How to Get out of a Sales Slump

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Sell or Be Sold" by Grant Cardone. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What causes a sales slump? How do you beat a sales slump?

A sales slump can happen when you let negative feedback from some customers diminish your conviction in your product. This negative feedback discourages you from actively selling the product. You get out of a sales slump by pinpointing what’s causing your lack of conviction and reinvigorating the enthusiastic spirit with which you were first selling the product.

Read on to learn more about how to get out of a sales slump.

Becoming Unsold: The Three-Month Sales Slump

There’s a common phenomenon in sales in which a salesperson sells a product successfully for 90 days and then chokes. If you find your sales slumping, there’s a good chance you’ve become unsold (perhaps you’ve gotten some feedback from consumers that the product isn’t as good as you thought it was, and now you’re sold on the idea that you shouldn’t sell the product). To escape the slump:

  • Review the reasons the product is beneficial.
  • Find out what’s causing your lack of conviction.
  • Recall the same spirit you had when you were first selling the product.
  • Troubleshoot your failures. Perhaps when you failed to close a sale for the first time, you attributed it to the wrong reason and therefore came up with the wrong solution, and are continuing to use this inappropriate solution.
  • Don’t blame unrelated factors. For example, some people feel their competitors (or the Internet) can offer such good prices that no one will buy from them. As long as you are sold, you can outcompete.
  • Consider whether management has made changes that affect the sales process. For example, if management is asking you to do something unethical, you’ll likely feel reluctant to sell.
How to Get out of the 90-Day Sales Slump

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Here's what you'll find in our full Sell or Be Sold summary :

  • How your happiness and even survival depend on your selling ability
  • The five steps to becoming a master salesperson
  • Step-by-plans to lead the customer to make a purchase

Joseph Adebisi

Joseph has had a lifelong obsession with reading and acquiring new knowledge. He reads and writes for a living, and reads some more when he is supposedly taking a break from work. The first literature he read as a kid were Shakespeare's plays. Not surprisingly, he barely understood any of it. His favorite fiction authors are Tom Clancy, Ted Bell, and John Grisham. His preferred non-fiction genres are history, philosophy, business & economics, and instructional guides.

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