Row to Zoom Out of a Selling Slump
Nothing’s more troubling and frustrating than a genuine slump.” You believe you are doing exactly the same things that have been successful for you, yet success now eludes you at every turn. You dig in, grit your teeth, stiffen your back and try even harder, but still you cannot get back on track. Impenetrable resistance surrounds you like a steel cage. You begin to question your knowledge, doubt your competence, wonder if you’ve lost it. You feel that people are whispering behind your back, noting that you’ve slipped, fallen and can’t get up! Your self-image is rapidly shrinking to the size of a small potato. Anxiety born of desperation occurs before every sales call. How will you break free of such a downward spiral?
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I have known pro athletes who get into slumps, who try the most amazing things to break free, such as wearing their underwear backwards, shaving their heads, refusing to eat or have sex until they get out of the slump. Incredible!
The truth is no one can sustain peak performance day in and day out, for every game, presentation, or situation. Everybody has down days, where everything seems out of whack. Top performers in every field experience this, and shrug it off. The great quarterback Warren Moon was having an off night, unfortunately telecast worldwide on Monday Night Football. He fumbled twice, threw three interceptions, and generally looked like a rookie. Late in the game, standing helplessly on the sidelines while the opposing team turned yet another of his sloppy fumbles into a march down field for a touchdown, Warren had the deer-caught-in-the-glare-of-the-headlights look. One of the announcers commented, “This is a night Warren will want to forget.” The other announcer, an explayer, said simply “And he will.” He’d better! (All “money players” have short memories for mistakes, and great confidence in themselves.)
Yes, everybody has their slumps. Every business has troubled times, every marriage its periods of difficulty or distance, and every individual has moodiness. The problem is not really the slump; it is how we respond to it.
The Salesman Who Desperately Needed Surgery, But Not in His Nose
When I was still in private surgical practice, a young salesman came to consult with me about having an operation on his nose. When I asked what he did for a living, he said “I’m in sales, but I’m quitting.”
His nose was slightly larger than normal or average, but certainly not as repulsive as he insisted, so I knew there was something interesting going on inside this fellow’s self-image. He described his nose as big and fat and bulbous, like a cartoon character’s. He believed that prospects were secretly laughing at him behind his back because of his nose.
When I pressed him for his story, I got the facts. It was a fact that three customers had called his manager recently, each complaining about his rude and hostile behavior. It was a fact that he hadn’t made a sale in three weeks. And it was a fact that his boss had put him on notice: get with it or get gone.
“I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of canning me,” he said. “I’m going to quit. Then I want you to fix this damned nose of mine, so I can go and get a better job.”
I suggested that we delay the surgery for 30 days while he tried some facial stretching exercises that might make his nose slightly smaller and thinner, which, quite honestly, were the equivalent of a placebo; a sugar pill; because there are no exercises that can actually do that. But I took him through several facial movements and prescribed twenty repetitions of each one, everyday. Then I also suggested that he delay quitting his job for that same month.
“You can always quit,” I told him, “but if that’s what you want to do, and you want to change occupations, why not go out a winner instead of a loser? Exit with your head held high. Leave to move on to better things, not to escape failure. If we can find a way for you to make a number of sales, you could leave with a fat commission check to tide you over, and something to brag about on your resume.”
I knew he needed emotional surgery. He was blaming his nose for his selling problems, but that just could not be the case. It was his hostility that was the problem. He had a chip on his shoulder and his prospects sensed it, didn’t like it and got rid of him as quickly as they could.
I had him tell me of some of his early successes in his sales job. This fellow had once been on the fast track, opening new accounts and securing important new clients at a record-breaking pace. But his early success had stalled, and he seemed unable to get back in gear.
His slump started right after his girlfriend broke up with him and started dating another man he viewed as more handsome than he was. So here was my prescription: First, every morning, while he did the facial exercises I had prescribed, he was to go into the Theater of Your Mind and replay mental movies of his most successful selling experiences. Second, he was to drop in on a past, happy customer he had a good relationship with first thing each day, with a half dozen doughnuts for the staff, a flower for the receptionist, just because “I was in the neighborhood and wanted to thank you for the past business.” I hoped this would get him in a positive frame of mind. He would never think of these people as laughing at him or being repulsed by him; they did business with him and welcomed him cheerfully. Third, after each sales call during the day, win, lose or draw, he was to take a few minutes in his car to defuse his frustration and relax, and I gave him a little relaxation exercise to do. Fourth, I told him to go to sleep each night picturing his nose shrinking, until it was the perfect size and shape.
