Sales Slump? Best Way to SMASH Through It!

The dreadful sales slump. Whether you've been in the business for two days or two decades, these sales slumps are inevitable. You've either faced one, you're in one, or you will face one soon. And it happens. And it feels like you're trying to climb this super steep mountain, but it's loose sand and you're scratching and crawling and sprinting and your heart rates elevated and you're burning all your energy, but it feels like you're either going nowhere or going backwards. And for the new person, it feels like getting traction is impossible. You question yourself, you question the industry, and then for the seasoned person, even the owner or the manager, it usually comes off the back end of a high. The best month, the best week, the best year, and all of a sudden some things occur, you're in a slump, and it really drags us down and makes it so hard to perform at our best and provide for our the people that rely on us. Whether you're a salesperson, that means your significant other, your kids, your family, or yourself. Or as an owner, it means your team. So in this video, I'm going to be teaching you how to spot the causes of a sales slump and give you some tools to break through that sales slump so you can smash your income goal in roofing sales. Which probably leads us to a great introduction. Hey, welcome back. And if you are new here, welcome. My name is Adam Bensman, the roof strategist. And everything I do here in these videos and on the Roof Strategist podcast are designed to help you smash your income goal in roofing sales. Because, after all, that's why you're in this business to begin with, to better yourself, find an opportunity to earn a really great income through serving others. But the hardest part of this business is what. It's not what goes on inside, it's this. It is you. And sometimes we're frowning because we're in a sales slump, because this business is like an emotional roller coaster of highs and lows. So here's the lows and here's the highs, and things go like this. So it's low. And then we're like, yeah, we gotta win. And. And then things go back down and they might plateau and they shoot up and there's just no such thing. And then, by the way, this right here, that's our sales slump. There's no such thing as an even trajectory. This business isn't level, and it definitely does not. You know, growth is not this linear lineup. It just doesn't work that way. So in order to help you maintain as consistent of that trajectory as possible. I'd love to provide you some tools and to help if you haven't done it yet, head on over to theroofstrategist.com right now and download a free copy of my pitch like a pro roofing sales training video library. All the videos I've ever done, over 240 of them organized by category and again available for free right now@theroofstrategist.com now, in doing that, what we're going to try to do is instead of leveling out these sales slumps that go like this, we know that here's your goal, right? And here you are right now. This is you at the bottom. We need to get from here to there. And it is not a linear path. Brian Tracy wrote a book called Flight Plan and he talks about how. And I forget the exact statistic, but it's 97% ish of time an airplane is in flight. It's actually off course. There's factors that blow us off course, but with the eye on the target, we can take off at where we started and land at our destination and adjust course as we go. So in this video, we're going to be covering just that. Now, let's start with this. First we're going to talk about the common causes of a sales slump and then what to do about it to break yourself out of that slump as fast as possible. First one, low sales. This is for people that can't get traction, new people or a seasoned person. Things were great. You had a dead week. Maybe you had your best week, 2, 3, 4 sales. I hear a lot from, from newer salespeople that have what they call beginner's luck. I got into it, I had 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 20 sales. And then all of a sudden it plateaued. So. So low sales cause a sales slump. Bad experiences. Now, bad experiences are often like customer issues. A customer complaint, a job went wrong. Commission that you expected on this can be cancellations or people. So cancellations. This can be bad customers that'll happen. And then commissions that don't pan out as they needed to or you wished. You know, this happens sometimes. You sell a job and things don't go great. Now, another cause of sales slumps that's more common, but people don't talk about is comparing yourselves to others. So comparing to others. And this is something that we see very frequently in the online world. Instagram, Facebook, everyone's posting their wins. Everyone's life on the Internet looks so grand. And amazing. But what's going on behind the scenes is often very different. These three are really what I would say are the highest triggers for a sales slump. Again, low sales, bad experiences, or comparing ourselves to others. Hey, the team. Everyone on my team is doing great. This is happening. Why isn't it happening to me? So how do we break these sales slumps and start afresh so we can, you know, put a, an end to that low level and then get back on track to hitting our goal? So I want to leave you with a few tips. So number one, take a break. Alright, this part right here was inspired by an interview I did with Marshall. You'll be seeing that on the channel