How to Avoid Slumps

Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of Coffee is for Closers. It's me and James today, and we are going to be talking about how to avoid and or get out of the slump.

Welcome, guys. Hope you're having a good day.

Yeah, I had to look up what slump meant in the dictionary because I wasn't really sure because I've never experienced one myself, but that's a lie. I have.

They are the things on the back of camels, aren't they?

And with that, cue the intro.

If you listen to this podcast, you will make your first million within three years. I'm going to repeat that. You will make a million dollars within three years of the first episode. You listen to. We don't want pikers. We're not here to save the manatees. We're here to make podcasts. You really want this? You listen and review. Put that coffee down.

So you didn't steal it from me this week still?

What? No, no, I thought I'd let you have this one. Makes you feel important.

Look at. Look at how. How bouquet. Ben is in the background, so Bouquet.

Right now, trying to get on camera. I love it.

Yeah, he's loving it. It's okay. They can. They can. They can crop me in. I like to give them a nice wide aperture so they can just crop me in tight.

Watch this video. They're going like, where's Ben? I don't see Ben.

He's there. Yeah, this way. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about slums today. This is gonna be a nice, quick podcast because we haven't eaten yet. Fuck you guys. Yeah, as they told me in the army, you joined us. We didn't join you. Right. So. Yeah. So slumps. What are they? How do they work? Obviously, a slump is when you're just going through and you're doing your thing, you're just not getting the result, you know, which then starts. Starts to snowball into you questioning everything about yourself. And then you. Yeah, you think you're a piece of shit. You think you can't sell. You start to second question everything, then usually start to try and develop your way out of it. So you go and buy a course, and then you change the way you do things, and all of a sudden it's been two months and you haven't made fuck all sales, and you're questioning everything there is about life. So how do we avoid that? How do we stop it from happening? And if we do find ourselves in the slump, what do we do about it?

Well, I think the biggest thing and Something that we've worked on is not how to get out of slumps, but it's how to acknowledge that we're slightly becoming, you know, below our average. And when you sort of dip below that average, it can snowball, as you said. So it's more for us is about putting in preventative measures to stop someone falling into a slump in the first place. Because it's a lot easier to prevent it from happening than. And get out of one.

I totally agree.

And we do that in quite a few ways.

I think. For me as a salesperson, I'll talk about avoiding slumps first because I think it's prevention is cure. The easiest thing is to be consistent in yourself. So like the eating, the training, the health, the whatever things you need to do to put yourself in like the best state every single day. I don't think that you need to be in like quote unquote flow states or any of that bullshit to be good at selling or to be productive. It's just like whatever you need to do to feel good about yourself.

Yeah.

Like just do that because you will sell more if you feel good about yourself, if you have more confidence, all that kind of stuff. Right. Also potentially having a workspace that you feel happy to be in.

Okay.

Like this is a temporary workspace. It's okay. I don't particularly like it that much. I like my office much better. I feel much more creative in my office. I feel like I would sell better in my office because that's like my space. Having some triggers. Having some triggers I think is key. Like whether you always wear a particular bracelet or a ring or a hat or something like that, that you can have to like put yourself into that sales mode every time. It was. It's like, why bedtime routines work. Like you do the same thing. It sets up your brain to release the same chemicals and do the same actions, all that kind of stuff. So I think like consistency is like step number one and step number two is like realizing that you can hit red 10 times in a row playing roulette. It makes it no more likely to hit red the next time. And so what I mean by that is that you can be really, really good at sales and you can get 10 no's in a row. It doesn't make the next one any more likely or less likely to get a no because you might hit 50 yeses in a row. And then all you would remember is that you went 50 from 60, which is fucking incredible. You just don't remember the first 10 was over 10.

Yeah. It's a conversation. It's not compounding interest.

Exactly. And so, like, for me, what really helped me just get rid of slumps and never have them. I think, like, I don't. I haven't had a slump in over a year where I wasn't consistently closing at a really good rate. I might have had three or four nos in a row, but then I made it up with, like, 10 yeses. Right. So.

