Sales Strategies for Selling in a Down Economy

• Revisit current and past customers to try to re-, up- and cross- sell the accounts.  There is no better opportunity than one where your offering is already working and proven.  While you are at it, ask each of them if you may use him/her as a reference.
• Fully investigate your large clients to uncover other sales opportunities that may have been overlooked in other business units, divisions, functions, locations, subsidiaries, and related companies.  Leverage existing customers to provide referrals and references.
• Research and pursue your customer's competitors.  Your experience and success in the "industry" goes a long way to help sell your offering.
• If possible, shift or refine your target market(s) to sectors less affected by the down-turn.  Use projected economic growth indicators to help make your assessment.
• Dedicate your most effective sales people (the "hunter-closers") to developing and closing existing sales opportunities and allocate the others to building your sales pipeline.  Your sales pipeline is your most important asset, next to paying customers during a down-turn.  Augment your internal prospecting efforts with a reputable sales prospecting outsource company to rapidly build your sales pipeline.  (Please check out our services in this area).
• Invigorate your sales team by providing them with new sales opportunities to pursue and/or expanding their sales territories to include new geographies and/or markets.
• Amplify the prospect's interest in and perceived value of your offering by helping them envision how they will directly use and benefit from it.  This is a subtle way to develop urgency and position your offering as the best solution.  Once the prospect has a good understanding of your offering, ask him/her how he/she sees using your "solution" and where he/she sees it benefitting him/her.
• To overcome a competitive sales situation, review the prospect's needs and requirements with him/her while trying to identify other needs that can only be addressed by your solution.  Gain additional leverage by applying the suggestion above, asking the prospect to envision how he/she would use and benefit from your solution.
• When competing on price, present your offering with the necessary basic capabilities matching those of the competition as the cost-effective solution, then offer your solution's differentiating capabilities as upgrades and enhancements at an additional cost approaching your offering's original price.
• During times of slow-economic growth and limited funding, buyers tend to be much more discriminating and averse to risk and change.  Sympathize with the buyer's situation and spend more time reassuring them that they are making a wise decision.  Support your position by:
  
  • Showing how you have helped others like them
  • Working with the prospect to identify a list of objections, then address each one individually and thoroughly, until the prospect is willing to cross it off the list, considering it a non-issue.
  • Facilitating a return-on-investment assessment by working with the prospect to develop a comprehensive list of benefits and related pay-back.  Come prepared with a complete list of benefits and, if possible, the corresponding pay-back experienced by customers similar to the prospect.
• Establish a standardized sales process to increase selling performance and prospect quality by promoting consistency in prospect development.
• Identify and work closely with business partners who offer products and services complementary to yours.  Two companies working closely together can increase sales performance for no increase in the cost of sales & marketing, not to mention the positives that come from stimulating productive sales discussions and friendly competition.
• Exhibit confidence and a positive attitude about selling to your sales team who in turn will express it when selling.

Sales Prospecting Strategies for Selling in a Down Economy

• Establish a clear definition of a suspect, prospect, and desirable customer (yes, there are undesirable customers), then use it as a standard to help guide prospecting efforts and control prospect quality.  Pursuing bad opportunities is the number one time-waster in Sales & Marketing.
• Target high in the organization.  Focus on the executive(s) who will have the economic and/or operational approval authority for your offering.  Specify and and then identify these individuals by their Area-of-Responsibility (AOR), instead of their titles, since titles vary widely by industry and even within a company.  Targeting high avoids getting bogged down with influencers and others who can insulate you from the decision-maker(s) and those who unintentionally or intentionally may misrepresent the needs of the company.
• When approaching a senior executive, to avoid the discussion transitioning to a technical "question and answer session" or being redirected to a lower level more technical buyer, keep the discussion at a high, strategic issue level.  (See the Messaging section for how to accomplish this).
• Reassess the value, quality, and level of development of the sales opportunities in your sales pipeline and sales forecast.  Return poorly qualified opportunities to the sales prospectors for further work and requalification or relegate them to the "bad fit" heap.  Maintain a bad fit database for future reference.  During recessionary periods, revisit the opportunities in your pipeline more frequently, as your prospects may change their position based on the performance of the economy.
• Confirm that all opportunities in your pipeline have a next step follow-up date even if they are not requested or agreed to by the prospect.  Call-backs are the "glue" that insures sales opportunities remain active until sold or explicitly "retired" from further pursuit.
• Establish an effective system to monitor and remind prospectors and sales reps of all near-term call-back dates, as well as prospects of scheduled (agreed to) call-backs so they are not missed and are performed at the correct time.  Note the time zone clearly with the time.  More than 30% of all sales opportunities are lost (fall through the cracks) due to poor or no follow-up.  Calling the prospect back at the agreed time goes a long way to establishing trust and credibility.

Positioning & Messaging Strategies for Selling in a Down Economy

• When approaching a suspect, tailor the "selling" message so that you are speaking in their terms.  Don't require suspects to have to translate a message consisting of features, capabilities, and benefits, into their operational world of issues, goals, and needs.  Put yourself in their shoes.  In preparation for prospecting and selling, create a translation table listing the key capabilities of your offering.  Then for each capability, specify how it helps the suspect in his/her terms.  Emphasize your offering's differentiating capabilities as part of this process.  This approach has the added benefit of "playing" to opportunities that have need, but who are not looking (future-interest opportunities), as well as those currently shopping for a solution.  Future-interest opportunities are frequently missed or ignored by the seller, but are extremely valuable, since little or no competition may exist and the seller has time to develop and "own" the account.
• When targeting market sectors adversely affected by the economy, adjust your messaging to "play" directly to the issues of the down economy, such as controlling losses, improving efficiencies, and positioning for a rapid recovery.
• For maximum effectiveness, personalize the selling message further for each prospect being pursued, by relating how the issues addressed by your offering address the specific frustrations and anxieties felt by the prospect.  Add an additional column to your translation table (discussed above) for each AOR being pursued, then for each issue you listed, identify the prospect's frustrations and anxieties that it addresses.  Using this "pain-based" approach is also a good way to build rapport and begin to establish a trusted advisor relationship with the prospect.
• To develop a trusted advisor relationship, share early in your discussion how your offering has helped individuals, like the prospect, address their issues and frustrations.  Start by reviewing what the issue(s) were & their underlying reasons, the key capabilities (and differentiators) required to address them, and the results.
• Message development is a dynamic and challenging process.  Continually, as often as weekly, assess the performance of your prospecting message and adjust it accordingly.  Realize that you message may differ for each market you serve

Marketing Strategies for Selling in a Down Economy

• Make your company's marketing presence readily accessible and visible.  Include phone numbers and email links to live people, not voicemail boxes and autoresponder email addresses, from each page of your web site.  Increase your web presence by establishing a blog and secondary "specialty" web sites to serve as portals to your primary site.  Offer white papers, application stories, evaluation checklists, and financial justification tools to stimulate interest in your products and services.
• Align marketing efforts with sales so that they fully support Sales.  Work closely with Sales management to determine Marketing's priorities.
• Review the financial return from each marketing effort to determine the most cost-effective methods for supporting sales.  Traditional marketing methods like tradeshows, webinars, and email blasts are showing a decreasing return while cold-calling continues to provide a much greater pay-back, providing the type of targeted and qualified opportunities necessary to drive Sales.
• Work with Product Development to investigate extending the capabilities of your current offering(s) so they could be appealing to those in other more "fringe" markets.  Similarly, if you have a high-end offering, consider offering a more basic solution for the SMB market.