How To Get Out Of The Slump?

Life has its ups and downs, but you only succeed in sales if you have more ups than you have downs. Avoiding a sales slump is, therefore, of utmost importance to every salesperson. Not every day is a jolly day in sales. We all feel burnout. We sometimes feel complacent or uninspired. How do we get out of those situations and stay on top of our game? Believe it or not, none of this has anything to do with the mechanics of sales. Sam Wakefield explains why.

We are talking about an important topic. What do you do when you start to feel burnout? How do you keep your energy high? How do you stay on top of your game when you get in the middle of the season and get overwhelmed? You’re like, “There’s so much going on.” It seems like all of a sudden, you hit this slump. You’re not selling anything. You have this overall overarching idea of, “I’m feeling complacent. I don’t care if I make the sell or not.” You’re going through the motions. Does that resonate with anybody? That’s something that we all experience from time to time. I’ll tell you in perfect transparency, I’ve been going through that a little myself.

What do you do to come out of it? What do you do to maintain that high-performance energy? What is it? To be honest, it has nothing to do with the mechanics of sales but it has everything to do with everything else. That’s what we’re going to cover. How do we keep the energy high? How do we stay as a top performer in this industry that we call sales? I know that there are lots of people all over the world who tune in, and thank you so much for that. If you haven’t already go check out our Facebook page, you can get a link straight from the website, which has CloseItNow.com. The very first thing you’re going to see is a link to go join the Facebook page. I’ve been doing a Q&A on Friday. If you have questions, thoughts, whatever you’re struggling with, an objection you keep coming up against, or the same type of issue you keep coming up against, jump in the Facebook group.

Every week, I put up a post that is a place to put in your questions for that week’s Facebook Live video. What we do is go through and I answer all the questions. If you jump on Live, you can ask the question live, we can interact and get a real-time response. Do that. It’s a fun place to interact with. It’s a great community and place. There are a lot of top performers in there. There’s a lot of wisdom, knowledge, and experience in that group. Go join the group. We’re building a community of people who are changing the world, one heatstroke at a time. Changing the world one frostbite at a time, men and women in this industry who are crushing it every single day and out there making a difference. How do we stay on top of our game? What do we do to maintain that? I had a call from one of my coaching clients that said, “I’m in the slump. I don’t know what to do. I was killing it for months and months but now I can’t sell anything. I’m not selling in the house. Nobody’s calling me back. What’s going on?” You have to start doing self-evaluation. When we’re thinking about this, remember the old saying, when is the best time to make a sale? Right after you make a sell. Why is that?

The reason is your energy is high. You’re pumped up, you’re excited and you walk into that very next appointment right after you’ve made a big sell. What happens is more of taking an order. You assume that they’re going to buy from you too and your energy all the way through the visit. What happens at the end of the visit is like, “Let’s do this. Let’s go.” Your energy was already there. Remember, your energy introduces you before you ever knock on the door. It’s true. That’s why you have to be in the right headspace. When we do sales, we have to be almost bi-polar. Even if you have a failure, you have to be able to mentally reset and go into the very next appointment assuming and visualizing that you’re going to make the sell knowing that you’re going to make the sell. That’s the initial part of it but how do we self-evaluate? How do we figure out what’s going on?

What’s causing us to be in the so-called slump? Start with your daily routine. When this guy called, Nathan, you were crushing it again, but we did a ten-minute tune-up call and it got you right back on your game. That’s what happened. He calls in, one ten-minute call and he’s crushing it again. Starts with asking yourself, “What is my daily routine like? At the very top performance, what did I feel like when I was doing my top performance?” Think about that and then look into your day. Start to ask yourself, “Has something changed? What is going on at home? Is my home life okay? Relationships with my spouse, partner, or significant other, is that okay? The relationships with kids, adults, family members, or friends, are those relationships okay?” You have to remember, sales is the transfer of enthusiasm. If your whole psyche, your mental state is a wheel, every single one of the different elements of your life are spokes on that wheel and something starts to suffer.

Sales Slump: Even if you have a failure, you have to be able to mentally reset and go into the very next appointment, visualizing that you’re going to make the sell.

Your wheel spoke shortening, your wheel is going to get lopsided and start to clunk along, not running smoothly. Start with your relationships. That’s a great place that can affect your sales life even if you don’t think it is. The next place to start to evaluate and to look into is your spiritual journey. That looks different for everyone but I guarantee you, there’s some element of spiritual journey that you are experiencing. A lot of people get their spiritual fulfillment through personal growth. A lot of people go to whatever church, synagogue, or temple that you worship out connecting to the source. Whatever it is, make sure that you’re okay in that level. If you’re struggling there, that can bleed over into the other elements of your life including your sales. The next thing to look at is your physical health.

