This is an excerpt from my book "Synergistic Selling"  

 

C H A P T E R 8

Avoiding Slumps

Every sales manager, every owner, and every salesperson selling anything in the world will, at some point, cross paths with the dreaded slumps. These slumps are mentally and economically taxing. They can also be taxing on your family. And they can be difficult to crawl out of.

Usually, you will encounter a slump pretty early. And you will likely face slumps – big and small – many times over. When you get into your very first slump, you will say: “This isn’t for me. Maybe I should do something else.”

In a world where bills are paid week-to-week, month-to- month, and day-to-day, any slump can have brutal implications. Very rarely are there any savings to dig into if you need them. And you have a tough time overcoming the slumps because you don’t understand them. Then, when you don’t have any money left, you think: “Oh, gosh. I’m living in a world of commission right now. I’ve got to pay my bills. I needed a steady paycheck.” Then you panic.

Slumps are inevitable. If they are inevitable, you may wonder what you can do. In this chapter, I will show you 30 slump-busting techniques designed to help you steer clear of prolonged slumps completely or quickly jump out of them, so they don’t ruin your career.

1. Get Back to the Basics

The primary common denominator for all sales slumps is that you have drifted away from the basics, and you are skipping steps.

Going from first base to home plate only counts when all the bases are touched. If you don’t touch all the bases, you don’t have a run. The thought “This just isn’t for me” goes hand in hand with abandoning the basics. Get reacquainted with the basics, and you will likely reacquaint yourself with deals.

2. Adjust Your Attitude

When you have a poor attitude, you are likely to be the last one to recognize it.

Even the great leaders I know say: “Roger, I’m struggling to keep my positive attitude.” It takes work to keep your positive attitude. How often do you concentrate on having an attitude of gratitude for all that you have rather than worry about what you don’t have, and working with what you have rather than wishing that you had something else?

As I said before, I believe the laws of attraction exist. A poor attitude rubs off on your customers, so it’s essential that you give yourself a checkup every day – and sometimes several times a day – when it comes to your body language. You have to ignore negativity and permeate positivity. You have to smile even when it hurts and you don’t feel like doing it.

If negativity is in your speech or body language, you have a serious illness. Looking for what is wrong is moving backward. Spending time thinking about what coworkers, bosses, dealers, or customers are doing wrong is sales suicide. Learn both positive speech and body language, and spend time practicing it.

3. Study Your Profession

Knowledge empowers you; it is KEY. Study your profession. Read or listen to motivational or sales related books. Listen during training meetings. Study as if you are studying for the biggest exam of your life. Entrench yourself in knowledge. Knowledge is a power that will propel you through the dreaded slump.

4. Balance Your Life

If your life is out of balance, you are driving your career with a wheel that is out of balance. It’s a rough and bumpy ride that gradually gets worse.

Are you scheduling your time with your family and significant other? What about your you-time? Do you have hobbies you enjoy? How about your higher power? I know that when I’m right with God, my life feels a lot smoother.

Not making time for these things is a recipe for cooking up a prolonged slump. Make a schedule and stick to it. Working twice the hours is tempting in the competitive sales environment, but it’s the road to nowhere. Keep your life in balance.

5. Have Fun

There is no shortage of practical jokers in our industry, and there is no harm in good-natured fun. Having fun with your prospects and your co-workers is healthy. Laughing customers are buying customers.

There is no need to go overboard with the fun. Keep the fun in its place, but eliminating the fun in sales is inviting the slump. You have to have fun. You have to have so much fun that if you didn’t need money to live in this world, you would do this job for free.

6. Accept Responsibility

When you realize that you are falling into a slump, you might begin playing the blame game. The blame game makes it difficult to move forward.

“If we had more or different inventory, I’d make more money. If my manager would listen to me more, I’d make more money.

"At the store I worked at before, we had better processes".

"Our advertising doesn’t work.”

You get worried about fixing the dealership, but don’t worry about all that. Fix yourself. It’s not complicated. When you are on the Research and Development Committee trying to fix everything else you are always losing because you are not focusing on what you are supposed to focus on, and you are headed straight to Slumpville.