Finally, I said, “I want you to take some time and reason with yourself when you miss a sale or at the end of the day. Forget temporarily that the prospect may have noticed your oversize nose. You are an intelligent, mature adult and so is he or she; you are not children in the school yard. Think of all the important matters your prospect must be thinking about. Do you really think he or she has time to dwell on the look of your nose? Really listen to questions and objections and consider them at face value. Is there legitimacy there? Is there a clue as to how you might strengthen your presentation? Give your prospect the benefit of the doubt, assume he or she is sincere, pretend your nose has nothing to do with it, and look for ways you might sell your proposition more effectively. Even if you are right about your nose being a handicap in selling, if you want to go out a winner, you must rise above it. You must sell so persuasively you cannot be resisted, much like someone with a really severe physical handicap, like a severed spinal cord and wheelchair confinement, must rise above the physical pain and inconvenience and the emotional trauma in order to still be a good parent and a productive member of society. Like Roosevelt, who could, at times, barely rise up out of his wheelchair was still able to inspire an entire nation to rise up out of despair.” I wrote all that down for him on a piece of paper and suggested he read it after a frustrating selling experience. I also gave him a copy of Psycho-Cybernetics and sent him on his way.
About two months later, I got a telephone call from the sales manager at the company where this young man worked. The salesman’s turnaround had been so profound, the sales manager kept after him, to find out how he had changed his results, and, obviously, his personality so dramatically, so quickly, and the young man had told him about his meeting with me and my book. “I want to buy 100 copies of that book and get them over here as quickly as possible,” the sales manager said.
Can you see that this young man’s slump existed first and foremost within his own self-image? The real world results were just a mirror-like reflection of the turmoil and unhappiness in control of his self-image. All I did was interrupt his piling on of erroneous and harmful beliefs about how others saw him. I gave his self-image a breather from the constant destructive input, so it could break free and demonstrate to him that all was not dark and dismal.
If you find yourself in a slump, you must begin the exit by giving your self-image a break. Let it up off the mat. Don’t keep slamming it to the ground, repeatedly piling the same input about what is wrong with the world, your life, your customers, your company and yourself on top of it.
How to Give Your Self-Image a Break and Zoom Out of a Slump
Let’s review the steps I put this young salesman through, as practical actions you can do:
1. Recall and relive past successes. When a salesperson gets into a slump, he or she begins to question his/her abilities. Maybe I’ve lost my touch. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing, and so on. By reliving past successes, you disprove these failure-oriented ideas. You reaffirm your worth, competence, and knowledge. Go into the Theater of Your Mind and build some vivid, detailed mental movies of your most successful, exciting selling experiences. Spend a little time each morning relaxed, eyes closed, running these movies. Keep a little notepad handy to jot down the principles, ideas, and techniques you notice that you used in order to complete those sales, as if you were preparing to teach your methods to other salespeople.
2. Do something certain to reinforce a successful self-image. Arrange the first phone call or meeting of each day with a past or present satisfied, happy customer. When a coach is trying to give a young quarterback confidence after the quarterback has done poorly, he/she has the quarterback throw a couple “high probability” passes, to re-engage the feeling of being successful. You are your coach. Start each day by putting yourself in a high-probability situation, where only good things are likely to occur.
3. Relax. Do not go into a presentation or head for the next one if you feel angry, frustrated, or “tight.” Allow a little time to debrief yourself and to relax between appointments. If you need specific relaxation exercises, you can find them in my first book Psycho-Cybernetics.
