, Stay Focused

How you begin your day greatly effects how you’ll feel throughout the day–by beginning your morning with a few unpleasant, difficult tasks, you set a mental ‘tone’ for that day. You also spare yourself the mental strain caused by having difficult tasks lurking in the future by knocking them out early. By kicking off the morning with intense focus and a strong work ethic, you’ll find it much easier to focus come the late hours of the day.

Learn When to ‘Cool Down’

In sales, it’s more important to be focused at key times than to stay at 100% intensity all hours of the day. Knowing when to take breaks is important to keeping your edge the rest of the day. Knowing ‘how’ to take breaks is important, too. Your work environment and your personal idiosyncrasies will matter a lot. Maybe you have the right mindset and workplace for a nap to be a good idea, maybe you just need to play solitaire on your lunch break, or maybe taking a brisk walk between big tasks is your path to success.

Whatever your personal method, just be sure that it doesn’t relax you too much. The goal is to release stress and get back in the game, not lose your tension completely. Tension is important in sales–prospects can tell when your head isn’t in the game and you don’t care, and that sense of apathy is contagious. So experiment and find a happy medium.

Experiment with Schedules Until You Find Your Perfect Fit

With practice and a well-designed personal schedule, you can train yourself to focus and relax as needed. The important words here are ‘practice’ and ‘well-designed’–don’t expect to draw up a schedule and stick to it perfectly without effort from day one.

Experiment with different schedules, but try each permutation before you toss it and move on. Eventually, you should find one that works. It’s important that you commit to your schedules even when they’re not working out, because the schedule only holds power so long as you maintain that commitment. The moment you let yourself slack ‘because it was difficult’, the schedule and the practice you put in become meaningless.