But that's not a slump, you know?

Yeah.

It's just exactly three or four people that happen to say no.

Yeah. You know, I was having this conversation this morning with one of our sales reps who's been going through a little bit of a slump, and he got in his own way, and he did exactly what I said, which is you try and develop your way out of it, which is the worst thing ever. You can tell how seasoned somebody is as a sales rep by how little they change when they're going through a slump. You don't want to change anything about your process. And if you have to be confident in your process, because, like, for me, I know my process works. It works, like, conservatively 7 out of 10 times. So for me, like, if I. If I do the process and somebody doesn't buy, I'm like, oh, that was a good call. Like, I should be able to sit back at the end of a sales call and go, no, that was a good call. Even if I didn't get the sale, I think I did everything that I needed to do. Whereas on. On a consistent basis, if I do that over and over again, I will get the close. That's all you can do. Like, stop pretending. Exactly what I told our guy this morning. I said, stop pretending you can convince people to do stuff you can't. Yeah. All the things that you said of your mouth is a total hot mess of garbage. And everything that they tell themselves is gospel. So all you can do is put together an argument or however you want to do it where they convince themselves, but at the end of the day, like, it's their decision. Yes, it's their call. And it's.

It's.

And it's their life circumstances that might dictate whether or. Whether or not they can even do the program. One of our sales reps came to me the other day. She's like, I'm really. I don't know how to handle this. Objection. The guy is moving house, can't get a loan because he's refinancing his mortgage, and you can't apply For a loan. While applying for another loan, he then has to move house. Once he gets the house, which is happening like the next four weeks, right? And he doesn't have any more cash, like physical money to buy it. And he really, really wants to do it, but he wants to start in March.

Yeah.

She's like, how would you overcome that? I was like, you fucking don't. I was like, those are legit chalk.

That went up to bad luck.

Yeah, that's legit, man. You ever moved house, you ever bought a house and moved house? It's a nightmare. And like his. All of his money's tied up in that. Like, that's fair.

Yeah, totally.

Like, that's fair. It's like, yeah, sweet. And he's like, and to be honest, I don't even have an extra hour in the day or I could do the course. I was like, man, like, that's totally legit. Just pipeline that person. They're not ready yet. Like, that person takes follow up in three months.

That's what. Yeah.

So don't like get angry at stuff. Like, yeah, sometimes those are bullshit and sometimes you can smoke screen it out, all that kind of stuff. Right. And you want to be able to make sure that in your objection handling cycle that you can weed out how much of that is true and how much of it is like a mindset issue, whatever. But people forget that, like logistics are real. People have actual logistical issues. If I was to sign up to a program right now, like, I would struggle, man, because my diary is. I'm struggling to find time to go to the. To go for a run. Like, I'm really struggling to find time to exercise. And I'm trying to do it. And like, I'm working back to back from 8 till 5 every day. Like, what am I going to do? Work from 8 till 6? Like, I have two fucking kids and my kids are more important than my business. So it's like, okay, like, I can't stand up to any coaching programs at the moment because what the fuck am I going to do?

Yeah. The ones that we all signed up to, I barely can do anyway.

We pay 30 grand a fucking year for one of them and we show up to like one call a month.

Yeah. Then we got another one that's probably 20 grand a year that I haven't even opened in 12 months. What's that one embarrassment?

Oh, yeah.

You know, there's a cause, like, good.

Programs, nothing wrong with them.

Just honestly, like, I don't have the time to jump on those calls. You Know, they have a few calls a week. If I have an issue, I'll ask. Like, if I have a problem that I can't figure out to solve, I'll ask a question and hopefully I'll get an answer. But, you know, I don't need to be on most of those calls. Like, it's. It's almost a moot time for me. All right.

Yeah.

And, like, I think a huge thing is, is understanding logic and numbers. Right. So you tend not to get into slumps when you realize that, you know, it is a numbers game and you just have to play the averages.

Well, I'll say it's not a numbers game when you're good, but you have to understand that numbers do play a role.