very soon. And Marshall talked about being in a sales slump and just kind of needing to step back for a minute. So when I say take a break, there's something in here that's really important. Far too many people fall trapped. I need a break, right? And they take a step back. And what they do is then they continue taking more and more steps back until they're out of the picture, just like I am right now. And what we end up doing is hurting ourselves even more. So a controlled break, one to two days. This is a time for your brain to reset. All right? Sometimes we need to get away and have a clear and fresh perspective. Do the things that fuel you. Everyone's different. I'll tell you what mine are to me. I refuel in nature. I need peace and quiet. Or for me, it's a long drive. I don't spend as much time behind the wheel as I used to when I was in the day to day roofing sales. So I really enjoy a long drive. I really enjoy a 5, 6, 7 hour mountain bike ride where I can just be present, be in the moment and let things go. To go for a hike, to go camping. You know what, and I'm going to say it here, people might argue me, turn your phone off. Okay? When you stop dinging, when it, when it stops getting, having alerts coming through this break of turning your phone off for one to two days. You can even change your voicemail. Hey, you know, I'm out of the office for a day. If anything comes up, call the office. The world's not going to come to a grinding halt. This industry pulls and nags on us and our loved ones tell us, hey, you're on the phone all the time. And we know it's how we make money, but sometimes we must take that break to come back fresh. What happens when we take this break? Is then we return fresh, fully fueled up, excited in all of that stuff has been shut off. By the way, other things here. Get a massage. I've recently started doing those sensory deprivation tanks are called float tanks. Those are one of the ways that I've begun to fuel along with doing massage. Why? Because caring for myself, caring for my body and my mind, I found makes a huge impact on my ability to serve in my energy. And ultimately what we find with a sales slump is our energy level is what gets compromised. What we want to do is focus on refueling our energy. Now, I used to have this saying that I just somehow popped in my head on my whiteboard in my office. It said, follow what fuels you and follow what fuels you. And this was my mantra. It's like when I'm in the mood for something, I'm energized, I'm fired up. I'm going to go do it. When I'm feeling hot on the doors, I'm never going to cut it short. I'm going to ride that wave. So if you're ever having that wave, ride it, continue riding it. Because your whole goal, the real secret, and I know I might sound a little woo woo here, but the real secret to high performance, performance is maintaining high energy. In a recent interview I did with Bill Sansom on The channel, who's 60 years old, first year in roofing sales, did 2.2 million, opened up this neighborhood and did 60 out of 73 homes. A quote he told me was, you do a check up from the neck up before you pick up. And it was a line he learned in car sales because people can tell when you're smiling. The voice inflection is different versus when they're frowning like this. Even I can't help it, I'm frowning right now. My energy is low. You can hear. But the minute that I turn those corners of my lips up, I smile. I have a genuine smile with my eyes. My energy increases and I feel it. There is that physiological connection. So return fresh and energized. Next, have a plan. All right, when I say plan, this is the biggest mistake in roofing sales that people make. They do not have a plan. What are they going to do? I'm going to work hard and put in the time. Come back fresh with a plan. You know what to turn this slump around. This is my mission plan. And then I'm going to add on here a daily goal. By the way, I have practiced this daily goal virtually for the last 11 years. I have a mission. What is the Most important thing for me to tackle today. When I was in roofing sales, my daily goal changed. It was to open a new neighborhood, get this follow up, to sign a deal, sign X number of deals on a Saturday, get this roof approved, get this supplement approved, it didn't matter. But when I had that goal, that was like, I want to keep knocking these important dominoes down. So return with a plan and a daily goal. All right? These three simple things can help you break out of this sales slump. Alright? And the last thing I'm going to do is to write this one, is to connect with a loved one. Now when I say this, a loved one, this can be your wife, it can be your girlfriend, your boyfriend, any romantic relationship, and it can even be a friend, someone that your loved one or that I'm going to add on here that you trust. For me, I turn to a few key people in my life. There's a couple of friends that I turn to when I need advice. My wife is my number one supporter who I can talk to. My father, my mother, my brother, my family that I'm close with, I'll turn to, to navigate. And these things really, these people can really help break us out of this because they're the reality check. Like hey man, you know, especially for the seasoned person, you've done this before, you've proven it, you just got to get back on track. And then the last one that I'm going to add on here is journaling. I know again that this may sound a little woo woo, but I don't know if that's two L's