SalesMotivation.net

by Dan Coughlin, author of Accelerate: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum

Babe Ruth had them.
Barry Bonds has them.
I’ve had them.
And I’m guessing you’ve had them.

Definition:
A Sales Slump – when persistent efforts don’t deliver your desired business outcomes.

No single aspect of selling is more complicated to deal with than “the sales slump.” Your normal energy gets sapped through periods of low self-esteem, frequent questions about how things are going from your spouse, and semi-sympathy from friends and co-workers. In the worst of scenarios, sales people turn to dangerous diversions like drugs and alcohol to keep them going through these slumps. That quickly turns slumps into catastrophes.

Three Keys to Catapult from Slump to Success

1. Choose your descriptions carefully.

Self-talk

Quick, write down your four greatest strengths.
Now write down your two greatest passions.

Answer these two questions:

a. How can I use my strengths and passions to improve my organization’s most important outcomes?
b. How can I use my strengths and passions to improve my customer’s most important outcomes?

Keep your conversation with yourself focused on those four items. By doing that, you will be concentrating on how you can add your greatest value to your organization and your customers. More importantly, you will be keeping your self-talk away from destructive internal conversations that will only slow down your sales turnaround.

Talk with Others

Always be honest, and always honestly tell people that things are going very well. If you have your health and if you’re learning from every interaction with a prospect and a customer, then you can honestly say things are going very well. Because even if you lose a sale, you can learn something incredibly important that can be used to increase future sales. When you simply answer, “Things are going very well,” you send a message to your own brain that things really are going very well, and that relaxes you and allows you to move out of the sales slump.

2. Internal Achievements versus External Achievements

Internal achievements determine external achievements, and external achievements evaluate internal achievements.

A sales strategy is a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It tells how you are performing today, how you want to be performing in the future, and the path you intend to take to achieve your desired performance.

External achievements include generating top-line sales, improving bottom-line profits, expanding your customer base, and deepening accounts with current clients. Internal achievements include expanding your sales know-how with a particular type of prospect, getting in better physical condition so you have the energy to stay calm and enthused during intense negotiations, calling on prospects and past clients, and investing time to better understand your desired customers.

When sales people say they are in a slump, they mean their external achievements are falling short of expectations. However, even if you’re getting great external achievements, you can ruin your career by not focusing on consistently improving your internal achievements. Your internal achievements of today will largely determine the external achievements you generate in the future. Consistently focus on improving those internal performances that will have the greatest impact on improving your desired external achievements. If you do that, then you are never really in a sales slump. You’re simply working today to improve tomorrow.

Now, carefully examine your current external achievements. What are they telling you that you need to keep doing, stop doing, or start doing? Make a list of your six most important desired external achievements. Go down your list and for each one answer these questions:

The Bar Raising Questions

a. What was my desired outcome?
b. What is my current outcome?
c. What did I do to try to improve that outcome?
d. What worked well?
e. What did not work well?
f. Based on that analysis, what will I do in the future to improve my actual outcome?

Avoid Getting Overly Emotional

The biggest mistake I’ve seen salespeople make is they get too high after a big sale and too low after an important missed sale. This sends the salesperson on an emotional rollercoaster that keeps him or her from really determining which actions are effective and which ones are ineffective.

Rather than getting emotional over your results, I encourage you to look at every result as a teacher. By buying or not buying from you, customers and prospects are teaching you something. It may be that your product or service is not of value to them, or maybe they don’t understand the value of your product or service, or maybe they don’t trust you. Instead of getting emotional, just search for what the result is teaching you. Do the same thing if you make a sale. Determine why the customer bought from you. That will help you make more sales in the future.

Content, Competency, and Connections

Essentially, selling comes down to three things: content in the form of a product or service that is of value to the customer, competency in being able to explain the value of the product or service, and connections with customers and prospects that allows you to explain the value your organization can offer. When you’re in a slump, concentrate on enhancing your content, competency, and connections rather than on the sales you lost.

3. The Business Upside of Downtime

Take a vacation.

People oftentimes say they get their best ideas while they are in the shower or sleeping. And yet those same people say they have to work harder and put in longer hours when they are in a slump. That doesn’t make sense. If you know you get great ideas when you take a break from work, then take more breaks from work.

In the course of your workday, go for a 30-minute walk. It will clear your head.

In the course of a week, schedule one hour just to think. Get away from your customers, boss, spouse, kids, and dog. Go somewhere no one knows you. Take out a sheet of paper and write down, “How can I add more value to my current customers this week?” Make a list of your answers, combine ideas to make even better ideas, select your best idea, assemble a seven-day action plan, and then move back into action.

Every 90 days schedule a five-day vacation. Even if you can’t afford to travel, then take five days away from your work and recharge your batteries.

Find the funny.

In the old television series, Friends, the actor David Schwimmer who played Ross said the main characters would work together to find the funny in every scene. Do the same with your work. Think about all the goofy and crazy things that happen. Rather than getting upset, start laughing. I gave a speech once in a room that had a gym on the other side of the wall. While I was talking someone was bouncing a ball against the wall. All I could do was laugh.

Maintain perspective.

One of my favorite quotes I heard from Lou Holtz, the former football coach: “Things are never quite as good as they seem nor as bad as they seem, but somewhere in between reality lies.” Sales slumps are almost never career-ending and sales successes are almost never your final act. Keep every sales result in its proper perspective.

About Dan Coughlin

Visit Dan Coughlin at www.businessacceleration.com. He is a business performance management consultant and keynote speaker. His clients include Toyota, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Marriott, St. Louis Cardinals, and Eli Lilly. He has provided more than 1,500 Executive Coaching sessions for executives in more than 20 industries. He is the author of Accelerate: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Business Momentum.