The best sales advice I've ever received was, "get out of debt, then hope for the best, plan for the worst".
When in debt, I needed deals to close to make my monthly payments (car, rent, utilities, etc.) so when they didn't come in, I had to take on credit card debt which makes the hole much worse to dig out of; we've all been here. We get desperate and the customer can smell it/management gets ticked. It's a bad situation.
When I got out of debt, and had about 6 months of savings, I've been able to tell multiple customers, "I don't need this deal done, but you do." Very little negotiation, maybe missed goal every couple of months, but who cares when you don't need the money. If management needs the deal done, they need to work with you to get it done vs. you begging them to get it done.
I'm not talking about "enough money to retire" type money. I'm talking about, I can take a "live on the edge"/ "don't need to take that from you customer" type money. We all got into sales one way or another, but one of the biggest motivators to us is money.
I'm not going to tell you how to get out of debt, or even that all debt is bad, blah blah blah. Just mitigate any risk and you can get a little risky!
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