1. If possible align your sales assignment to adapt to changes within Industry Verticals.
If you are a Named Account Manager in Financial Services you should be sharing with your highest ranking Sales Leader the account intelligence you are gathering about your customer’s policies on expense and capital spending for the rest of Q4 and 2009. Financial Services is in disarray and management has a responsibility to adjust to the economic conditions. In some cases this may mean redeployment to other verticals in other cases reductions in quotas, changes in compensation plan structures, etc.
2. If you are not locked into a particular vertical, focus on verticals that are not wounded.
According to Gartner Group IT spending in Enterprise is predicted to increase by 2% in 2009. Companies rarely stop spending entirely in down markets. Pursue verticals and companies whose businesses overall are healthy but are merely cutting back to deal with the Recession. Eg Defense, Healthcare, Government, certain Consumer Packaged Goods, Life Sciences, Online Gaming, Media & Entertainment, etc.
3. When selling to accounts with businesses that are healthy or at the very least, still functional, find THE projects that are labeled as critical to the business. These projects are unlikely to be cut. Pursue only those projects and pursue them vigor.
4. Make sure you are selling something that is truly needed and of high value. Now is not the time to be selling solutions searching for problems.
5. Work harder to fully understand what issues your Prospects are dealing with during the Recession and think of ways your product or service could help them.
6. Use Value Based Selling. During Recessions all project spending receives closer scrutiny and if you are selling something that is on the pricey side of life then your customer has to build a financial business case to justify the spend. To seal the deal your Proposal should include a Return On Investment Analysis that you create WITH your customer. This can be a good closing tactic as well. Present a draft ROI and ask for his or her input on it. Make sure your ROI is a simple ROI that focuses on hard ROI and not soft ROI. Sure many businesses like to use complex ROIs and that’s fine but if your proposal can pass the simple ROI test you’re on the right track. Example of a hard ROI is: Buying Solution A will result in an incremental gain of X and expense reduction of Y. Example of a soft ROI is: Buying Solution A will increase customer satisfaction, boost competitive advantage, etc.
An example of a simple ROI is:
Simple ROI = (Gains less total cost of ownership) divided by the total cost of ownership
7. Be cool and don’t panic. Stressed out and anxious sales professionals spread anxiety. When a Prospect voices concerns about the economy acknowledge the concern and show empathy. Then respond with a positive data point that you can attribute to a credible source. i.e. Transition to a positive topic / ice breaker before discussing your opportunity. You need to influence your Prospect’s outlook in a positive way and redirect them to your solution after they have shifted to a positive frame of mind.
8. Be flexible. If your Prospect wants to start small then start small. If flexible payment terms are needed then provide them. Now is not the time to be rigid. It’s the time to close the sale at all costs as soon as you can.
9. Fight like crazy to win the business. Don’t be eliminated by competitive price discounting. Work with your Prospect closely to find a creative solution for responding to competitive attacks through price discounts. Be willing to discount but try to counterbalance it with longer term contracts with pre-negotiated price increases or minimum volume commitments. You can also try to hold your price but give away additional products or services at a 100% discount to counter the competition thus maintaining your opportunity value.
10. You can never have enough Partners. If your sales call volume decreases due to customer access challenges instead of spending that time commiserating with your sales colleagues in the office, spend your time with your alliance partners or other vendors who are engaged in your accounts and may have insight or leads for you. Also, spend time with colleagues of your target Prospects to gain additional account intelligence to help you find Recession proof projects
