Everyone has had those days when they felt unstoppable, like they could keep calling, keep selling, and keep succeeding at everything for hours on end. Amateurs will only see that sort of sales momentum by accident, like an amateur athlete getting ‘in the zone’–but like a professional athlete, a skilled sales agent can set themselves up for success and make sales momentum a near inevitability, not a lucky event. In this article, we’ll discuss five tips that should edge you closer to seeing high levels of sales momentum on a regular basis.

1. Prep Your Workstation

Very important, very easy to overlook. Your ability to get your workplace prepped with everything you’ll need to keep selling without rest will be on one the key factors in whether or not you can build sales momentum on a regular basis. If you might need it, have it within reach–the less you have to move away from your workstation, the more likely you are to get into the zone and start rolling sales out. 

When you get up and walk away for a piece of paper to take a note on, to grab the laptop with your analytics apps, to grab something to drink, you break your concentration. That should only happen when you want it to–breaks need to be planned, not forced (more on that later).

2. Clear Your Schedule

You won’t consistently build sales momentum if you don’t give yourself room to work. That means at least an hour of uninterrupted sales time, without anything to drag you out of your pattern. It also means taking care of as many incidentals as possible in advance–if you can handle something early in the morning, before it becomes urgent, it won’t arise as a problem in the middle of your sales time. You need to control when things happen for sales momentum to build–consider what things you can seize control of that would otherwise happen ‘whenever’.

3. Stay Positive

You can’t let failure kill your sales momentum–in most industries, even the best salesperson in the world will face more failures than success. If you can only maintain sales momentum with back-to-back successes, you have a problem. The trick is to file failures away for analysis–it’s not a failed sale, it’s a lesson you can use to improve your numbers tomorrow. You have to stay positive and keep working.

4. Learn to Take Optimal Breaks

Breaks are important. To build sales momentum, you need to be starting from an optimally rested state–if you don’t take breaks, the mental stress of extended focus builds up and you’ll find yourself distracted more and more often. Breaks themselves will interfere with sales momentum, but not taking them is even worse. So what’s an optimal break look like? That depends on you–how you think, how you relax. You’ll have to experiment with timing and with what you do. Naps? Walks? Solitaire? Any of those could be the answer.

5. Set Goals and Drive For Them

Without goals, we can’t put our all into a task. If you don’t have a sales figure you want to hit, a coworker you want to surpass, a boss you want to impress, you won’t be able to apply that perfect amount of healthy pressure that leads to the best cases of sales momentum. Consider how you want to measure yourself, consider where you are, and set something difficult but not impossible to aim for. When you hit that goal, set a new goal. Always aim higher; always maintain that healthy pressure–that’s what makes great sales people great.