5 Tips for Getting Out of A Sales Slump
Going through a slump? Feeling like this fat cat?
Whether it's that time of the year, or your pipeline is looking depressing, or your personal motivation is lacking, there are endless reasons why you might be having a difficult period for passing leads. But this is not a bad thing. Since there are many reasons for a “sales slump,” this means that there are endless ways to escape it!
Here are some tips for getting out of a sales slump and back into doing what you do best:
- Switch up your timing. You can always try changing the time of day you reach out to prospects. If you work on multiple projects, flip around the times that you normally block off for each one. Or if you work by time zone, try to contact people at times you might not have thought of in the first place.
- Contact different job titles or levels. If you are finding that there have been some problems reaching your prospects, try going up or down a level within the company to get a referral. You might end up speaking to an even more appropriate prospect. Also, pull in different titles than those you have been working on. You will get a different perspective on the pains and needs of the organization, while increasing the amount of quality conversations you have.
- Change your messaging. When was the last time you changed your messaging? Are you conveying the correct message? Are your voicemails and emails personalized when they need to be for certain job levels or campaigns? Take a look through your emails and change up the way you create the picture of your company. Leave different voicemails and see how well they work compared to your previous messages. In your emails and voicemails, reference when you last attempted to reach them and let them know you will contact them again if you do not hear back from them. It can’t hurt to try new ways to attract prospects' attention.
- Send a mass email. This is not always the answer, but sending a mass email to a certain campaign or a certain group of people can generate a good response, providing new referrals and time frames for you to update and create new records. Creating a simple, clear message can help response rates.
- Be clear and concise. Sometimes, it's hard not to “product dump” in emails and voicemails. We are all busy and our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter with every new piece of technology. This is why it is important not to have long emails; they should be able to fit on the screen of a smart phone, as most people are on-the-go and read their emails every few hours on their phones. With voicemails, people can delete them without listening all the way through, and will most likely do so unless you are clear and to-the-point in your first sentence. Keeping one important piece of information about your company per message works well. You do not have to include every positive thing your product or service can do in each message. If there is an interest, you can go more in depth as the conversations progress.
If you find yourself or your sales team in a funk, try a few of these methods to get a fresh angle on teleprospecting. What other methods have worked for your team in the past?