Are You In A Sales Slump? Or Talking Yourself Into One?

Wherever there’s an MSP seller struggling right now, there’s another one who’s crushing it. Can be in the same market, same conditions, same economy—I see it all the time. So if you were in a slump right now from a from a sales standpoint and you’re looking around for reinforcement on why that is, I urge you to stop. Because when you’re looking for reinforcement or validation on external reasons—like other reasons why you might be going through a slump—you’re making your problem worse. And I’m going to walk you through exactly how, because I’ve watched a lot of really good sellers talk themselves into a hole this year and I and I want to help pull you out of that.

So here’s what kicked this off: I was on a sales coaching call recently with a handful of MSP sellers. And they’re all sharing kind of the same thing. After the fourth person and the fifth person, and it was that deals are closing differently this year from what they’ve seen, you know, they things are different this year. And decisions are harder to to get than they were six months ago; they’re getting more verbals, they’re getting these soft commitments, people are getting stuck in the negotiation phase, they’re not getting as many closes, and they’ve got more post-proposal deals that are stalled out in their pipeline than they’ve ever had before.

And the first one goes and they tell their story, then the second one, and the third one, and the fourth one, and they’re going around the room basically reinforcing each other’s beliefs, right? Like reinforcing each other’s opinions about why this is happening. And something struck me as I’m as I’m watching this objectively because I have a lot of context on what’s actually happening in MSP sales right now. I work with 100 sellers every Tuesday, a handful of coaching calls, and I’m hearing from them directly on, you know, discovery calls, proposal calls, closing deals, managing pipelines. And beyond that, I work with a handful of of outside sales reps doing the same thing in my my fractional sales management program. And I speak at, and I attend, and I coach dozens and dozens of other MSPs and at other MSP events. So I get a pretty wide view of what’s happening—like a diverse view from different MSPs, different sellers, different offers, different markets, all that.

And what I know is, yeah, there are stories that are real. Like there are some pipelines that are stalled out right now. Uh, and if you go back and look at six months ago, there are more deals stalled in negotiation phase than there were before. And the data shows some friction. But you know what? There’s also a whole lot of MSP sellers who are absolutely killing it right now. Like they’re closing more deals than they were six months ago or 12 months ago. And I get to see what those sellers are doing too.

So I’m listening to this on the call and I I jumped in and I said, “Like listen, I get it. This feels very real to you, but the last thing that you want to do is you want to start... like you don’t want to start reinforcing limiting beliefs that prolong the actual problem.” And there’s a few things I really want you to hear if you’re if you’re selling as part of this. First, I don’t accept the premise. Like this isn’t an MSP-wide thing. This isn’t a national market thing. Like this is happening to everyone. I have just as many sellers closing as much or more right now as I do sellers who are not. Okay, like when I’m when I’m listening to these calls and you know looking at the pipelines on Tuesday, there are just as many people who are killing it as there are people who are doing worse than they were six months ago. And I get to watch this trend ebb and flow like across individual sellers. By the way, this isn’t just MSPs; this is every industry. And the one thing that’s consistent: wherever there’s somebody who struggles, there’s somebody else who’s winning. That is always the case.

The second thing is, even if it is 100% true that there is some industry-wide thing—like “Oh my gosh, there’s four other people who are struggling with this and also have deals that are stuck in pipeline and aren’t closing as much as they were six months ago”—even if that is true, the last thing that you want to do is accept it. Because if you accept that, you’re a victim. Like you’re the victim of an economic trend, you’re the victim of some industry shift, you’re the victim of something that is outside of your control. And that might make you feel better right now, but it’s terrible for your psychology and and what you do every single day. And who the fuck wants to succumb to something that is completely outside of their control? Not me. Like that’s not the way that I’m wired. Especially when that thing though affects your money and affects your compensation. The last thing that I want to do is accept a reality, or something that I think is a reality, that affects my paycheck that I can’t control. Like I do not want to be in that position. You have the option to simply reject the premise, right? The same way I do. Every time I hear... I used to do political fundraising, it’d always be people, “Well, you know it’s the election cycle and oh it’s this and oh it’s that.” Well, you know what, I hit my my goal for a decade, I you know like for a decade in a row—economic slumps, all these things—and it’s because I don’t accept the premise. I I just simply refuse to believe that I’m powerless over this thing that’s affecting my results. And if I were you, I would too.

Because when you reject that premise, you you go into solution mode. You stop being a victim, you say “Bullshit, there’s somebody else winning, I know there is, I want to know what they’re doing, I want to figure out what it takes to win,” and now you’re back in the driver’s seat. Now you’re back in control of your own destiny.

And then the third thing is: let’s assume that you’re right for a second. Let’s just say it is true there is some trend in MSP sales or whatever industry that you’re in, there’s some circumstance, some economic impact, it’s tariffs, it’s this, it’s that—something is out there and it’s affecting your results. Now what? Like if you’ve accepted that, if you believe that, so what? Like what are you going to do? Like just sit around and wait for it to change? That’s not where I want to be. Like being right in the circumstance doesn’t actually help you. Like the only question that helps you is what gets you back into solution mode.

And then fourth, I will say—and this is actually the most important one—be very, very cognizant of the story that you end up telling yourself and the words that you’re using, because it is affecting your behavior in in ways that you may not be aware of, but in a way that perpetuates the problem. What I mean is when you go into calls thinking, “Ah, man, deals are harder than they’ve ever been and the market’s off and I’m having trouble closing and you know there’s this economic thing that’s happening and MSP trends and this and that”—like trust me on this, I’ve been doing this a long time—the lack of confidence, that self-doubt, that self-talk, it is creating changes in your behavior, in your body language, in your tonality that make it true. And they’re little, they’re small, they’re subtle, they’re little micro-expressions, they’re little tiny shifts in your tonality, things that do not project confidence. And and it creates the spiral downhill for you. By the way, if you’re the type of person who likes breaking this stuff down and actually applying it, I’ve got a newsletter that you could subscribe to completely free; you can sign up at raizemail.com.

So back to this specifically, here’s what I’d do to fix this if you’re in a slump standpoint. First, if you record your sales calls—and you should, by the way, if you’re not start now—but if you record your sales calls, go back and listen to calls from when you were on a hot streak. Go grab five wins, go grab five deals that you actually closed, and listen to the words that you used. Like listen to how you said them, like the pieces of the process that you may have dropped or you let fade out by by accident. Just listen to yourself winning, right? The timing of how you speak and how you say things and what you’re saying when you were winning, you were projecting confidence. Go back and listen to that. And preferably, like do that right before your next sales call or on the way to your next sales call, because that’s going to remind you of how good you can be. It’s it’s going to bring back the bits of the process that that may have faded, that you may not even be aware that are impacting your your sale. It’s going to remind you of the little sound bites, of those little moves, of the things that you said and that you did when you were hot. And when you were confident, when you were projecting confidence, because that confidence is what perpetuates success, not perpetuating losses—it creates the spiral up, whatever the hell is that that’s called.

So if you’re in a sales slump and you’re and you’re looking around for reinforcement or for validation on why, and you’re looking for external circumstance, like that is my best advice to you from 25 years of managing sales people. And as a sales trainer buddy of mine says: the most difficult territory to manage is between the ears. So reject excuse-making, reject being a victim, take back control, remind yourself of when you were kicking ass, and go kick some more ass. Adios.