At one time or another, we’ve all wished that people came with an instruction manual. A guide that answered questions no one thinks to ask and provides information we often forget to share. Every big-ticket, important, valuable item comes with instructions. Why are people any different?  

The beauty of humanity is that we’re all unique. However, our differences often lead to frustration, miscommunication, lack of productivity, and can even end up threatening our job performance. How can you bypass miscommunication and anxiety? Develop a personal user guide!

Slumps happen to everyone. No matter how good you are or how long you have been in sales, sooner or later you're going to hit a sales slump. And they always seem to come at the very worst times. (Actually, when is it ever good to go into a slump?)

It’s never exactly the same, but it sometimes looks like this: You've put a lot of time and energy into a prospect, and thought for sure he or she would say yes—but the person gives you a NO. A client has been with you every month for the past 6 months, but then calls you up and says they need to take the next couple of months off. The appointment you have been working so hard to set tells you to call back in 6 months. 

Sales managers bemoan slumps just as much as salespeople do. If you're a sales manager, you need your people hitting their numbers so you can in turn hit yours. It’s difficult to watch anyone struggle, particularly people you feel responsibility for. As the manager, you are a developer of people and of talent. You need to grow your people, and you take that job seriously.  

So how do you get out of a slump if you're in one? Here are four steps to help your salespeople break out of a slump.

My favorite book in high school was George Orwell's Animal Farm. If you haven't read it, it is an allegorical novel that tells the story of how Communism took over Russia and ultimately ruined their economy. I loved this book because a) it's brilliant, and b) it's a great defender of capitalism, which I LOVE!

If you are a manager with a struggling seller, this blog post is for you!

Too often, managers place the blame of a struggling seller at the feet of the struggling seller. This is usually a mistake. There is a better way to find out what is causing the seller’s lack of performance, and it involves an analysis of the following five things:

• Talent and Fit
• Relationship
• Expectations
• Feedback
• Compensation

If someone has the “gift of gab” they're often told that they should go into sales. Which often, just gives salespeople a bad name. Think about it. None of us like the salesperson who just keeps talking. The one that knows everything and is willing to tell us every detail. Are you talking about something the other person expressed interest in?

Recently, I spoke to a sales management group on four things that they can do to improve sales performance, and this is what I shared with them.

1. Recruitment

Always be recruiting. 24/7. 365. The battle for top sales talent these days has never been harder. You always have to be recruiting. Not just when you have an opening.

We all have needs, and those needs drive us to spend time and money addressing them. In sales, we count on the needs of our prospects and clients to motivate them to buy. For decades, it has been a good sales process to focus on client needs. Needs are good, but they are not the complete picture.

Learning about client needs used to set the better salespeople apart from the package pushers.

On a personal level, we don’t focus on our needs to solve a problem. We focus on what we want. When we’re hungry, we focus on getting food, when we’re tired we focus on getting some sleep, and if we need to hit a goal this quarter, we focus on getting the next sale.

I've worked with thousands of salespeople over two decades now, and it's interesting that so many salespeople are still afraid to have candid discussions about the results a client is seeking and how well what they have sold them is working.

Many sellers wax eloquently about the features and benefits of their product, and especially why it’s a much better value than the competition. At the end of the day, whether or not you get an order, and certainly whether or not you keep your client onboard for a long time, depends on the results you deliver—even if the person you sell to never mentions it.

It’s the sales leader’s job is to pay attention to both what is working and what is not working in the sales department and to make the appropriate adjustments so that the sales force has the best possible chance for success. To do that, the sales leader must pay attention to several things including sales process, sales activity, sales analytics (KPI’s), and of course, the customer.

In fact, paying attention to the customer is perhaps the most important of them all. In recent years, the way that customers have been engaging with sales has changed significantly. If you are a sales leader and you have not adapted the way you run your sales department, then you might find yourself slowly starting to lose ground to the competition.

“Wow, this is the best campaign recap I’ve ever received!”

As a seller, have you ever heard this from a customer? The odds of getting this type of feedback are low. Don’t feel bad because most campaign recaps are mediocre at best. Most are a bunch of data that do not tell a story. Most are forgettable at best.