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I. Yeah, we could have a whole argument whether it's a numbers game or whether it's not. But beside, the point is it's understanding averages. Right. You know?

Yeah.

And like, if you know that and people get funny about this, they're like, oh, we have to change everything because the no shows are different. It's like, okay, well, on average, let's say if you get a hundred calls a month, on average, 30 of them could not show up in that month.

You might get 30 in a row.

Exactly. Right.

Doesn't mean anything.

I could flip a coin 100 times, and on average, I'm probably going to get 50 heads, probably get 50 tails, give or take 10, you know, but I might go through a stage where there's 15 in a row, and if you react to that 15 in a row, you setting yourself up for bad decisions because it typically will even out and average out if it doesn't.

Whenever there's a problem, we say, let's give it two weeks and see what it is.

Let it rise.

It's not laziness. It's like, well, let's just not make massive, drastic changes based off, like, what could be just, like, an anomaly.

Yeah. And that. And that, like, I. E. That is a no show. Right. It's the same as, like, a slump, you know, if you, on average, close at 50% and then for one week you're at 20%, by the next week you're at 150%. You got to give it time, because the moment you start thinking, oh, something needs to change because I'm not getting those, closes that conversion rates down. That's where you kind of trap yourself. And you trap yourself by making changes that you're not prepared for and changing your script, when in reality those averages were Going to even out over the space of a month anyway.

Yeah. And that's where, as the sales guy, like, you have to be. You have to be confident in your process.

Yes.

And then, like, the big. The big trap is to not do your process based off a perception of the other person.

Yeah, exactly.

That's a big trap, which I think leads to a lot of this stuff. Whether it's a quote unquote sophisticated buyer, whether it's like a referral or a friend or whoever. Like, you know what I mean? You just need to do your process. Otherwise it just never works. Like, it just doesn't. And so that's why, for me, I don't really suffer from the slump thing anymore because, like, I just sort of go through and go, okay, like, did I. Did I do my process with all these calls? And I go, yes. And I go, okay, like, I'm happy with that. Like, there was a call a while ago that I didn't close, and I mean, I threw the kitchen sink at this dude. He was just a really tough prospect. And I was like, man, that was a great call. Like, I even. We even used it in training. It was like, it was a no sale. But it was like, fuck, man. I did some creative shit in that call. I like, I did the best I could. I don't think I could. I don't think I personally could have done any better. Could somebody have sold that person? Yes, because there is always someone who can put together the puzzle. It doesn't mean they're better than you. Doesn't mean they're worse than you. It's just like. But the particular things could have lined up better and they might have had experience with that type of person before or whatever. Right. Like you can Slumdog Millionaire. You know what I mean? There's, you know, probably someone that I could close that Jeremy couldn't, and vice versa, just because of the experiences that we've had. And so there's no need to get frustrated over that. And I think, like, going down that rabbit hole and trying to sell, like, somebody else, that's another thing that causes slumps, is when you learn a new skill and take it as gospel. I see this a lot with, like, younger guys who have. Who have. Who are for the first time, potentially doing coaching programs. Like, I've done so many coaching programs, and I've done this myself a bunch of times where you learn something and it becomes gospel. Like, this is how you do it. It's like, well, that's one way of doing it.

Yeah. Exactly. It's one way of doing it. That's one way that you haven't seen the other way. So therefore that makes sense to you.

I'll take a classic example. Like our Facebook group. Right. Closing code. We're in a Facebook group growth course. I do none of the strategies. And our Facebook group grows really quickly with no ads. And it's. And it's probably the highest engagement group. We have a nearly a hundred percent engagement. And I don't do any of the techniques and tactics. And we give far too much away. They say you shouldn't do as we do a live every day sometimes to like now you should only do two a week. It's like well, I do seven a week and our engagement's a hundred percent. So maybe our content is just really good.

Yeah. So maybe there's maybe other ways of doing things better than what you teach.

Yeah. Or just work better for us.

Yeah, exactly.

