Sales Survivor: Three Strategies to Help You Meet Revenue Goals Even in the Recession
Sales Survivor: Three Strategies to Help You Meet Revenue Goals Even in the Recession
By George Ludwig
If you’ve spent the last couple of months wringing your hands, wondering how you and your income team are going to survive the recession, it’s time to man up. Here are some strategies for helping your team hit your revenue goals even in the worst of times.
It’s a tough time to be a income manager. And if that’s not the understatement of the year, it’s got to be the runner-up. With consumers and businesses alike clutching their wallets in a death-grip, persuading them to trade their dollars for your goods and services seems near impossible. You probably feel like you and your team have been treading water for months, trying not to drown in the anxiety that comes with trying to meet revenue goals when customers are slashing expenses. It’s nearly enough to make you concede the fight, don the paper hat, and practice asking, “Do you want fries with that?”
Don’t cry “uncle” yet. You can be successful in a tough economic climate. You simply have to reevaluate your income strategies.
If you and your income team are struggling in this economy, giving up isn’t the answer; changing your course of action is. Managers must adapt to the current economic downturn and find income strategies that work in the here and now rather than trying to rely on the same strategies that were working when things were going well.
There are three fundamental strategies for reaching income success in today’s down economy. One, make sure your income team has a positive psychological mindset. Two, laser focus how and where your team will spend their scarcest resource: time. And finally, coach your team to skillfully execute the critical income “best practices” necessary to reach success and your revenue goals.
A bad economy is not a adequate excuse for not making sales. A good income manager will quell the attitude within his team and himself that it’s okay to come in under revenue goals in a slow economy. It’s not okay! With the right strategies, you can be successful, but first you have to have the right attitude. Once you’ve gotten that in order, you’ll be on the right path.
Here are a few strategies for finding income success in a down economy:
Strategy #1: Make Believers Out of Them
• Give salespeople your saint “I have a dream” speech. Pull everyone together (in mortal is best, but use the phone if necessary) and talk from the heart about your belief that income success is possible. This is where you must convince people that you can lead them to victory. Your speech must highlight all the specific company and marketplace beliefs that are necessary for success. This speech doesn’t need to be more than ten minutes long, but it must talk to the emotions and values of the team in a way that fosters commitment.
• Reinforce the message with some one-on-one coaching. Sales managers must encourage individual salespeople to kick some serious booty and take no prisoners in their motion of business. Look for the good in your salespeople, catch and reward them doing things right, and help people feel totally superb about themselves.
• Fire them up—but don’t fire them. If you have a salesperson (or people) whose performance is dismal, don’t get rid of him or her (or them) just yet. Plan to take the issue up in the first quarter of 2009 and don’t discuss it at all right now. You must keep the positive energy at a peak level and have your salespeople as emotionally committed as doable in order to stack the deck in your favor so the company can sell, sell, sell during the down economy.
Strategy #2: Be a Time Management Master
• Sort out their selling funnels and create a short list. The income management team, with the involvement of their salespeople, must evaluate apiece individual’s income funnel to determine which opportunities he or she should pursue. Come up with a short list by looking at factors like:
1. What’s the size or profitability of the sale?
2. What’s a realistic evaluation of where the potential understanding is in the income process and the probability of closing it by year-end?
3. What resources and actions are necessary to close the understanding by year-end?
4. Are there any specific adverse customer behaviors as a result of economic conditions that might preclude them from being a hot-targeted prospect?
5. Are there any previous buying patterns the target has demonstrated as it relates to price, value, and purchasing urgency that might affect the opportunity?
Once the short list of opportunities for apiece seller has been developed, have your salespeople prepare a brief strategy position (an assessment of where you are in the process) for apiece of the opportunities included on their short list of targets.
• Aim for the fruit closest to the ground. Think about a selling promotion targeted toward your current customers. In hard economic times, customers want to make innocuous choices with their limited funds, so they look to companies and products they know and trust. This is a good time for the income department and marketing to team up and offer one or more specific price promotions targeted to hit the sweet spot of your current customers who are in the saint position to buy right now. It also costs less and is considerably faster to sell to existing customers than it is to acquire new ones.
