Episode 3:The Lows

Last week I was flying.

Got back on the phone. Did a few hundred dials. Had great conversations. Booked four meetings from four different channels. Cold call. LinkedIn outreach. LinkedIn post. Cold email. Everything was clicking.

This week? Flat as a pancake.

That's the bit nobody talks about.

In my first newsletter, I wrote about walking away from two deals. Episode 2 was about winning two. Both felt honest. But if I only ever posted the highs, I'd be doing sales a disservice. And I'd be lying.

So this one is about the lows. The real ones.

The fear of not hitting target. The constant rejection. The deal you thought was done that falls apart at the last minute. The competitive pressure that never fully switches off, even on a Sunday evening.

And the stigma. Sales is still a dirty word to most people. You tell someone at a party what you do and you can feel the energy shift. Like you've just admitted to something.

I've felt all of it. For 15 years.

It started on the streets of London doing charity fundraising. Asking strangers to stop, listen, and care. Most of them didn't. You learn fast that rejection isn't personal, but your body doesn't always get the memo.

That pattern has followed me through every role since, right through to JumpLead, where there's no salary, no safety net, and every month starts at zero.

Chris May (opens in a new tab) and I bootstrapped this from scratch. No funding. No fallback. When the pipeline goes quiet, you feel it in your chest.

They always follow the highs. Always. Last week's dopamine hit from booking four meetings was incredible. But the comedown is real. You wake up on Monday expecting that same energy and it's just not there. The calls don't land. The inbox is quiet. Your brain starts telling you stories about how last week was a fluke.

It's not a fluke. It's the game.

Yesterday was a perfect example. I woke up and genuinely considered sacking it off. Having a lazy day. Telling myself I'd earned it after last week.

The old me might have done that. The new me doubles down when that mindset kicks in.

So I sat down and dialled. 141 dials. 25 connects. 9 good conversations. No meeting booked.

On paper, that looks like a bad day. In reality, it pulled me out of the slump. The act of doing the work changed how I felt about the work. Then I dragged myself to the gym and felt instantly better. Not because anything external changed. Because I moved.

I wish there was a superpower for consistent thinking. Some switch you could flip that keeps your head level regardless of what the pipeline looks like. But the mind will have its moments. You learn to cope with them better over time, but the feeling never fully goes away.

Sales is not about winning every day.

Joe Stone

You could book five meetings one week and none the next doing the exact same activity. Same calls. Same emails. Same effort. Completely different results. That's the reality nobody puts on a LinkedIn post.

In both situations, you keep it in the day and keep going.

That's the whole secret, if you can call it that. You don't wait for motivation. You don't wait for the pipeline to warm up. You don't wait for the fear to pass. You just keep moving, and eventually the results catch up.

JumpLead (opens in a new tab) exists because consistency in sales is very difficult to achieve. Chris and I have over 35 years of experience learning that the hard way. We built a business around it because we know what happens when the activity stops.

So if you're reading this and the bad days impact you more than you'd care to admit, you're not alone. That's not weakness. That's sales.

And if you want to talk about it, or you want help building the kind of consistency that keeps the pipeline moving even when your head isn't in it, drop me a DM. Or book a free 30-minute call, Let's find your next client, at jumplead.io/review.

See you in a few weeks.

Joe StoneCo-founder, JumpLead