After playing three seasons of baseball for the UCLA Bruins, Jermaine Curtis bounced around the minor leagues between 2007 and 2020, and had, as they say, a cup of coffee in the Majors for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013.
You don’t play baseball for more than three decades without learning a few things about batting — and about getting yourself out of a hitting slump. Curtis’ four-step process for getting out of a batting slump is applicable emerging from sales slumps as well.
Step 1: Stop listening to people giving you advice.
“I would start messing with my swing and my mechanics, and start listening to everyone. They mean well, but [what they’re pointing out] is probably not the issue,” Curtis says. “The issue is your confidence is gone and you forgot what you do well.” Listen to those you respect, Curtis advises, but don’t listen to the 9-hole hitter who says your back elbow needs to come up.
Step 2: Forget about your stats.
Focus on the fundamentals that lead to sales, not on how many deals you’re closing. “In this game, you can control the process, but you can’t control the results,” Curtis says. Sounds a lot like sales.
Step 3: Retrain your brain to think about the process.
Find the positives of each prospect interaction. If Curtis battled through a double-digit pitch count at-bat and ultimately got out, he told himself it was a quality at-bat and if he kept doing that, he was about to be on fire. Learn from each pitch, whether or not it has a successful outcome.
Step 4: Brag about your successes out loud.
“When you get that hit that breaks you out of a slump, you need to tell yourself, ‘This is the player I am.’” (Note to managers: You need to celebrate your reps’ slump-busting sales deals loudly too.)
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