Leaping Out of a Sales Slump–or Any Slump

Your green light has suddenly turned red. What happened? You’re out of your zone? The cosmos are conspiring against you?

Well, believe it or not, your sales funnel doesn’t depend on the stars (although it can seem just as futile to try to control your “bad luck” at times). Move past it. Everything is within your control—if you embrace the fact that it is.

To flip the red to green, start using the techniques of Psycho-Cybernetics. Maxwell Maltz, author of Zero Resistance Selling, outlines a strategy to overcome your “inner defeatist”.

1. Replay the times in your career when you won. Get comfortable and relive those experiences.
2. Dress the part of a successful, pain-relieving, deal-closing expert. From clothes to paperwork, emphasize quality.
3. Use affirmations. I can’t say this enough. Affirmations change your programming, which changes your beliefs, which change behaviors, which change results. Affirmations change results!
4. Keep reading. Acquire new knowledge and skills to fine-tune your current repertoire. Your increased competence will be reflected in self-confidence: you know you’re the only one who can truly remedy the prospect’s pain.
5. Maltz refers to this last tool as the “Theater of Your Mind.” Mentally rehearse your success. How will the prospect stall? What will you say in response to that person’s stall? How many times will you have to chip away at their vague responses? At what level will you hit their pain? Watch as the person gets excited about implementing your solution.

Continue to be productive. Your red light will only be a flickering of the past. Each time you start lapsing into red, review and perform the five steps above.