Every competent salesperson dreads a slump, but even if you’re the kind of hunter who can sell ice to an Eskimo in December, you’ll find a time when even the Eskimos just aren’t buying. Want to keep your pipeline fat and flowing? Learn the signs a slump’s heading your way so you can stop it before it hits your pocketbook.
- Your activities slow. Regardless whether or not a prospect comes to you or you go to them, activities are the gasoline that powers the engine of your pipeline. If you’re not doing anything, you won’t go anywhere. If you’re consistently underperforming on calls, meetings, and emails per day, even if you have plenty of prospects now, it’ll start hitting you later. When you aren’t hitting activity targets, what are you doing? You certainly aren’t selling.
I often hear salespeople tell me that they would rather concentrate on quality activities than meeting a certain quantity of them. If you are one of these salespeople, let me ask you a question: Have you met your annual goal? If the answer is no, that bird don’t fly.
Even if you believe some your activities aren’t ‘quality’ ones, the mere fact that you’re forcing yourself to do something means you aren’t leaving room for excuses. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can fill your schedule hunting and pecking for just the right prospect. Pick up the phone and start making calls, not excuses.
- Your lead conversions slip. In Salesforce, lead conversion is a great leading indicator of incoming opportunities. In my organization, I tend to rely more heavily on this data than on leads created because we require very few criteria to create a lead. For instance, a salesperson can put in a first name, last name, company name, and lead source to create a lead. Since there’s no email or phone number, that salesperson has no way to actually contact this lead. It’s basically a useless record until we have more ways to engage.
Converted leads require contact information like a phone and email, so our sales team must perform due diligence to qualify a lead. If your company functions in a similar way, reach out to your Salesforce administrator to create a report or dashboard component that will track your conversions.
- Your outbound prospects shrink. Outbound prospects are leads you generate beyond the marketing department’s efforts. Your company’s marketing team has a set budget for the year. They know that budget will generate X number of prospects for you. Your sales goal is likely X + Y number of prospects because most marketing departments don’t have the budget to carry 100% of the lead generation for a company. Don’t let the leads that come to you carry you, because by the fourth quarter you’ll be desperate for wins, and nobody buys from a desperate salesperson.
So get out there and sell. Go to networking events, leverage your social networks to find customers. Write articles on LinkedIn like this one and share it. There are plenty of simple things you can do to generate leads. Trust me when I say you’ll need to do them.
- Your opportunities age. Nobody likes losing a deal, but in sales it’s a fact of life. Sometimes you need to recognize that opportunity you’ve had open for six months is a goner. Why? You need a fresh pipeline so you know where to spend your time, and if you have old opportunities clogging your pipe, you won’t spend your valuable time concentrating on the deals you could win.
By keeping your opportunity volume artificially high (not to mention keeping lost opportunities open also artificially inflates your closing ratio) you won’t feel the pressure to refill the top of your pipeline. You’ll start convincing yourself you need to do less when you should be doing the exact opposite.
- You don’t know your KPIs. If you don’t know your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), it’s time to call your supervisor and have a talk. Your KPIs measure your performance. Your success (or failure) hinges on meeting the benchmarks your organization has set for you. You should know everything about them, from how many calls you need per month to your close ratio, knowing your performance is key to meeting and exceeding your goals. You can find your KPIs via Salesforce dashboards and reports. If you’re not using them, you’re selling in the dark, and that’s never a good place to be.
Memorize these warning signs. Leverage Salesforce to track them, and when you notice one, take action to turn things around before your pipeline dries up. At its core, a sales slump starts from within, not without. Recognize the signs and make a conscious effort to eliminate them. Once you do, you’ll find yourself back in the driver’s seat and busting past your goals.
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