4. Reason with yourself. Think! You are an intelligent adult, capable of sorting out reality from fantasy, logic from emotion. Are you jinxed or hexed? There’s no such thing. On Friday the 13th, someone will hit the lottery, someone will land a huge contract, someone will catch an early flight and be home in time to see her son’s Little League game. Also on Friday the 13th, someone will lose a fortune in a bad business deal, someone will lose a key account, someone will miss the last flight of the day. These events have nothing whatsoever to do with it being Friday the 13th. There is no such thing as Friday the 13th hexes, jinxes, or even bad luck. If a prospect has refused to buy from you, it has nothing to do with your nose, whether the moon is full or not, or whether or not your lucky rabbit’s-foot key chain is in your right or left pocket. Take responsibility, creatively question why the prospect made the decision, and find a way to use that information to make your next presentation better.
5. Take action. One thing is certain: a ballplayer can’t break out of a slump sitting on the bench, cowering in the dugout. You cannot break free of a slump hiding out at home or in the office, shuffling paper, pretending to be busy. Stop and reflect, take a bit of time to create a new plan of action, but then get on with it. Athletes will tell you, all superstitious goofiness aside, that they have to play their way out of a slump. You must do so too.
6. Inspire and motivate yourself. Rise above your frustration rather than give into it. Remember that all motivation is really self-motivation. Certainly attending a great seminar can help clear your head and renew your spirit; the Peter Lowe International “Success” Events that tour through dozens of cities each year are excellent for this purpose.* Certainly listening to an uplifting message on a cassette tape in your car can stimulate the imagination. But these are temporary, not lasting. You must develop the ability to motivate yourself, to be your own counselor, coach, booster and disciplinarian.
Waiting to somehow be inspired is waiting forever. Don’t wait for inspiration to happen magically! As an author, I’m often asked how I have created so many books, articles, and other materials. Many other writers are often asked the same question. And there is a popular myth about writers that we lay around waiting for inspiration to strike, then leap to the typewriter, fingers flying over the keys. I sometimes wish this were true. Instead, most writers inspire and discipline themselves to write something every single day. The popular songwriter and novelist Jimmy Buffet says he never lets a morning pass without sitting down and writing at least a page of something. Me too.
I always cringed when I was introduced as a motivational speaker. I never wanted to be known as that, because I wanted to have more impact than a snack of Chinese food that leaves you hungry an hour later. You have a job to do, my friend, and that is to motivate yourself. Learning how to “flip your own switch” is what Psycho-Cybernetics is all about. While the world sits around waiting for someone or something to motivate it, you can rise to the very top of your profession by doing just the opposite.
How do you inspire yourself? How can you motivate yourself to action? How can you create energy, enthusiasm and optimism as needed, on demand? With exciting, vividly imagined, meaningful, worthwhile goals. With a strong, healthy self-image. With the simple understanding that all champions experience occasional slumps and that all champions rise above them, not by waiting for them to pass, but by working through them.
The truth is, if you find yourself in a slump, it’s a pretty good bet that you put yourself there! But that’s good news, not bad, because whatever we do we can change. If you are a Slump-Maker, then you are also a Slump-Breaker.
7. Program your Servo-Mechanism each night before going to sleep, to prepare for success the next day. Remember, your awesomely powerful Servo-Mechanism need never rest, and, solely dependent on your self-image’s directives, is either a Success Mechanism or a Failure Mechanism. Before going to sleep at night, feel free to give it an assignment or two to work on, a quickly recalled vision of your near-term goals being achieved, a message of positive expectation for tomorrow. This will inspire your Success Mechanism to line up the resources, thoughts, ideas, know-how and confidence you need. It will magnetize you, to attract the cooperation you need from others. When you awake in the morning, on time, of your own accord, without requiring the prodding of an alarm clock, you will be full of optimism and energy.
Five Days to Breaking Free of Your Sales Slump
Day One: Acknowledge Your Slump and Take a Break
Take the day off. Go to the zoo and laugh at the monkeys. Go to a ball game. The mall and a movie. A relaxing drive in the country. Sit under a shade tree and enjoy a good book. Whatever may help you relax and cleanse your thoughts of frustration and tension. At the end of the day, get a good night’s sleep.
Beginning today, and everyday, put together and use a Psycho-Cybernetics regimen. Visit the Theater of Your Mind and rerun mental movies of your past successes and reinvigorate your Success Mechanism. Reaffirm a set of exciting goals. Select or create several new, strong affirmations you can use to reprogram the self-image.
