Poor Economy, Rich Rewards
While some sectors of the economy have been hard hit, it's a good bet that most of the customers and prospective customers in your market are still buying. It's just as good a bet that some, perhaps many, of your competitors with short-term growth strategies have pulled in the reins on their sales and marketing efforts.
What does that mean for you?
It means that it is time for you to expand your efforts. Maintaining a long-term perspective may be difficult, but the rewards are great. Traditionally, the companies that didn't "pull in the reins" during economic downturns were the ones that ended up with a bigger market share when the economy recovered.
While your competitors are sitting in their offices, worrying about the state of the economy and losing market share, you can be out in the marketplace making contacts, developing new relationships, closing sales, and gaining market share.
The rewards won't be automatic. You will have to be focused, organized, and diligent. And, you'll need an effective process for identifying and qualifying opportunities. But, if you are willing to put in the effort... the rewards will materialize.
Is your current sales approach coming up short?
For many salespeople, their market landscape is changing. If you provide a product or service that fits specific, easily defined needs and for which there are many competing suppliers, it is likely that buyers have begun to look at your products and services as "commodities" - items to purchase from the supplier who provides the most incentives or makes the most concessions. The "extra value" you and your company may be able to bring to the table will be ignored - if it's even recognized - when the customer is intently focused on price or other concessions. On this landscape, it could be argued, salespeople will eventually become unnecessary. Customers will make purchases from catalogues or over the Internet from the suppliers that have the best combination of lowest price, best terms, and fastest delivery.
For salespeople who must first analyze prospective customer situations, challenges, and goals and then develop custom solutions, the situation is quite different. In today's economic climate, characterized by rapid change and accelerated growth of technology, companies are trying to accomplish more with less... and in shorter periods of time. Those initiatives create more complex problems that require more complex solutions. These solutions often require a greater depth of knowledge about the challenge and potential solutions than the company possesses. In these situations, salespeople who possess that knowledge are invaluable in helping the prospect fully analyze their situation and evaluate potential solutions.
Selling opportunities for products and services that fit the "commodity" profile will not vanish. However, there will be fewer of them, and the rewards from those endeavors will likely be limited. Opportunities in the custom solutions arena, on the other hand, are growing. Salespeople who are willing to invest the time, energy, and effort to become experts about the challenges faced by the market they serve and potential solutions available will be better able to compete in this arena... and be better compensated.
After 1 year of implementing a National sales training program with Terry Ledden's group my team has experienced a 53% increase in new business productivity per sales rep year over year. We also experienced a very consistent rate of new business growth across the year and by sales rep; forecasting accuracy and pipeline quality have both improved dramatically.
Rob Farrell Vice President of Sales in document management