Sales Drying Up? What To Do When You Get Stuck in a Sales Sahara Desert
Every now and then when you least expect it, your sales will dry so fast your mouth puckers. I call it “The Sahara Desert Dry Spell”. When it happens, it will suck every ounce of energy out of you if you don’t know what to do!
When the Sales Well Goes Dry
The reason Sahara Desert Dry Spells are so tough to deal with is because they happen so unexpectedly. It starts when you lose business that you were counting on, usually due to changes outside your control. If you get caught unprepared, what follows is a Sahara Desert Dry Spell.
It happened to me when I lost FOUR of my largest television advertising accounts in one year. Nothing to do with me, but I was left scrambling to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Losing those HUGE clients was a really tough lesson, especially as 100% commission salesperson. It forced me to become REALLY CREATIVE and also to make sure it never happened to me again.
So What Is a Sahara Sales Desert?
You’re selling like crazy, working your little buns off and then WHAM the sales start disappearing and you start to panic. The key to avoiding the dry spell from hell is knowing what to do.
Plan Ahead! If you are too busy working in your business instead of ON your business, you will have one dry spell after another. You must plan ahead and determine the months of the year that your sales increase or decrease and then create a strategy on what to do!
Have Some Reserves! (Camels Do!) Most people in business are under-capitalized. You have to SAVE or have access to money to help you weather a DRY SPELL so you don’t react in a manner that is totally short-term thinking. A dry spell is not a good reason to cancel advertising, stop promoting yourself, or not invest any professional development. If you are at that point, then you aren’t making wise business decisions and you have more DRY SPELLS in your future. GUARANTEED.
Don’t Have All Your Water On One Camel! It happened to me and it could happen to you. Who is your biggest client? Now imagine that client goes out of business, retires, chooses another provider – where would YOU BE? Don’t keep all of your revenue in a handful of clients otherwise if something goes wrong – you will need a HANDFUL OF KLEENEX!
Make Sure You Are Headed For An Oasis and NOT a Mirage! Do you have realistic sales targets? Do you have an established sales and marketing plan for the next year or are you WINGING IT? How much do you want to earn this year? Write out in detail how you are going to achieve that goal.
Remember this piece of advice: “Dig the well before you are thirsty.” Otherwise you will be looking at a dry bank account because your sales have flat-lined or dropped. Get creative with your sales and become your own rainmaker!
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Kim Duke is CEO and Founder of The Sales Divas, www.salesdivas.com, she’s an international sales expert who provides savvy, sassy sales training for women entrepreneurs (with a twist!)
Her extensive sales background was based in the media – 15 years working with 2 of Canada’s largest national television networks in sales and management.
She is a national award winning salesperson – and was the second youngest sales manager in Canada for CBC Television (Canada’s oldest network).
Now Kim is a successful entrepreneur – providing training for companies internationally. (she’s even done work for the NBA/WNBA in New York and Office Depot!)
Kim’s first love is working with women entrepreneurs and women in sales - she loves helping women succeed! And she doesn’t want you to break a nail dialing for dollars!!
She’s an author, and speaker who’s had numerous interviews for national television, radio and print across North America. Kim also writes hundreds of articles for newsletters and websites internationally.
She’s bold, she’s sassy and she says it like it is –sign up at www.salesdivas.com to receive her FREE 30-page report: The 5 Biggest Sales Mistakes Women Make.