Slump

A period of time during which a person goes without an object or action.

Example: Billy has had no hits in the past month, he must be in a slump.

If you’re in any kind of competitive activity where you deal with people on a daily basis like Sales or Dating, you know that even the best of us will get into periods of sustained failure called “slumps.”

If you reach an intermediate level where you start to get laid once a month or start selling in the top 30% of your peers, you will eventually have to deal with the dreaded slump.

You might even be in one right now.

In my experience, slumps typically happen whenever something in your current environment changes. Maybe you move to a new city and now find dating more difficult than before. Maybe you start cold calling or cold emailing a new list for sales and that’s why you’re struggling to land clients compared to before.

So what causes slumps in dating or sales and how do you break out of them if you’re in one?

I’ll share two experiences. One in Dating, and One in Sales.

Dating

Background: I had just gotten to an intermediate level in dating in Boston, where I got laid once every couple months or so and found a long term girlfriend.

Slump: That’s when my best friend invited me to New York to start a Real Estate company with him. Boom. Instant slump. Could not for the life of me get laid, no matter how many girls I approached. At one point, I approached over 800 women and went on only 3 dates total, with no lays. It was really demoralizing stuff and I almost went back to my crazy ex-girlfriend…

What I tried to break out of the slump: Posting daily on forums asking for advice, trying my best to follow vague advice like “Stop being needy” or “It’s all in your head bro” or “Just be yourself”… and my personal favorite… “Don’t overthink it!” That led to a whole rabbit hole of meditating for an hour and a half at a time to “get out of my head”.

Did it work?: Nope, none of it worked, I was still in a slump 5 months later.

What actually worked?: Getting lucky enough to find the right mentor who taught me to fix my hairstyle, fashion, and body language since that’s the first thing women notice about me when I approach.

Analyzing in field recordings of what I say and most importantly HOW I SAY IT. Figured out I was a monotone, autistic sounding sperg. So I took acting lessons and figured out that the key to sounding more enthusiastic (in a realistic way, not in an overly enthusiastic fake way) is to match your body language to whatever emotion you’re trying to convey. If you’re feeling sad, then go put your head in your arms while hunched over as if you’re really crying into your arms and then talk to someone and notice how you really do look sad. If you want to convey excitement, start jumping up and down and doing jumping jacks and running around, then talk to someone and notice how you really do sound pumped up without trying to force it. The body language controls the emotion.

With these changes, I ended up going way past my original starting point and got to a level where I would get laid pretty much every night I went out, with the only exceptions being if there were crazy logistical issues to deal with.

Sales

And now let’s talk about a Sales Slump I had 4 years later, where I go door to door selling security systems for my company. This is actually something that happened only 3 months ago so it’s still fresh in my mind.

Background: I was assigned a really “good” neighborhood and absolutely dominated, selling more in a week than I typically sell in 3.

I finally exhausted all my supply of leads in the “good” neighborhood and found myself in a new one that didn’t look as good on the surface.

There I was knocking doors. Getting no results for 2 days straight.

Last time I was in a slump for dating, it took me 5 months to break out.

But this time, I was older, and wiser.

I asked myself, hmm, how is it that I’m actually coming across to others?

So I pressed the record button on my phone as I was knocking doors. Analyzed the audio and figured out that I was talking too fast because I was in a “rush” to find deals. Completely frantic, rushed energy at the doors. Slowed down and got way more people to at least hear me out, though I still wasn’t getting good results.

Therefore, I asked myself another question. Hmm, how do I look when I’m talking to these people in my neighborhood?”

Flipped my phone around and started recording myself doing a practice pitch just in selfie mode to myself. Discovered that now that we were in the middle of the Summer, I could barely keep my eyes open while talking to other people because the sunlight was too intense. You have to understand, I’m Asian so… if I’m squinting… it looks like my eyes are closed lol

Invested in a pair of sunglasses.

True story, I sold 3 deals in one day after that small adjustment.

Lessons Learned:

If you’re in a slump with dating or sales, the natural reaction is to blame a change in environment, or to start looking for advice online, asking people you know, maybe even taking a week-long vacation to clear your mind.

All I know is for me personally, none of the following generic slump busting advice worked:

“Stop being needy”

“It’s all in your head bro”

“Just be yourself”…

“Don’t overthink it!”

What actually worked was putting myself in the other person’s shoes and actually try to see what others see and hear what others hear when they interact with me.

For overcoming my dating slump, it was meeting the right mentor who could point out these mistake and correct them.

For my sales slump, many years later, I did the same thing to myself, by recording a video of myself and noticing “wait a minute, my eyes are squinting so much they’re practically shut!”

Therefore, the key to overcoming a slump in anything having to do with people is Empathy.

Simply flipping your phone into selfie mode and recording a brief video of yourself will give you more useful information on how you can actually break out of your slump than any of the standard “it’s all a mental game” advice.

Because at the end of the day, people are people. They’re not baseballs where you really do need to get out of your head and just let your body put bat to ball.

People require constant awareness of how you are coming across to them when you’re communicating to them.

That’s what ultimately determines your success rate in dating or sales.

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