7. Questions Are the Answer

No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. You have to ask questions before you give your diagnosis. You need to put in the time to understand where your customers are coming from and what their actual needs are.

After we have been selling for a while, we become experts, and we begin telling instead of selling. Telling is not selling; it’s the formula for anti-selling.

Don’t forget to ask your prospects the necessary fact-finding questions, and then listen to their answers. Ask more and listen more. Answer questions with questions. Listen between the lines.

8. Can’t Never Could

Can’t is a word that is at the forefront of the vocabulary of most sales associates who are mired in a slump. They will even say: “Let me see if I can’t do this. Let me see if I can’t get that much for your trade.” They will tell the customer: “You can’t get that price. You can’t get that payment. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.”

Telling customers what they can’t do is poor salesmanship. There are only two can’ts in the sales business: If you can’t sell, you can’t stay. Always tell the customers what you can do and what they can do, and then ask for the order. You will find this is a magic slump killing medicine.

9. Get Inspired

Did you choose this profession due to a need to make an income greater than that of an hourly or salaried position? What inspired you to be in sales? Was it a nice home, a lot of toys, or the lifestyle? Was it your family security? Was it your kids? Was it a chance to start over in life? Whatever inspired you to sell, concentrate on that inspiration. It’s a natural repellent for slumps.

10. Overcome Fear

FEAR stands for false events appearing real. Fear is not real, but it’s real powerful. Fear creates slumps out of thin air. You may have a fear of asking closing questions, a fear of failure, or a fear of rejection. Perhaps you think: “Everybody is watching me, and I can’t get my customers to do anything.” You shut down because you become fearful. Fear is a slump creator. Boldly do what you have been taught to do, and do so with enthusiasm.

11. Talk to Your Mentor

All successful salespeople have had other successful salespeople train, inspire, or coach them along the way. No one became successful on their own.

Use your support group of winners rather than huddle with losers who are making excuses. Get back on track with the people at the top, not the bottom. Turkeys and chickens – people in Stage 2 – stand around at the bottom and peck each other’s poop, but eagles don’t do that. Get off on your own. Talk to your mentor, talk to an eagle, not a turkey. If you are always the most successful person in your crowd, it’s time to change crowds.

12. Don’t Give Up

More often than not, the breakthrough is just around the corner. Selling is like riding a bicycle; you have to keep moving. The business is full of extreme highs and extreme lows. Don’t live in either for prolonged periods, and let neither one of those define you. Einstein said: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”13 If Einstein didn’t give up easily, then neither should you. 

13. Enthusiasm Is the Potion That Creates Motion

“For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will lose a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.”14 That is some more of Zig Ziglar’s wisdom.

Film your presentation. How do you look? How does it sound to you? Would you buy from you? Listen to yourself on the phone. How do you sound? Be a commercial. Excitement sells. Do you sound distracted? Do you answer your cell phone when you are talking to customers? Are you tired, depressed, or angry? Are you uninspired? All these are ingredients for a slump. Get back to enthusiasm.

14. List Your Goals and Read Them Aloud Daily

Every morning, write down your goals and read them aloud. It seems nearly impossible to get salespeople to do this. It seems so simple that maybe the power of it escapes us.

Perhaps you think: “I know my goals, so why should I write them down every day?” For starters, the difference in the level of success of people who do write down goals and the people who don’t is a mile wide. The power of writing down your goals is greater than what I can describe. It’s slump vaccine on steroids, so write them down every day, read them aloud, and see what that does to your slump.

15. Get Karma on Your Side

Focus on being inspirational rather than critical. Do more than your share to assist the team effort. Rather than thinking about what is in it for you, help other people reach their goals.

Be a person who would be missed if you were gone. Don’t be the person who says, “That is not my job.” Be a person who does little things that aren’t in the job description. Be a person who takes pride in their work, is positive to be around, and helps everyone. If someone else has a good idea or does a good job, give credit where it is due; it doesn’t have to be your idea or something you did.

Criticism and selfishness are slump magnets. There are many people around who are selfish and like to criticize. Don’t be one of them.