Day Three: Put Together Your New Battle Plan
Marshall your very best resources. Who are your best, most loyal, profitable clients you can call on first each day, count on for a positive experience, and confidently ask for referrals? Who are the prospects you’ve been cultivating, who are most likely to be ready to buy? Assemble a strong assault plan for the next two days. Plan intense, high-energy activity. Allocate every minute productively. Take a “blitz” approach to making things happen. Get into action, too. Get on the phone and set up those appointments. Focus entirely on what you can do; do not waste any mental energy on things you cannot control.
Day Four: Massive Action!
One of America’s finest lecturers on personal development and success, Jim Rohn talks about the principle of massive action. Jim says that if you go and spend a week with a top performer in just about any field, you will walk away saying “No wonder he’s so successful. Look at everything he does!” So that is the kind of day you want to have today and tomorrow. If an observer was watching your every movement, with you every minute, at the end of the day he or she would say about you: “It’s no wonder she’s so successful. Look at everything she does!”
This is the first day of your new “boom period” in selling. You can start reaping the best harvest ever from all your efforts. You have every reason and right to anticipate successful results today. Follow-up confidently on past meetings, leads and contacts.
High Performers’ Secret of Resiliency
When pro football coaches and key players, like quarterbacks or defensive corners are asked what quality is most important to success in the game, many say “very short memories.” When a quarterback throws an interception or a corner gets badly beat by a pass receiver, he has to forget it, and gear up to perform on the very next play. Actually, I would say he has to instantly forgive and forget. This is resiliency.
Ego can drive you to win; desire for achievement can drive you to win; occasionally even desperation can drive you to win. But resiliency is necessary to keep winning. Ironically, ego can also prevent you from winning. Desire for achievement can even create frustration and stress that interferes with success. But resiliency always contributes to winning.
In many instances, a sales slump represents the decline of resiliency. When a salesperson gets into a slump, he/she can often be observed avoiding confrontation, procrastinating, reducing the quantity of activity. Finds it more difficult to bounce back from refusal and frustration, and avoids it. Of course, logic says it’d be better to turn up the activity a notch or two, redouble efforts, and play through the slump faster. But that requires great resiliency.
Resiliency can be programmed into the self-image. You need to create an image of yourself as the kind of person who is immune to temporary disappointments or setbacks, who can withstand occasional tough times with dignity and calm confidence, and bounce back quickly from adversity. Think about some of the noticeably resilient people you know, or know of from the news.
Donald Trump and Merv Griffin, business adversaries, have both exhibited great resiliency in their careers. Before them, Conrad Hilton, incredibly resilient, and his autobiography, Be My Guest, is a study in resiliency. Kathie Lee Gifford, who in 1996 came under enormous criticism and media attacks for having her line of women’s clothing made by child laborers, quickly bounced back as a respected crusader for assertive enforcement of child labor laws and changes in U.S. import policies, featuring her testimony before the U.S. Congress. The actor Christopher Reeve suffered a terrible accident, spinal cord injury, and is fighting back from near total paralysis from the neck down. He admits to having contemplated suicide. But he has since proved remarkably resilient. He is earning excellent fees as a professional speaker, working to raise funds and facilitate research for spinal cord injuries, and in 1996 was a featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
Everybody has an experience of resiliency. There are times in your past when you have been resilient. As a child, when you fell over trying to ride your bicycle, did you get right back on? In Little League, did you miss an easy fly ball, but play again the next day and stop a difficult line drive to win a game? Were you ever told you lacked talent in a particular area, then proved your critic wrong? In your selling career, did you rebound from a very disappointing experience, beat out of an account by a competitor, and secure an even bigger account? Recall every example of resiliency from your past and present them all to your self-image at once, and tell yourself: “Look, I’ve been pretty resilient throughout my life. I clearly have the ability to bounce back quickly. Now I’m going to strengthen and emphasize this characteristic. I’m the kind of person who takes a hit and bounces right back up, stronger than ever.” You can be like that Eveready bunny; you just keep going and going and going. Or the old Timex watch slogan; it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Plug all those pictures into your self-image.
