Don’t Let a Bad Sales Week Turn into a Bad Sales Month

By Michelle Bendien

Are you having a bad sales day? We’ve all been here. Shrug it off. Chalk it up to being “just one of those days,” go home, relax, read something inspirational, and get a good night’s sleep.

What about a bad sales week? Anyone in sales for at least a few months probably knows what a bad sales week looks like. Experienced sales professionals realize a bad sales week can turn into a bad sales month which can quickly snowball into a down quarter and potentially lead to a disappointing year.

Bad sales days, even weeks, happen to the best salespeople. However, top-performing sales pros understand it’s wise to self-critique and see if any negative patterns exist so you can make adjustments when necessary.

How Are You Prioritizing Your Time? 

Here’s a great activity to determine if you use your time best during working hours.

Take one week and meticulously write down every activity and how long you spend doing it. Then, at the end of the week, analyze your findings. How much time are you consuming wastefully? And how much time are you spending on behaviors that lead to productive results?

Be brutal in your analysis. Then, prepare a strategy for eliminating the time wasters. Become intentional about maximizing your time on activities that produce sales.

What Are Your Buyers Saying? 

A drop-off in sales is only sometimes the fault of the salesperson. Sometimes the culprit is the product itself.

A salesperson “whining” that the reduction in sales is not their fault will often fall on deaf ears at the managerial level – unless the salesperson can back up their claims with data.

Are you able to quantify what’s happening? Record how many prospects you are seeing and the frequency of specific objections. If you can show management enough people with a particular problem with your product or process, they are much more likely to pay attention!

What’s Happening with Your Competition?

Here’s another way to isolate variables to see what’s happening in your market.

“The competition isn’t selling either,” isn’t an excuse for poor sales performance. But a quick check-in to discover what’s happening with your competition can lead to uncovering trends within the broader marketplace.

You may discover the market is shifting, and your business needs to figure out how to adapt. Your market is cooling off, and you need to reconnect with consumers to determine what they want and make strategic business adjustments.

Moving with the market is a characteristic of every high-performing company. And you could be the spark that keeps your company from the slide toward market irrelevance.

Ultimately, a bad sales day (or even a bad sales week) is not the end of the world. But ignoring extended bad sales trends can lead to big problems.

• Focus on your behaviors.
• Control what you can control.
• Keep up with what’s happening in your market and outsmart the competition.

If you do, you’ll make the most of those bad sales days and become an even better sales professional.