How are your sales doing right now?

Because secretly a lot of sales professionals who sell services are concerned that their sales are slowing down.

Now don’t get me wrong, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic… but there are other reasons that your sales might be slowing down too.

So in this post I’m going to show you why a sales slump might not be anything to worry about and what do to when you feel like you’re sales are slowing down.

WHY IS BUSINESS SLOW?

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to change your sales success rates. But if your sales have slowed down over the past few months then there might be other factors in play as well.

The first thing to do when sales slow down is to troubleshoot what the REAL problem is.

There are three variables that you should consider when trying to work out why sales are slow. They are –

* Inbound interest – Has the level of interest for the service you sell dried-up? For example, your service might be seasonal. If you’re selling accounting services, the end of the tax year is going to be busier than in the middle of it.* Sales pipeline – If the level of inbound interest for your product has not changed, then the next variable to examine is your sales pipeline. You need to determine if you are you able to capture the interest the market has in your service. If you’re unable to capture attention and drive it through your sales pipeline over time your sales will slow.* Closing percentage – Finally, if the market is interested in your service, you’re able to capture this interest and drive it through a sales pipeline, yet your sales are still slowing down, the closing end of your sales process must be the issue.

So before you start blaming the pandemic for your selling slow down, ask yourself if any of these variables have changed over the past 12 months.

There are lots of issues that can affect inbound interest, sales pipelines and closing percentages. Here are a few examples –

* Disruptive innovations from your competitors* Your service being commoditized and cheaper versions brought to market* Regular economic upturns and downturns* Legal or legislative changes* Changes in customer facing members of staff

Your mission should you choose to accept it, is to uncover where the issues are. Once you uncover what the real issue is that is causing your sales slow down, you can try one of the following 6 ways to eliminate it.

#1 Better lead generation

No matter what the issue is that is slowing down your sales, 9 times out of 10, if you put in a few extra hours a day on lead generation, these issues disappear. At least in the short term anyway.

Also ask yourself if you’re doing less lead generation now than you were 12 months ago. I know when the pandemic first hit I personally went quiet with Salesman.org as I struggled to figure out what to do next and that lack of activity at the beginning of the year effected my sales pipeline for months afterwards.

#2 Robust sales planning

If your sales have ground to a complete halt, it’s time to stop, take a couple of days away from your usual daily selling activities and create new a plan of action.

Albert Einstein once said –

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

So if things are slowing right down you might need to take a different approach to your selling.