I'm proud and excited about starting my thirty-eight year in down the street aka SMB copier sales. Needless to say, the start of 2018 has not been terrific in fact I'm probably off to one of my worst starts ever.
I guess I could call it the perfect storm. Right after Christmas I took two weeks to recharge the batteries and get ready for 2018. It's a great time of the year just to stay at home, kick back and enjoy relaxing. Nothing to do and no where to go can be a great salvation. But that was not the case, I contracted some type of Jersey cold/bug that knocked my ass out for the two weeks of vacation and another entire week. It was about four weeks before I felt better.
I don't care how good of a sales person you are, four weeks out of action is going to hurt.
One thing that I've learned in sales is that you always need to be prospecting. Now one is going to prospect for you and you can't count on leads suddenly appearing out of thin air. Always remembering that winners make things happen and losers wait for things to happen.
During the last two weeks I've been able to re-build a pretty decent pipeline. If you've been in copier sales for a period of time you'll have experienced "the deep freeze". That's when your pipeline continues to fill, you have plenty of meetings, and more opportunities that you can shake a stick at. But you can't close a deal or get those deals to move forward. It's not that the clients are buying from some else it's more like every deal is stuck in a time warp. However, you still continue to add additional opportunities each week.
I've been in these cycles before, they suck! But there's not much work you can do but keep stepping up to the plate and take your swings. Sooner or later the cup of opportunities will runneth over and you'll be writing plenty of orders. Geesh, I'm hoping that going to be next week, because I've only got two weeks left in my month 
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We all go through slumps, some minor some major, and some you have no control over. It's our job to continue to work hard, work smart and never stop prospecting. Thus, if you're ever in a slump, what I can tell you is that slump will end, can't tell you when, but what I can tell you is "the harder you work the luckier you will get".
Have you experienced a sales slump, if so would love to hear about it and how you came out of it. Hit up the reply and tell us!
-=Good Selling=-
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