I've always been under. The thing is like I'm going to do things my way and I'd love to learn other ways of doing it. Like if I feel like it's more without sound like a douchebag. Authentic to do it a particular way. But also we have a going on a side tangent. We have a very different vision of what content is.

Yeah.

Like ours is like somebody. We said this a thousand times. Somebody should be able to get better at sales for free just. Just by knowing who we are.

Exactly right.

And if they want to give us money, that's great. You can go to the closing code link will be in the description and you can give us 25 bucks for your first week and then a hundred bucks a fortnight after that. For those of you who don't know what a fortnight is every two weeks. And yeah. Like that will. And that's great. You can get those of you that.

Don'T know what a week is. It's seven days.

Those of you don't know what day is. How the fuck did you navigate your phone? Right. So yeah. But yeah. So anyway, I think that all goes back to being confident in your process. If you're confident in your process, I think you emotionally detach much more from the actual outcome of the sale. Which makes it way easier to not get trapped into a slump because you don't start questioning everything about yourself.

Yeah. Secondarily to being confident in the process is being consistent with the process.

Yeah.

Meaning that you do the same thing every time. Right. Because then if you're doing the same thing every time and that's what's got your results before then. If you continue to do that, you should on average get the same results. Right. But you need that consistency one with your process, but you need that consistency with everything else.

You know, speaking, speaking truth to power.

Jimmy, you stop sleeping, you don't get consistent with your sleep, you're not going to be on your calls best because you don't function, stop eating well, stop training, stop doing all those little things and you fall away from your routines. Then you can't be consistent with your scripting, you can't be consistent with your process because the rest of your life isn't congruent and consistent. You know, and that makes it very difficult. When we bring our health coach on James, what he does is he.

James can link in description.

Yeah, link. If you want to sign up with him, definitely do it. You'll go to new levels.

Do we get an affiliate deal? We should probably get an affiliate deal.

But we track things and you know, all of our, well, most of our guys get coaching from him as well. It's something that we.

Aura rings too. You get an affiliate code.

Yeah. And what we do is we look at, you know, our heart rate variability. We look at a whole bunch of markers which, you know, won't bore you with. And we can recognize when someone has, is becoming more stressed out and we can recognize when someone has a lack of sleep and then their scores for how well they can be at their best reduce. You know, you know those days where you just don't sleep and you feel like shit? Well, that that correlates to certain scores and we look at that and then as we see those go down over time because, you know, the guys are working too hard. They've been, you know, stressed out in other aspects of their life. We can see that and we acknowledge that that is going to take away from the consistency that they have in their outside of sales life. And when that consistency isn't there, that will creep into the consistency sales process. And we know for a fact that when that happens, the conversion rates will go down. And if the conversion rates go down, it leads to a slump. So what we we put in place is to be able to acknowledge that and see when those stress markers go through the roof, see when that consistency in everyday life falls apart so that we can put mandatory days off or a couple of days or mandatory holidays in place so the guys can refresh, get back to consistency to prevent them from getting into slumps in the first place. Love it now.

So that's how you Prevention is cure. Really?

Prevention is cute.

Just realizing that, like, you just can't win them all.

Yeah, yeah.

So many salespeople put like, no, she's shitty. Once they put such a realistic.

Listen to our last episode expectations.

Losing an 80%. You should. Let's say.

Yeah, let's say if you haven't put any preventative measures in place when you get into a slump, like, I know you, you were in one before with your sales. I've been in them before as well. How do you get out of them? Like, what do you do?

Number one thing I do is make sure that all my, like, just day to day stuff is sorted.

Yeah.

So just. Yeah. But then also I go back to calls that I was really, really happy with and I. And then I listened to.

Yeah, yeah. So you go back to your best calls, review what you did really well in those and then just do that again and then see what you're not doing now and be like, okay, here's where I've messed up. You know, I need to get back to what has been working for me. And just.