or one, but I don't have spell check on this. So we're going to roll with it. So journaling. So again in the key things is what, what worked and what's not okay, what worked and then not worked and when we can really reflect why are we in this slump. Oftentimes it is a classic squeaky wheel gets the grease and we'll have this one bad customer like I showed you before, and that bad customer experience, just like plants the seed of doubt. The world is evil, people suck and it just drags us down. But when we journal and we realize like, hey, all these things that were going really well, it was this one customer experience. I can't let that tarnish it. And you know what? Don't be afraid to let that customer go. Write them off. Be done. So, so we now have the tools to identify the causes of the sales slump and to get yourself out of this. And I know sometimes when you're in a slump and you're scared about money. It is very difficult to take that break, but have a firm start and stop. Give yourself permission, and I'm going to write this big and bold, because this is a tough one to do, to give yourself permission to chill. We put so much pressure on ourselves to perform, to make money in this whole thing of giving yourself. I give myself permission to take one to two days off, to take this weekend off, be with my family, let work go, and come back fresh. This is the way to stay fresh. And remember, your number one focus is on your energy. This is your mental and physical energy. This right here is the most valuable source of inspiration, fuel in anything, in this gentleman. Bill Sansom, who I interviewed at age 60, has contagious energy. I mean, I left that interview even just thinking about it. I got energized. I'm like, man, this guy, like, I want to have him over for dinner. I want him to come to my house. I want to have a conversation again with Bill because how he made me feel. And the energy you bring allows you to stay inspired, stay focused, stay ambitious, fuel through those difficult times, and it becomes the contagious piece of you that you leave with all the customers in lives that you touch. Because remember, at the end of the day, you are here, and this is your destination, this goal. And unfortunately, this path is not linear. There are highs and lows. And your job is to help minimize these lows by identifying those causes and then curing them quickly. Listen, if you do want help on this, with the goal planning, if you're using my program called the Complete sales strategy, keep using it. In the first three foundations, I help you create a daily plan built around your income goal. Okay? Which starts with your goal here. And again, I share this with you because there's gentlemen, one of them, Caleb, who you've seen on the channel, he had this printed out and hung on the visor of his truck. And it will show the goal. It will show the daily plan that is all built around your annual sales. And by the way, annual sales are daunting. To say, hey, I have to sell 100 jobs. That's a lot. So we want to break that. By the way, we can't do this in 12 months. We have to sell and collect. So annual sales, which I shortened to nine months, that's just my plan. Nine months, which then we break down to monthly so we can track it. But most importantly is weekly. Now, here's the thing. These weekly sales right here, when you know how Many you have to hit each week. Too many people focus on the sales. What I want to focus on is the number to get to that which is your weekly appointments. Okay? And when I say appointments, these can be inbound leads for retail, they can be self generated leads for knocking doors. But this right here, this is the golden number. And that's why I'm going to going to highlight it here in our little gold, these weekly appointments, when you just stay focused. All I got to do to hit that goal is talk to four people a week, close half of them, which is two. Now I've got two deals a week, that's eight deals a month. These are great numbers. And again, these are just rough, conservative numbers. I do think, especially on the storm side, your close rate has a very reasonable possibility of being much higher than 50%. But at any rate, you need to break this down and have this plan ready so you can return to it and say, hey, these are my weekly wins. You can review them monthly and you know whether you're not on, you are on track. So if you have the complete sales strategy, use it. If you don't, you can get access to it. There's a link in the description and it is an optional add on to the marketing battle pack so you can get both and then it'll stitch all this together not only into this daily plan, but what you need to be doing each day, the marketing material to use, so on and so forth. So I do hope that this video helps you break free from that sales slump because it has happened, maybe it's happening now or it will happen. And it's important for you to spot it and to stick with it because this industry is in an emotional roller coaster. Buckle up, enjoy the journey. And just because this video is about to wrap up doesn't mean your and my time needs to come to an end. So if you are interested in more motivation and hype, I have a playlist for you right here. And if you haven't already done it, download a free copy of my pitch Like a pro roofing sales training video library right here. And if you're tuning into the podcast, links are in the description below. Thanks for joining me. Have an awesome one and I will see you soon.