Best-Trust: Ideas for Growing Sales in Tough Times
In a tough economy 80% of all profits are the results of internal
decisions and 20% due to external circumstances. In a great economy the
percentages are reversed. (Gerhard Gschwandtner)
What kind of Sales Year do you expect 2009 to be? I hope a GREAT one!
But to make it a successful year you will require good plans, well
executed and a dose of good fortune.
But even as you look forward to a great 2009, economists across the
world are predicting a global recession. If the experiences of the last
quarter of the year are anything to go by it would be wise to assume
their predictions will be true. Even if you disagree with them there is
already too much of doom prophecy in the air. This prophecy is likely to
be self fulfilling.
With an economic slowdown there will be general decline in demand for
most products. People and businesses have access to less money and will
consequently tend to spend less. Most Individuals will tend to buy
services and products that are essential for their survival, increase
their earning power and help cut costs of living. Businesses will spend
only to keep their business going on, cut costs or increase their
revenues to some extent.
This situation has a very unpleasant truth to sales leaders and sales
people. Selling in 2009 will be harder than in the last year. This may
sound pessimistic but real optimists will see opportunities in the
situation. They will grab these opportunities, beat competition through
creative products, marketing and sales strategies. They will grow their
revenues and achieve higher profit margins.
How will they do this? A lot of advice, ideas and tips on how to sell
in slowing down economy have been in circulation for some weeks now.
The soundness of wisdom in this advice will be evaluated through results
generated. We have gone through a lot of these ideas and here are seven
of which we believe will help organizations not only succeed but thrive
in the year ahead.
1.Commitment to development of Sales Competencies. It will be very
difficult to achieve better results in 2009 using the same level of
competencies you used in the last year. It will be more important to
improve the skills, knowledge and motivation of the sales people and
managers to be able to excel in a tougher market situation. It will be
critical to focus on competency development through coaching and
effective training.
It is a fact that when the economy is not doing well the training
budget is among the first casualties but failure to invest some
resources in equipping those who bring the life into the business
(salespeople and sales leaders) will only make a bad year worse.
Although being thrifty is essential ; it will be important for sales
leaders, training managers and sales trainers to develop competency
development programmes that are not only cost effective but offer
guaranteed results improvement and require minimal time since selling
time is the only resource that will neither be more or less in 2009.
2.Follow a Formalized Sales Process which will increase win rates,
reduce time and financial wastage, shorten the salescycle, increase deal
size, remove obstacles for customers to buy from you and build
profitable business relationships.
Probably, this will be the single most important factor that will
determine your 2009 sales success or lack of it. Most firms have been
operating without one. But in a situation where it is harder and more
expensive to get a top performing sales person as it will be in 2009 ;it
will be like attempting to swim wearing a heavy woolen jacket. But as
the economy becomes tougher and competition stiffer even with the best
sales people in your team you will need to have one that is followed to
the letter.
3.Hire, develop and keep highly optimistic sales people and sustain
positive attitude throughout the year. The most successful sales people
have very optimistic world view. Various studies have shown optimistic
sales people sell more and stay longer in a sales job. One of the
studies showed that optimistic sales people outsell their pessimistic
colleagues by 300%.
Optimists will also stick with you longer in hard times. Pessimistic
new salespeople last in a tough sales job only for a few months while
optimists will be in it for at least two years.
As As an organization you need to build channels of positive communication and adopt a culture that provides for passion and oozing motivation in all people who interact with the customer. Even as you tend to cut costs don't cut costs on sales people motivation which is equivalent to cutting the hand that feeds you.
As As an organization you need to build channels of positive communication and adopt a culture that provides for passion and oozing motivation in all people who interact with the customer. Even as you tend to cut costs don't cut costs on sales people motivation which is equivalent to cutting the hand that feeds you.
4.Customer Focused Selling Approaches: When there is so much news of
real or perceived economic slowdown it becomes ten times more important
to adopt customer focused sales approaches. The customers will not want
to spend one more penny than necessary to solve their problems. It is
then important for the sales person to have almost flawless ability to
identify the customer's pain (or pleasure points) and match the
attributes and advantages of what you are selling to these pains (and
pleasures).
5.Positive Price Communication: In 2009 buyers will ask tougher
questions related to price and they will base many of their buying
decisions on price. They will actually try to live with their problems
than spend to solve them which will mean that one of the biggest price
competitors to a salesperson will be status quo. Therefore, it will be
necessary for the salesperson to communicate his prices in the best
positive way possible. Whether this communication is in verbal
presentations or written proposals and quotations it will need to be in a
format that gets the customer to see more value than cost otherwise
forget the sale. Infact the value should prove that the person will lose
by maintaining the status quo.
6.Account Management: Many organizations get at least 60% of their
sales from existing customers. But this is the year that most of these
customers will become more open to propositions from competition
(especially if they are less than excited about your handling them). As
you think how to excel in 2009 the first set decisions you need to make
are on how to handle existing customers as the foundation of your
business.
Most businesses that fail start by having their old customers stop
buying from them. As you think of old customers you will have to think
beyond maintaining these accounts to growing them €"getting as much
business from them as possible.
7.Build 3Rs of Buying Decisions: Remember people buy from sellers who
present lowest perceived risk of buying from. This risk is affected by
what we term as 3Rs of Buying Decision €" Relationship, Reputation and
Reliability.
People will be more risk averse when there is too much news in the
market advising them to be cautious. They will be less willing to
experiment on ideas (products and services) whose results are less than
obvious and worse if these ideas are from unreliable or unknown players
in the market.
If you have built good relationships with your customers 2009 is the year to get most out of them since they will tend to be more conservative in their experimentation. But for those who have been unreliable you better clean up your mess immediately since your unreliability will be scrutinized more and found to have more negative effect than you can imagine. Unreliable sellers can have only one reprieve sell on lower prices for some time.
If you have built good relationships with your customers 2009 is the year to get most out of them since they will tend to be more conservative in their experimentation. But for those who have been unreliable you better clean up your mess immediately since your unreliability will be scrutinized more and found to have more negative effect than you can imagine. Unreliable sellers can have only one reprieve sell on lower prices for some time.
You will therefore need to work harder to be perceived as a less risky person to buy from by focusing on the 3 Rs.
I believe by putting into action one or more of these ideas you will
get closer to sales success. I hope you will find it worthwhile to
seriously consider these ideas and implement them throughout the year.
(These ideas are applicable today as they were during the global recession. Business environment has not become easier.)
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