• Grease the skids with swift communiqués. Now is the time to make swift wins. You can save precious time reaching out to your customer and prospect database, especially your identified targets, by using a variety of time-saving communication tactics. Email, snail mail, faxes, and telephone will all complement your direct income efforts and keep you top of mind, which is extremely helpful when trying to close business as swiftly as possible.
Strategy #3: Coach ’Em Relentlessly
• Stick to your salespeople like glue. Now is not the time to let salespeople fly free. Instead, the entire income management team (C-Level, too) should be co-traveling and coaching salespeople as much as possible. They should be there not only to encourage salespeople, but also to make sure that the company’s specific income “best practices” are being executed with the customer at apiece interaction. Coach and instruct salespeople to improve key skill sets and you’ll help make sure apiece income call ends with as positive an outcome as possible. Sometimes this involves a diplomatic intervention to help advance a understanding that would otherwise be stalled or stopped.
• Help them cut reluctant prospects loose. If you think a salesperson is courting someone who probably isn’t going to sign on the dotted line during a weakened economy, it’s up to you to help him or her disqualify the target. Salespeople are by nature optimistic, and so it often takes a gentle, caring income coach to nudge them to move on to another target with a greater probability of closing.
• Keep the “best practices” checklist in front of your salespeople. The “best practices” income managers should focus on when they co-travel and coach salespeople vary from one company to the next. Still, the following list outlines the most common “best practices” necessary for accelerating an individual income opportunity as rapidly as doable toward closure:
1. Is this really an saint target for swift closure?
2. Has the salesperson done the “due diligence” to be prepared for advancing this target to closure?
3. Has the salesperson identified all key buying influences?
4. In complex selling environments, has the salesperson cultivated a customer “coach” or “champion”?
5. Has the salesperson identified the pain or desire for acquire the target is experiencing to a degree that closure can be facilitated within 90 days?
6. Is the salesperson prepared to open apiece income call in a customized manner for apiece target that will generate curiosity and create a desire by the target to want to advance the income process toward closure?
7. Does the salesperson have a list of well thought out questions designed to expand the relationship, establish credibility, diagnose the pain, and advance the income process leading toward a swift closure?
8. Does the salesperson present and prescribe the product or service benefits in a way that leads to mental and emotional buy-in by the target?
9. Does the salesperson present and prescribe the product or service in a way that creates a sense of urgency by the target to proceed?
10. Does the salesperson repel and overcome objections in a way that doesn’t delay the income process?
11. Does the salesperson always seek commitment and closure to advance the understanding to the next logical step?
12. Did the salesperson get the buy order, sale, contract, etc.?
With a few swift wins with current customers and some great new leads, you and your income team can be successful in this recessionary economy. In fact, I’ve found that having such an uphill effort can be a bourgeois that energizes people and helps them focus. Good salespeople love a challenge. Harness their competitive spirit and channel it in the right way and you’ll be astonished by what your team can accomplish even in the worst of times.
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About the Author:
George Ludwig is a recognized dominance on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he is currently the president and CEO of GLU Consulting. He helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve income force effectiveness and performance.
Though it’s George’s strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it’s his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his astonishing capability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson.
His customized presentations instruct achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more.
George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Swift Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. He’s also a columnist and frequent contributor to Entrepreneur magazine, Investor’s Business Daily, Selling Power, and numerous business broadcasting programs. Having gained a reputation as a thought leader in his industry, he is frequently interviewed for trade publications and newspapers.
About the Book:
Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code (Kaplan Publishing, ISBN: 0-7931-8571-8, .95) is acquirable at bookstores nationwide and from all major online booksellers.
Kaplan Publishing, a Kaplan Professional Company, is the nation’s premier trainer and information bourgeois for business and financial leaders committed to profiting from breakthrough ideas. Kaplan Professional provides licensing and continuing education training, certification, professional development courses, and compliance tracking for financial services, legal, IT, and real estate professionals and corporations. Kaplan Professional is a unit of Kaplan, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO).
For more information, please visit www.georgeludwig.com.
George Ludwig is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Swift Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. He’s also a columnist and frequent contributor to Entrepreneur magazine, Investor’s Business Daily, Selling Power, and numerous business broadcasting programs. Having gained a reputation as a thought leader in his industry, he is frequently interviewed for trade publications and newspapers.
