8 Common Causes of Sales Slumps, and How to Avoid Them

Summary:

• All sales agents go through periods of greater or lesser productivity—but knowing why they happen can make slumps less likely and reduce their impact on your work.
• Some slumps can be caused by your attitudes or assumptions, while others come down to the way you organize and approach your work.
• Setting better habits and intentions is the first step to overcoming slumps. Set realistic goals and take an optimistic view of your work so you can approach it with confidence.
• The right dialing tools and CRM solutions can also help by improving your call quality, confidence, and cadence, while making it easier to follow up afterwards.

It's something nearly every salesperson dreads—the slump.

Sure, they happen to everyone, whether you’re in a call center or on a remote sales team. But when you're in the middle of a slump, you find yourself fearing how long it might last and wondering what you can do.

So why do slumps happen in the first place? And what can we do to avoid them (at least some of them)?

Let's dive in. Here are eight of the most common causes of sales slumps and how you might avoid each one.

How PhoneBurner Helps Make Sales Slumps Less Likely

We designed PhoneBurner to support sales agents by promoting productivity and creating conditions that lead to less stress and more success. Here are a few of the features that you can use to mitigate sales slumps:

• A power dialer that helps you outreach up to 4x faster, yet delivers 100% delay-free connections
• A built-in CRM to help you track prospect details ans activity, plus over 200 integrations with useful third-party software.
• Automated lead distribution with customizable rules to help you and the rest of your team reach the prospects you’re best qualified to nurture and close.

Start your free trial of PhoneBurner here, then keep reading to learn why sales slumps happen so you can deal with them more effectively.

1. Overzealous Expectations

Sometimes a slump is just the result of setting your expectations too high.

Say you've started the month racking up sales left and right. Although you should certainly be proud of this, it's important to recognize that things will come back down to Earth at some point. Don't expect a hot streak to suddenly become the norm.

Similarly, things change—the products you sell, the competitive landscape, prices, trends, etc. What starts out as typical may not remain that way over time. Just be reasonable in the expectations you have to avoid setting yourself up for disappointment.

2. Attitude Issues

Attitude is a crucial part of selling. If you have a negative attitude, whether it's due to personal issues or problems at your company, that can affect your sales effectiveness. It can also cause you to become more concerned, down, or disappointed than is reasonable. If every “no” hurts, you need a shift in your mindset.

Many salespeople adopt the “Go for No” mindset. By making “No” your goal, you’re bound to get more “Yesses” and learn a lot along the way.

Focus on maintaining a positive attitude, and tuning out issues and distractions throughout your day. Here’s how to Stop Thinking Negatively & Make More Sales.

3. A Crisis of Confidence

Perhaps the worst type of slump is one where you lose your confidence in your ability to sell. You find yourself second-guessing everything you're going to say and not being able to close.

To deal with confidence issues, you need to trust in your training and your abilities. If necessary, consider seeking out additional training.

You’ll also want to reduce the likelihood of events that could impact your confidence—like:

• Spam flags: Flags hurt your reputation and can crater your answer rates. Monitoring and optimizing your answer rates with tools like ARMOR by PhoneBurner can mean more and better quality live conversations, which means more positive outcomes. This can make the work of outbound calling feel a lot less futile and ultimately give your confidence a big boost.
• Telemarketer’s delay: If you use parallel dialing technology each of your conversations begin with an awkward pause or delay. That means more hangups, frustration, and other confidence-crushing reactions. Try a single-line power dialer instead. That allows every conversation to start naturally, leaving more room for success.

4. Lack of Product Knowledge

Being an effective salesperson hinges on knowledge.

You need a deep understanding of your product if you're going to sell it. You need an in-depth understanding of competing products as well.

Slumps are often caused by not knowing the space as well as you should. So if you find yourself struggling to sell, spend time brushing up on your product knowledge.

5. Lack of Buyer Understanding

Perhaps more important than the product you're selling is what it can do for your prospects. If you don’t understand your prospects’ struggles, goals, and motivations, you can’t empathize with their situation or explain how your product solves their pain points.

The more you know about your prospect, the easier it becomes to adapt your messaging in a way that resonates with them. Adjust your script to probe and provoke and see what happens. 

Make sure you’re using a CRM that lets you track key details, prior conversation history/recordings, and activity history so that you can use this information to prepare and improve your success rates.

It’s even better if your CRM integrates with your dialing software so you can pull this information up easily while each call is still in progress. Not only does this keep current data at your fingertips when talking to prospects; but it ensures your CRM stays current with each interaction so the relationship can progress smoothly.

The result? More leads nurtured and more deals closed. The moral? To avoid fighting uphill battles in sales, put your prospect and their interests first.

6. Poor Prospecting

Knowing your prospects is critical, but it’s not always enough. At the end of the day, it's tough to sell if you lack quality leads or can’t distinguish good lead sources from bad.

In today’s competitive landscape, it’s time to move away from bulk cold lead lists and spray-and-pray approaches and start prioritizing quality. Low-quality leads will damage your number reputation, increase the risk of spam flags, and exacerbate the struggles that drive slumps.

Sales teams should work with marketing to generate quality leads, use dialer reporting tools to identify which lead sources lead to answered calls and active opportunities, and then allocate investment based on what’s actually working.

Good leads and smart prospecting is the difference between reps being successful versus simply busy.

With improved lead-generating and prospecting processes in place, strong lead distribution becomes essential. Successful sales teams need a way to make sure the right leads get to the agents best qualified to handle them. Here’s some advice on How to Better Manage Your Sales Leads.

7. A Disorganized Approach

Efficiency is everything in the sales game. Slumps are much more likely if you're wasting time doing the wrong things, or spending too much time on low-value tasks and unqualified leads.

To avoid slumps, take a good look at your sales process and where you're investing your time. Then prioritize the actions that lead to closed deals—and look for ways to streamline (or eliminate) everything else.

The right reporting features make this easier by showing you the metrics most relevant to your goals. To get a better idea of what this information might look like for your specific team, check out this list of The Top 3 PhoneBurner Reports You Need to Use Every Week.

8. Going on Autopilot

When you have a sales script to guide your calls and it feels like most calls involve the same topics, you can fall into the trap of going through the motions. You say what you're supposed to say, but you're not putting in any extra effort.

Every person and sales situation is different, and they need to be treated as such. Make it a point to explore each lead uniquely, try solve an actual and identified issue, and make a genuine connection with them. That's not only a more effective way to sell; it's also more rewarding. Learn how to Increase Sales Through Active Listening.

Equip Yourself to Deal with Slumps Efficiently

Getting out of a sales slump can be hard. So it's wise to look at what causes them in the first place, and avoid falling into those traps.

Sometimes it might be the way you see your work—your expectations, attitude, or confidence level. Other times, it might be the way you prepare for your work—how much you know about your products or your prospects. Finally, it might happen because you just aren’t setting yourself up for success with the right tools.

Tracking customer data in your CRM and linking it to a power dialer that helps you leverage it effectively can make all the difference in the world—turning sales slumps from roadblocks to mere speed bumps along the route to crushing your quotas and achieving your goals.  See how PhoneBurner can help when you start your free trial today.

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