16. Don’t Outrun Your Resume

Don’t get ahead of your resume. What you used to do doesn’t matter. The Bible tells the story of what happened to Lot’s wife as they were leaving Sodom and Gomorrah. An angel told her not to look back, but she did, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Don’t look back like her.

No one cares what you used to do. It’s that simple. Leave the past in the past, and let’s talk about the now and the future. The questions are: What have you done lately? How many units have you or your department sold right now?

Clinging on to what you used to do or how you used to do it, or trying to relive the good old days prevents you from moving forward into today’s good times.

17. Keep Your Eye on the Ball

Focus may sound so simple that it deserves no mention, but far from it. Lack of focus is prevalent amongst salespeople. Wasted time is the companion of low production.

It’s amazing to me how many people are not selling anything, but still they are doing all kinds of things that serve no purpose in selling cars. They have lost focus. Why would you not be doing something to create a deal rather than focusing on things guaranteed not to create a deal?

18. Go All In

Lose the mentality of “I guess I’ll do this until I get a real job.” Stop looking around for other jobs instead of learning this one. Giving a half-hearted effort to sales is self-inflicted mental abuse. This is a very difficult job if you don’t go all in.

If you want to be more successful in sales, and you want to avoid the slumps, then you must sell out completely. This is who I am. This is what I do. I’m going to be the very best at it.

Even if it didn’t make your parents proud when you got into the car business, even if you never dreamt you would be in sales, you have to be very proud of who you are and what you do.

Many average salespeople try to start their own business or jump to another job without studying the best practices of the job they have. They just learn a little bit of it and then they go looking for something else. You have to sell out and learn everything about this job. Without 100% commitment, this isn’t going to work.

19. Avoid Playing the Victim

This is no business for the self-pitying crowd. In the auto sales business and sales in general, you get paid what you are worth. Remember Winnie the Pooh? Remember his self-pitying friend

Eeyore? This business doesn’t fit the Eeyores of the world, the woe-is-me or why-me crowd.

Victims and the thin-skinned are out of this business more quickly than you can say lickety-split. The victim card is easy to play, and it’s a bad habit to get into. Stay away from this deadly sales career killer.

20. Avoid Gossip

Sales floor gossip is a real momentum breaker. It seems harmless to listen to or even join in. But the truth is that if you do, you always end up mired in drama, even if you are not the one doing the gossiping. 

It has been proven that secondhand smoking can kill you, and it has killed people. Secondhand drama will kill your sales career. If your words are not inspiring or uplifting, they are grave digging, and eventually you will fall into the pits they dig, whereas if your words are uplifting, they will lift you up. All people are elevators; we can bring people up or take them down. Don’t take people down because you go with them.

Gossip is like your shadow. You can’t run fast enough to get away from it because it’s your dark reflection. Slumps are best friends of gossip. You rarely see one without the other.

21. Have an Outlet

Whether you express yourself in music, weightlifting, yoga, running, or a myriad of other things, you must do something to release negativity and stress.

Successful salespeople are conduits for taking in negativity and putting out positivity. Releasing this negativity is a must. When people ask me why so many older salespeople are negative, the simple answer is that they have retained too much negativity over the years.

During your career, certain customers will treat you poorly and even say rude or unnecessary things to you .Face it: Car sales people are easy targets. You must not take it personally, react to it, or return the bad behavior. Professionals specialize in returning poor behavior with positivity.

22. Be Prepared

Arrive at work prepared to do business. Preparation is a many- splendored blessing when you do it, and it’s a curse when you don’t. “It’s not the will to win that matters – everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” That is a quote by Bear Bryant, and I'm a Sooner but I love it.

My old coach used to tell us that proper preparation prevents poor performance. We all know the salesperson who is always 10 minutes late, can’t find a pen, has wrinkled clothes, and has few sales as a result.

What are you doing to be well prepared? The well prepared seem to find deals through muddy waters. Slumps hide from the well prepared like thieves hide from law enforcement.

23. Smile

If you see someone without a smile, give that person your smile. There is no magic like the magic of a contagious smile. People will mirror their company, and a sourpuss expression is not what you want from your customers.

