What do you do when you have a big sales week, month or quarter?

What do the other salespeople you work with do with their money?

Do you "reward" yourself? Do you "invest" in your future?

As salespeople we are notoriously known for the amount of toys we buy with our commissions. Killer stereo systems. Picture Cell Phones. Titanium Palm Pilots. Luxurious new clothes. Expensive lunches. Partying with our friends.

We say "I deserve this."

I know that's what I used to say.

Sales is hard. It gets all of our emotions riled up. Excitement. Fear. Anger. Juice. The thrill of the kill.

Your emotions are intense and very real.

So you want to reward yourself.

Rewarding yourself, is your way of feeling good after all you put yourself through to make the sales you did.

It's a natural reaction to going through times of feeling fear, frustration, and stress.

Before we close another big sale we often feel fear.

Fear that you won't close again.

Fear that you've lost your edge.

Fear that you will get fired and lose your job.

And then when you do make the sale, WHAM! Excitement! Elation! Relief!

It's time to play!

This rollercoaster can be a lot of fun. But it also can be costly to your future.

Sales offers a real opportunity for men and women everywhere to make large sums of money and get out of the rat race.

The more you say "I deserve this" and "reward" yourself with toys and indulgences, the longer you be working for someone else in sales.

If you want to eventually get out of the rat race, you've got to have a reward system that will help you do it.

Consumption rewards just bandage you up and make you feel good for a little while.

Then you're back at the sales game again, looking for more sales and the cycle starts over again: fear, frustration, stress, win, excitement, reward.

I know. I've been through this many times myself.

I can remember one of my first big sales wins. I took my sales partner and our wives out for a luxurious dinner at a restaurant that I was very impressed with. It felt great that night to dine well and drink champagne.

But the next day I was worrying about the next deal, with a few hundred dollars less in my bank account.

I repeated this pattern of pain - win - reward for many years before I realized what I was doing to myself.

Then I changed my focus.

I focused on the future, and set some bigger goals for myself.

I changed my reward system. I now measure my rewards in terms of how much closer I am getting to complete financial independence.

Consumption is nice, and my family and I do live well.

But I am much happier focusing on the day that making money will be optional and not a necessity of my daily existence. It's important to budget your commissions intelligently.

When you get a big commission check, take a substantial portion of it and save it. Build up your financial stockpile.

Set better goals for yourself. Goals such as "I want to make $200K this year" aren't enough. You need to be more specific. You need to set goals for what you will do with this money (hint: complete financial independence is one of mine).

What you'll find when you build your financial stockpile is that the fear, frustration and stress you experience decreases.

And by setting bigger and better goals, you'll find it easier to build your financial stockpile because you'll have highly motivating goals to keep you on course.

After all, did you really get into sales to just so you could buy the latest and greatest cell phone every year?

1999-2004 Shamus Brown, All Rights Reserved.