Exactly. Chances are you've just like tried to overdevelop yourself or you've tried new tactics and you haven't implemented them correctly and you haven't practiced them and you just said, oh, that's a great idea, I'm going to start using that. But you don't understand it. So it gives you an answer that you weren't really prepared for and then it was just a whole shit fight. So the key is just go back, listen to like the favorite call you've done, listen to two or three of those and then go, oh, sweet. I'm actually good at this. I know what I'm doing. I'm going to go back to that and then I'm going to learn how to utilize some of these other things and I'm going to go in and I'm going to. I'm going to start to implement them slowly or implement them in the role plays. Because you're a closing code member and you have access to six role plays a week for only 50 bucks Aussie dollars a week. You can go in there and say, hey, I want to try some new stuff, so bear with me and give me some feedback. Then you have a coach and you have like 30 other people that you can get feedback from before you actually try it in the ring for real life. If somebody taught you a new way to squat, you wouldn't go into your max.

Exactly.

That's fucking ridiculous. And a lot of people do fucking ridiculous things and they wonder why they get ridiculous, wonder why they get hurt.

You're not going to throw 200 kilos on your back because you learn a different way to squat. You build up to it. Yeah, that's a good analogy. That's great.

So I think that that's the key. And then just. Yeah, just if you want to try new things, you need to bounce them off, you need to practice them, you need to understand them. Because, like, you're putting together a puzzle, a human psychological puzzle with sales. And so not knowing the outcome of what you're going to do will fuck you really badly because you'll get an answer and you'll go, I have no idea what to do with that. Yeah, like when I first, like the way that I close is like, would that be appropriate? Or how would you like to proceed? That is really scary for a lot of people because, like, there's so many choices. But I like the choice because I know where all the doors go. But if you don't, then most people would. Would try and do more of a binary. Does that work for you with the payment plan or the paid in full work better. Right. So you're sort of going down the binary choice. It's not as good of a technique. But if you're brand new to sales, like asking someone how they like to proceed can go, you'd want to know how to answer that. Be pretty quick on your feet in terms of. Yeah. Your responses.

So I think, yeah, what you said is like probably one of the best ways. The other thing is just chalking up those little wins. So take something out of it to prevent yourself getting deeper into the slump. And what I mean by that is like, review the calls that you probably. If you're in the slump that you are failing on, but review them. Review and take out the parts that you did really good, you know, and be like, okay, I gotta win here. I crush this pot. I crushed this part across this part. And that helps build confidence back up. And because you did something really well on that call, even though you, you didn't get the close, you're preventing yourself from getting deeper into that funnel because you can take something positive and learn from it out of it. And I think that's really important. And then do what Matt said and take those little wins and. And that helps build confidence back up. And because you did something really well on that call, even though you, you didn't get the close, you're preventing yourself from getting deeper into that funnel because you can take something positive and learn from it out of it. And I think that's really important. And. And then do what Matt said and take those little wins and compare them to what you did before, where you were crushing it. And once you can do that, you can knowledge that you are still doing what you were doing previously. And it's just a couple wins away from getting out of that slump.

When I first implemented any pq, I do what a lot of people do, which is I went through like, I tried to implement too much of it too quickly, and I went through like a slump of like probably a week. I didn't make any sales, which is very unusual. And so I was like, okay.

So I went back coincided with the first outbreak of coronavirus that we like, that would have been March last.

I think it was like, it might have even been two weeks with like no sales. And so it was a perfect storm of like, weird area, but also implementing something new. And then I just went back to some of like my favorite calls that I had done, which I listen back to now, and they weren't very good, but they were effective. And I was like, okay, I'm just going to do that, but I'm going to leave my triage very npq, which is kind of how I came up with like the implementation guide for any pq, which now when you sign up to it, you get the implementation guide, which is how to actually do it properly because you can learn from my mistake, which was trying to do too much too soon. Then when I developed Marco into like an any PQ guy, we had to do the same thing. But he was. But more because he was so reluctant to do it.

It's very hesitant.

Yeah, I would say, yeah, like downright refusing. Oh, it took like six, eight months to.

