The fastest way out of a sales slump, the SLUMP protocol

You're on calls. You're saying the right things. Nothing is landing.

Your confidence drops. Then you start overthinking every word. Then your close rate drops too. It's a spiral, and if you don't catch it, it eats your whole month.

I call this a sales slump. I've got a protocol I run every closer I work with through to break it. I literally call it the SLUMP protocol. Let's get into it.

Why the slump happens in the first place

Before you can fix it, you need to understand why it happens at all.

Feelings are relative. If you're driving 100 mph, you feel the acceleration from 0 to 100. But once you're cruising at 100, you don't feel it anymore. Especially in a smooth car. I feel this all the time in my Porsche, I look down and I'm going way faster than I realized.

Humans work the same way with happiness and performance. Say you're a 10 out of 10 happy on a normal day. One day you're a 9 out of 10. For most people, a 9 out of 10 day is amazing. But for someone used to living at a 10, a 9 feels like something is missing.

That's just the law of averages. You will have a top 10% of days, weeks, months. And you will have a bottom 10%. Doesn't matter who you are.

"If you're Elon Musk and you're making a hundred billion per year, whatever the hell much money he makes, he's going to still have a top 10% of days and a bottom 10%."

So the goal isn't to never hit a slump. The goal is to systematize your top so your bottom doesn't dip too low, and when it does dip, you get back up fast.

Step one, separate: is it you or is it the team

First question in the SLUMP protocol. Are your numbers down, or is everyone's numbers down?

If the whole team crashed, you're not in a personal sales slump. Something is broken upstream, the offer, the leads, the marketing, whatever it is. That's not on you to fix emotionally.

I had a guy I train who closes about $200k per week on average. One week he closed $84k. I asked him what happened. Turned out their ad platform got shut off and the whole team's numbers tanked. That's not a personal slump, that's a business problem. We pivoted to pushing referrals to make up the gap.

"If everyone's show rate's down, everyone's close rate's down, there was a deeper problem there. But if it's only you, now this is a personal issue that we need to actually address personally."

Only move to the next steps if it's actually you.

Step two, lifestyle audit: what changed

Once you know it's you, ask what changed. Something always changed before a slump hits.

For me, it's usually the basics. Did I stop getting sun. Did I stop sleeping well. Am I taking care of my biology. It's also about mental diet. If I'm scrolling X and getting into political arguments, I notice I don't show up as sharp on calls. I have X blocked on everything now because of this.

I had a guy in a B2B offer get told to double his proposal volume. He's extremely detail oriented, takes an hour or two per proposal, that's literally why he closes. The workload spike had him skipping lunch, working late, not sleeping, full anxiety.

"Yeah, of course we're in a sales slump at that point, right?"

Find the deviation. What changed in your routine, your sleep, your inputs, your workload. Pinpoint it.

Step three, uncover the peak

Now flip it. Look at your top 10% weeks. What were you actually doing then?

This is why I tell people to journal or at least track their calendar. When you have a great week, go back and look at what you actually did differently.

I had a stretch where I was listening to one specific audiobook on repeat. I felt amazing going into calls. I rode that wave for almost a year before it wore off. That's not magic, that's just knowing what puts you in state.

Ask yourself what makes you feel most confident, most locked in, most like an authority before you get on calls. For me it's watching training content and staying in the mindset of being on calls. If I skip that for too long, I start to slip.

Once you know what worked, systematize it. Don't overthink whether it's the "right" protocol. The only protocol that works is the one that's tried and tested for you specifically.

Step four, match your calls

This is the M. Match your energy by reviewing your best calls on repeat.

When you're in a slump you start questioning everything. Am I even good at this. Should I quit. Watching your own calls where you crushed it reminds you that you do know what you're doing.

"I don't care what level you get to, having that reminder of like, yeah, I'm at this level for a reason. I close. I know what I'm doing."

When you review the good ones, look at your energy, your tone, the questions you asked, how you handled objections. Take those notes and plug them into your next calls. This should be a morning habit, not a once in a while thing.

Step five, pivot your focus

This is the P, and it might be the most important piece.

When you're in a slump, your focus shifts to one question: did it close or did it not close. But closing is partly outside your control.

"If you talk to 10 homeless people in a row that have missing teeth, they're under a bridge, and they have no money, and you do not close those 10 people in a row, are you now bad at sales? No, you're not bad at sales."

Flip it around. Talk to 10 billionaires in pain with unlimited pockets and close all of them, are you suddenly great at sales? Not necessarily. It's somewhere in the middle.

Instead, focus on what's in your control: was it a good call or not a good call. Did you ask the right questions. Did you bring full effort. Did you push the conversation where it needed to go, even if they didn't buy.

"You showing up to the call and actually doing what was required and pushing that guy to the limit is much more of an actual good thing to review versus just showing up and taking payment. You had the skill set of a McDonald's worker at that point."

Effort is usually the first thing to go in a slump. People stop caring as much, stop pushing as hard. Chasing the close instead of chasing a good conversation is what makes you come across as desperate. Chasing a good conversation is what actually gets you unstuck.

The daily habit that raises both your top and your bottom

Review good calls every day. Have them on repeat, especially before you hop on calls or in the gaps between them.

Also review 3 to 5 calls that didn't close every week. Not to beat yourself up, to catch patterns and bad habits.

"Nobody closes 100%. When somebody tells you that, they're lying."

Even I've got things to improve on every call I take. The perfect sales call doesn't exist, and that's the game, you're always chasing it.

When you review a bad call, write down what to fix, then burn it. Don't replay it in your head all week. Your brain doesn't know the difference between something happening right now and something that happened in the past. If you only replay your losses, your brain thinks you lose constantly. If you replay your wins, your brain thinks you win constantly. Use that to your advantage.

The bottom line

Slumps hit everyone, there's no way around the law of averages. The fix isn't hoping it passes, it's running the protocol. Separate whether it's you or the team. Audit your lifestyle for what changed. Uncover what you were doing during your peak and systematize it. Match your energy by reviewing your best calls daily. Pivot your focus from closing to having a good conversation. Do this and your bottom 10% stops being a crisis, it just becomes a Tuesday.