Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 3 minutes to read.

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It can often feel like you're stuck in a slump until everything clicks and you're master of the universe.

This emotional whiplash is compounded by a feeling that your deals are out of control.

Because sellers aren't in control, buyers decide when, how, and if to buy. Sellers are only in control of inputs and the process.

To get out of a slump:

• Accept that your outputs don't define you and that any slump is temporary
• Identify a daily input you can control and do it daily
• To prepare for sales calls and meetings, pick one input to define success.
• Only compare yourself against your daily input and each meeting's success criteria
• By doing the work, you'll come out the other side.

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**Story Time**

Coach John Wooden is one of the greatest US college basketball coaches ever. His exploits include:

• 10 national championship
• 98 home wins in a row
• 7 undefeated regular seasons

Coach Wooden's crowning sporting glory was winning the national championships seven times on the trot from 1967 to 1973. For context, college players are only available for a maximum of four years. No individual player from the 1967 team was still playing for UCLA in 1971.

In his book Wooden on Leadership, Chapter 14 is titled "Don't look at the scoreboard."

In essence, myopically focus on playing your game to your best efforts. The rest will take care of itself.

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Acceptance

The first thing to do when you're in a slump is accept that things aren't going your way. And that's ok.

A quote attributed to Buddha goes:

This is how you need to treat your current slump: ignore the past, ignore the future, and focus on the present.

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Inputs over Outcomes

The second part of acceptance is understanding that you don't control outcomes (only buyers can decide to buy); you can only control your inputs (dials, emails, LinkedIn DMs, etc).

To get out of a slump, create a minimum number of inputs you have control over, which you can complete every day and should result in the outcomes you want.

Inputs I have used in the past:

• 80 Cold Dials per day
• 30 LinkedIn messages per week
• 20 Emails sent to anyone who might respond per week

Top Tip: Make the volume of the input you choose large enough that you'll inevitably luck into success. This is the power of large numbers; if you do enough of a thing, eventually, it will work. This way, you'll regain the infectious confidence buyers can't get enough of.

Once you have your input or group of inputs, this is your daily priority. No matter what, define your success based on how achieving this input.

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Sales meetings

As you inevitably start booking sales meetings, take the same input approach as above. Create a list of inputs you can control. Examples are:

• Nail the intro
• Ask at least eight questions about pain
• End every call by either BAMFAMing or to BAMFAM at least three ways

Once again, the key is inputs you can control. Even if the buyer doesn't let you BAMFAM, you've achieved your goal by asking three ways.

And on the flip side, even if you close the biggest deal in company history, judge success only on your inputs.

Remember…

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Don't Look at the Scoreboard

It might take a week or a month, but you will see results. If you see absolutely nothing, only change your inputs once a month.

Trust the process and keep going.

As Coach John Wooden would say - Don't Look at the Scoreboard.

When I was getting out of a slump in 2014, 80 dials per day were hard—really hard. This was before auto-diallers. I was manually using my fingers to dial the number on a Panasonic KX Phone. And 80 dials had to fit around 3-6 sales calls every day.

If you stop, you're falling back to luck. That's what got you into a slump in the first place.

Control what you can control and keep going.

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Until next week,
Scott Cowley

PS I'm soft releasing a guide this week - check it out here 7 Closing Techniques to Move Any Deal Forward and please send me your feedback

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