It’s crucial to maintain the pace that we have to maintain when you’re a top performer in the sales industry. How is your nutrition? That turned out to be one of the main things that caused my client, Nathan, to get him off his game. We start asking, what were you doing then when you were crushing it and what are you doing now? Are you going to the gym like you used to? Are you exercising? How’s your nutrition? It turns out, “No. I’ve been eating a lot more fast food because of the nature of trying to get to places. I haven’t been to the gym as much so I’ve felt sluggish and gross.” “We figured it out. Get yourself back in the gym. Start eating better and see what happens. Call me in a week.” Sure enough, he texted me a few days later that, he closed to $26,000 sale right at the table. Thanks so much. That’s what happened to me.

I got into the season and I was doing amazing, top sales, and slump hits. I started looking and evaluating my life, doing this very same exercise. What happens? I wasn’t in the gym like I was before. I wasn’t focusing on my nutrition like it was before because if we truly respect and love ourselves, you have to treat your body like a freaking Formula One race car. You don’t give it the crappy fuel, the bottom end fueled petrol or gasoline from the gas pump. You give it the top end. You’re going to do extra things to take care of that race car. Your body is that race car. You have to have a mental routine, physical routine, spiritual routine, and relationship routine in your life to maintain that top performance. You cannot expect to feel like $1 million if you’re eating from the dollar menu. That is the truth.

Remember that if you are going through a slump, if you’re experiencing any of that, you’ve got to self-evaluate. You’ve got to go through all of the checkpoints in your own life that are going to keep you at the top level. What I’ve done for years is I’ve had a coach and mentor. I’ve paid people lots and lots of money to have a weekly or biweekly call, or however often it is, depends on the coach to help keep my mind, energy, and focus where it needs to be. Something I’ve noticed with the COVID-19 crisis that is sweeping across the world, many people are experiencing complacency. They are experiencing the, “I don’t know if I should care anymore type of feeling, or it’s hard to get out of bed and even try because what’s the point?” That is something that has affected all of us.

Throughout the entire week, you’ve got the Friday afternoon feeling. It could be Tuesday mid-morning, and you have that moment of, “Screw it. Let’s go have a beer or whatever it is.” That is dangerous to slide into that mindset. What we have to do to maintain top performance level and all the things we’ve talked about, you’ve got to maintain your health, spiritual journey, relationship journey, and physical activity. I don’t care if you’re not exercising or if you’ve never exercised. I guarantee you, do something every day that will make you sweat. If it’s going for a walk, a few push-ups and sit-ups in the morning, start somewhere and get yourself exercising. Every little thing you improve in your life, even if you don’t think it relates to sales will increase your sales and it’s how it works. That is my message. I know it’s a little shorter one than we typically go through but it’s crucial.

Sales Slump: Find a mentor or coach who can help you break through the barriers and limiting beliefs that are keeping you from resetting your thermostat to a higher temperature.

It’s important that we do this. You’ve got to maintain all of these things. That’s what I do with all my coaching clients. A big part of what we coach on is helping everyone break through their own mental barriers that would keep them from believing that they are a top performer because we all have at some point that imposter syndrome that comes in and says, “I’m good at this but I’m only at this level. That person is at the top level. I could never do that.” Is that a thought that’s ever creep into my head? It’s okay if it is because that’s perfectly natural, it’s human. However, that is a mental block that will keep you from achieving that next level. That’s something we work through. In our coaching program, that’s something we help people do. You can do it yourself.

Find your mentor, any life coach or performance coach can help you break through those barriers and limiting beliefs that are keeping you from resetting your thermostat to that higher temperature. Your goal is to be the thermostat in the room, not the thermometer. You don’t walk into a room, sense the energy, and adjust to that. You walk into a room and you’re the one that is setting the temperature of the room. You are setting the energy in a room and that is every room you walk into. If you’re a top performer, you’re functioning in a high vibration of all of the different elements of your life. If you’re functioning in a way that you know that there’s nothing you could do that’s going to fail, you go out there, and you know that it’s going to be a success, what would you do?

If you function with that belief system every single day, that’s when you’re going to become a top producer. There’s no way around it. You will become that because your belief system is, “I’m a top producer.” Your actions will follow and the results will follow. Find someone who can coach you into that if you’re not there yourself. It’s okay to admit that, “I haven’t been able to do this myself. I need to find somebody.” It’s worth the investment on yourself. Find someone who can help you get there. That is a huge part of what I do with my coaching program.

If you want to know more about that, reach out to me, Sam@closeitnow.net, or shoot me an email. We can talk about getting you to that top level or find a life coach or performance coach near you. If you need to see somebody in person, absolutely. Find someone who can help you get past your limiting beliefs. What is keeping you from being a top performer is only in your mind. That is my message. Thanks for reading. Go check out the Facebook group. You can get the link at CloseItNow.com. Cheers to everyone around the world that’s reading. Everyone, you go crush it. I will talk to you again soon.