Sales are tough. There is a reason that salespeople are often referred to as aggressive animals like lions, sharks or bulls, and it's not because they are the mascot of a favourite sports team. Salespeople can be both lucky and skilful, and there are many ways a salesperson can win out in the end.

Sales are always hardest at the start. Not knowing the client's needs, or the products and services back to front and inside out means that you’re prone to costly errors that can lose the sale. Not only that, but most commission cheques come from ranked performance, so you can be assured that you’ll be starting from the bottom of the pile. I’ve compiled 6 survival tips to help you survive and then thrive in your first 6 months of a new sales role.

This famed saying might seem intimidating at first, but the truth is that your first 6 months will indeed be scary. Being scared doesn’t make you any better at your job, so it’s important to try and move out of this phase as quickly as possible. Take your mistakes on the chin, learn from them and own up to them with pride, not shame. If you can do this, your courage will shine through in your sales.

If you’ve come from a sales role where you were at the top to end with, chances are high that you’ll expect to come into your next role and be their superstar salesperson. Almost always this leads to a sense of expectation, that you can change the sales process overnight and double or triple what was done beforehand. You pretty much can’t. Start from the bottom, be humble and work your way to the top.

The best salespeople, or the most successful ones are the ones that understand the fundamental principles of sales in the field, combined with a keen sense of customer motivations and hunger for delivery. The worst salespeople will almost always be the ones that try the generic approach, repeating the same lines to every customer in the hopes of making the sale happen. If you can help it, try and spend as much time learning from the first group, not the second.

One of the best examples of this was in an early sales role I recruited for, selling software for gym owners. One candidate I had was incredibly successful in his sales career, selling enterprise cloud software. He went into the role, using the hard-hitting approach he’d used from previous experience. It turned out that this was the worst approach possible, and he quickly learned that a more mild-mannered approach was needed to sell products. He only learned this from mimicking what the most successful in the group were doing, and refining his own technique within that.

Salespeople are prone to get hot headed. When it comes to money there are egos at stake. You’re also putting yourself out there and that can feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. With egos come type A personalities, and with these personalities there is often conflict. To curb this, try as best as you can to ensure that you don’t take your lack of success at the beginning personally. With every day that comes, start it afresh with a renewed sense of knowledge and understanding. By removing your own self worth from your success, you can be assured of your own survival in the long term.

More than anything else, the key is perseverance. If you can take the time to build out your persona in the company, not take anything too personally, devote yourself to learning the nuances from the best in the business and have courage to do it all, you will survive. That I can guarantee.