If you have troubles at home or wherever, put them in an imaginary bag and set them on the curb when you pull into the dealership. Don’t share them with anybody because when you leave, those problems will still be there. No one wants your problems. While you are in the sales environment, remember to smile as if you don’t have a care.

24. Be Honest

Everyone deserves honesty, including you. The lies that we tell ourselves are the most damaging. Lying to customers and coworkers leads to lack of credibility and production, and eventually it leads to job-hopping. You will be surprised by how being honest with everyone will help you get out of the slump. One of my favorite jokes is, “I’m the most honest salesperson ever. I wouldn’t lie, cheat, or steal, but those people I work with, you have to watch them.”

Knowing everyone deserves honesty; give it to them even when they don’t give it to you. You don’t have to say all you know in every situation, but you do have to keep it real.

25. Stop Running for Mayor

The classic examples of people who are “running for mayor” are those who consistently recite their resume to their peers. They never miss an opportunity to verbalize their contributions, and they have the habit of exaggerating their efforts and taking undeserved credit.

Reciting a real or exaggerated past of accomplishments like a broken record is a bad thing. For example, sales managers always telling the salespeople how many cars they used to sell when they were on the sales floor doesn’t help anybody sell cars.

The mayors, as I named these people years ago, are quick to point out anything that goes wrong yet shuck any responsibility: “That wasn’t my deal. That was before I started working here.” They are quick to say, “I got that deal bought,” “I bumped the lender,” etc., while they rarely give credit where it is due.

Stop running for mayor. Let’s just get the job done.

26. Walk Around the Building Backward

This is my personal favorite. In my career, hundreds of sales associates and sales managers have contacted me saying: “Roger, after a week with no sales, I can’t believe it. I walked around the building backward, just like you told me to, and I sold four cars in two days.”

Walking around the building backward is an old salesperson slump-killing remedy. Some will laugh or scoff at it, but it is the single most effective method I have ever tried. You must walk around the whole building backward. You may try changing your alarm clock to an earlier wake-up time, your typical daily routine, and other habits as well. However, the backward walk is most important. Somehow, this changes the mojo and causes your ebb to become a flow. 

27. Keep Your Pipeline Full

The batter’s box, the on-deck circle, and the dugout must be loaded with potential hitters. The salesperson who is skilled in keeping the pipeline full is very skilled at avoiding slumps.

Those pipeline deals tend to come together all at once. I’ve always said selling is like fishing; it seems like they are all biting or none of them are biting. If you leave gaps in your pipeline, you will have gaps in your sales, so you must care for the pipeline constantly.

If you master the skill of setting appointments, you will guard yourself against slumps. Appointments are the best medicine for slumping sales. Typically, even a terribly slumping salesperson cannot keep a consistent appointment flow from creating sales.

Appointments sell cars.

28. Network

Networking is important because the more people who know you and know what you do, the more potential clients you will have. Talk to businesses, individuals, churches, sports teams, bars, and so on. Wherever you go, network. Let all your friends, neighbors, and acquaintances know who you are and what you do.

29. Market Yourself

There are very many social media sites and business sites these days. It’s a wise decision to invest in marketing yourself. By marketing yourself, you will get opportunities you would not have received through any other means.

Converting opportunities you would not have had otherwise is invaluable when avoiding the dreaded slumps. There is a lot you can do with Facebook, YouTube, etc., and branding your name with a hashtag and coming up with a nice little logo or slogan. Get involved with e-commerce today.

  

30. Fake It Until You Make It

Don’t feed the slump with any form of verbalization because doing so tends to enhance the slump’s foothold. You must pretend everything is fine and act as if you closed and delivered the last

100 prospects you spoke with.

These 30 slump busters I’ve shared with you will assist you to make money and keep your sanity because they will help you avoid or jump out of the dreaded slumps. Knowing how to avoid and escape these slumps can be the difference between failure and success.

This is an excerpt from my recently released book "Synergistic Selling" to read more just go here 

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DLA3F3Y

Roger Williams

The AutomotiveCoach

Corporate Sales Manager

Fletcher Auto Group