Tips To Beat the Summer Sales Slump

BY Jessica Helinski
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We are now in the dog days of summer–a time when many salespeople experience a seasonal sales slump, which in turn can wreak havoc on sales quotas. But there are ways to boost productivity and keep on top of your goals during this quarter. In a Business2Community article, Kim Staib shares four quick tips to keep on track–even when you’re getting “out of office” replies from vacationing prospects. Three of those tips are below:

  • Take excellent notes. Every single conversation with a prospect should be recorded with carefully made notes and filed away for future reference. “The knowledge you gain with each conversation is knowledge you can leverage with different contacts or with that same prospect when re-​engaging them months down the road,” Staib explains.
  • Maintain full pipeline visibility. Rigorously review the notes you take (see above tip!), and ask yourself questions to uncover opportunity, such as “Who did I talk to?,” “Who asked me to ‘check back in’?,” and “How much information do I already have on that account?” Analyze your prospects and determine where each should be in your pipeline–or if he or she even belongs in the pipeline at all. Doing this will also help you identify high-​priority tasks that need attention, keep your pipeline flowing, and prevent the need for last-​minute pipeline maintenance at the end of the quarter or year.
  • Call, call, call. Don’t stop picking up the phone and getting in front of prospects. “The more people you call, the quicker you are able to navigate through the account and reach that contact identified, or CI. CIs are either decision makers or valuable influencers that can help you get to the next step,” she writes. Also, you may need to try a few times to reach those who are out for vacation or other summer activities. Starting now will  buy you a lot of time before the year ends.

If you find yourself in the middle of a summer slowdown, use Staib’s tips to get active and prep the path to reach your sales quota. Work you do now will pay off when 2016 ends!


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