A sales slump has one main cause, and it isn't what your rep thinks it is. It's statistics catching up with them. They ran above their real close rate for a while, now they're settling back to it, and it feels like falling off a cliff even though nothing about their ability changed. There's a smaller second cause, where a rep gets so tactical they turn into a robot. Mostly, though, it's just math.
Your rep has a close rate. A hot stretch is a spike above it. A cold stretch is the number coming home. The close rate never moved. Nobody lost their touch. That's the whole diagnosis for most of the slumps I see.
This is the part that messes with people. When the numbers spike up, nobody calls a meeting about it. They celebrate. Same rep, same math, spike down, and suddenly they can't do anything right.
Both spikes are the same distance from the same average. Show your rep the dip is the mirror image of the high they were bragging about in March, and a lot of the time the spiral breaks right there.
There's a partial cause we see with clients. A rep gets so locked in on the how that they walk into meetings repeating be tactical, be tactical, be tactical in their head, and they lose their humanity. Buyers feel it immediately. That one's fixable too, and the fix is usually giving them permission to be a person again.
Start by taking the blame off the person. Left alone, a rep in a slump will sit there and decide they can't make anything happen. Nope. Show them the close rate is intact. Show them the dip is a normal swing and not a verdict on who they are. A rep who believes they've lost their ability starts selling scared, and scared selling drags the dip out a lot longer than the math ever would.
Call the slump what it is and you take the fear out of it. Leave it alone, and you'll watch a good rep talk themselves into being a bad one.
Frequently asked questions
What causes a sales slump?
Most slumps are statistics catching up with a rep. After a stretch of above-average results, performance settles back toward the real close rate. It feels like failure even though the rep's ability hasn't changed.
How do you get a salesperson out of a slump?
Show them it's math and not failure. Their close rate hasn't moved, and the dip is the mirror image of an earlier high. Take the personal blame off the table and they go back to selling like themselves.
Is a sales slump the rep's fault?
Usually not. It's typically statistics returning to average. The one thing worth checking is whether the rep has gone so tactical that they've lost their natural style, which has its own fix.