It can be tough to push back against the dominant mode of thought in corporate culture. But a cultural shift around sleep— and even workplace napping —is taking place. Companies in the know have begun to acknowledge what experts like Harfoush have been saying for years: “”If you’re a high performer and recovery isn’t an intentional and strategic part of your time and workflow, you’re only damaging your output in the long run.”
Sleep Debt Is the #1 Sales KPI
Sleep lays the groundwork for everything you do while awake. Its impact on how you function can spell the difference between success and failure at any job. That said, sleep particularly effects sales work, as it entails a unique and demanding mix of cognitive, emotional, and social skills.
Every one of us has an innate sleep need, with the average hovering around 8 hours or so. Our brains shoot for this amount of sleep to optimize how we perform during the day. Research shows that meeting your sleep need each night is a reliable predictor of every aspect of performant selling, from creativity to goal-setting.
If you’re consistently sleeping less than this amount, then you’re racking up sleep debt. You can measure sleep debt by the amount of sleep you owe yourself, relative to your sleep need, over the past two weeks.
Unfortunately, sleep debt hits sellers hard in the area chinese overseas australia database of the brain they need most: the prefrontal cortex, which controls planning, organization, and other executive functioning abilities. Salespeople carrying sleep debt are therefore notably less productive, less sociable, and less able to lead.
On the other hand, making up sleep debt quantifiably raises sales success. After sellers at a Fortune 200 company used Rise to minimize their sleep debt over a period of 8 months, they reported a 14% increase in monthly revenue and a 50% increase in outbound sales calls.
If you think your team is safe from sleep debt and its consequences, including burnout … think again. First of all, approximately 70% of Americans admit that they’re sleep-deprived. Secondly, humans are experts at downplaying (or ignoring!) the effects of sleep debt. We’re bad at calculating our own sleep durations, and tend to overestimate how much time we spend asleep.
Sleep-deprived people also don’t have an accurate perception of their performance. They think that they’re operating as normal, or even better than normal, when really their cognitive skills have taken a measurable dive.