Sales Consulting and Services
Ten tips on how to improve your sales results in a down economy are listed here.
You have done all you can to improve your offer, picked the best place to target your efforts, and used your best selling skills to develop this opportunity. Yet, the economy is tough and the customer has grown very conservative on spending. You have heard rumors that your competition has called in some Senior Executives [...]
You have successfully developed a real partnership with your customer and have put together a compelling proposal. You have gained broad support yet you can’t get a commitment from the customer. Your sponsor is telling you that competition for capital is very intense and there are projects higher on the desired list. He is unsure [...]
Normally, the VP you call on has the budget and the authority to make a purchase decision. But the economy has made this customer pull back a lot of budget authority. Right now nearly all spending is reviewed by the CFO. She spends corporate money like it is her own. She has been analyzing all [...]
You have done a good job spreading the pain and securing adequate funding to complete your sale. But by doing so, you have introduced a few people into the decision process you may not know well. Your customer solution sponsor may or may not now have the clout to push their version of the solution [...]
You have been working on a sales effort for months and have just learned the budget has been hacked. Before you trade in your sports car, stop and think of how to broaden the impact of your proposal. Involve more departments and the project budget can grow with each one added. The department you have [...]
Every company will be first focused on saving money – costs savings. Your clients are likely adjusting capital spending priorities focusing more than ever on saving money. For most, the capital budget has been trimmed or eliminated all together. However, most senior executives will listen to a proposal that might save them money. Re-tool all [...]
In good times or bad, cross selling and up selling to existing customers is a great idea and yields strong business growth. When the economy is tough, there can be even greater benefits from cross selling and up selling to existing customers Your install base of products at the client is a beach head eager [...]
Doing all you can to keep your customers happy and returning to you means building a good offense and a good defense. Your offense includes all your proactive selling tasks, your CRM activity, etc. In a down economy these things must continue, with adjustments like we are listing on our top 10 list Your defense [...]
A down economy can lengthen sales cycles, evaporate deals, and generally depress the sales volume. You can’t fix it all by yourself. If you have a strong business partner network, increase your activity with them. if you don’t have a strong business partner network, shame on you. It will be more difficult now to build [...]
A slowing economy doesn’t impact all industries alike nor all at the same time. Unique research for your territory should reveal certain industries and sub-industries that are slow to enter a down turn and those likely to exit the slow down more quickly. That historic data will also suggest which companies will be least impacted [...]