It was the complete opposite of everything he's ever been taught by his idols.

Yeah, this is totally fair. And I think his attitude is probably almost a better attitude because it was like, no, what I do works. I don't want to change it. But then like getting little wins, you know what I mean? It was like, okay. And now he's like, super. Any PQ neutral.

Yeah, we implemented it really hard on his triages to start with because he had a poor shot right to sales calls. And then once it fixed, his shot, well, increased heavily his short rate to sales calls. He made far more sales. And I was like, oh, wow, that worked incredibly. Maybe I'll try a couple of little different things in this sales call. And now he just does the whole thing that way because it was like gradual wins that head up to a bit.

You know, it's funny with Marco, I, I don't. I never post his numbers because nobody will believe it.

Yeah. Because they're ridiculous.

Yeah. That's why I never also posted my numbers because it just sounds like self blobiating bullshit. People just don't believe it. And I'm like, whatever, there's no point posting it. And it's not even like typical of sales Sniper. The guys here close really well. Like road closes really well. Like all really, really good closers. But like Mina Marco's numbers were so high that there was no way everyone would ever believe it. Which is why somebody challenged Marco to a sales competition.

Yeah, well, you know, rest in peace his career. That's funny.

Yeah. Well, I think it's actually off now because he told me he would only do it for a particular account and I was like, well that means I got to take Marco off the two accounts that he's selling. And I was like, I'm running a business here, dude. Like I got fucking 27 staff. Like I'm not going to take my top producer off accounts that he's crushing it on to prove a point to some dude that I don't give a fuck about.

Yeah.

I was like, we can do it my way or we can just not do it. Like I don't care. And, and he's a nice enough guy. There's nothing against him. But I was like, I just don't think people realize how much he produces, how good he is at selling. He sold a $15,000 solar deal, had never sold solar for a client, never even seen a solar unit and knew nothing about solar and just sold a $15,000 paid on the phone, which is not how solar is done.

Note this was a sales training client. He closed the deal for the guy. That or teaching sales training to show.

No, it's so he could pay his fucking his bill to get in the program. So he could. So he could get in the program. That was why it was pre programmed. Now the guy's doing really well because he's learning the techniques. But yeah, like, dude, Marco sold everything. He sold books, sold solar, sold fitness, sold door to door. He's cold. Cold. The dude's a fucking unicorn. But yeah, anyway, let's get off them. Let's get off the.

Let's stop sucking his dick for a while.

Just remove his balls from my mouth. He's a good dude. Like I just.

We don't.

Yeah, we don't Get. I don't think we give him a shout out enough. He's a very, very high producing sales rep with a great. Worth it. So well done, Marco. You're a killer.

Thank you.

He also broke my record the other day.

Yeah, that was a good. It's like good records are made to be broken, remember?

Yeah.

X minute you're organizing sales calls to get back on the phone to try and take it back.

I was thinking about. Because we're going to release that course, I think it would already be released by the time this comes out. I was thinking, like, I could just take all the sales calls for that and just sell like 35 in a week. Just drop the mic and walk out.

Stop it.

I don't want to. I want the guys to make money. Yeah, I'd rather. I'd rather the guys make the sales. Like when I get lay down sales, I give them to the guys so they can get the comms for.

All right, let's finish it there. Thanks for listening.

All right, guys, thanks very much for coming. Make sure you, like, subscribe. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit the notification bell. If you're, you know, especially for. Especially on YouTube, make sure you share this content. Make sure you send it to other people. And if you listen to this in any other media, make sure you subscribe to us so that we know that you're giving us some love. Make sure. Go have a look at the closing code group, which is the Facebook group for the podcast. And if again, if you want to give us some cash, you can go into our closing code program. $25 for the first week, 50 bucks a week after that. Six role plays plus a portal. And if you want to go into our Facebook group, I do a live training for about two hours once a week. Big Q and A. I actually sold a guy live on last week, so that was fun times. All right, guys, thank you. Have a good day. Bye.

Put that coffee down.

Coffee's for closers only.