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Succeed in the New Economy: Engage Your Offense

In the new economy that’s taking shape around all of us today, confidence and pride haven’t gone out of fashion (and thank goodness for that). However, they have to be earned by doing more than just showing up in the market and assuming that your clients will be waiting in the wings, ready to do business with you. You need to equip yourself with a sales strategy that’s geared for offence—not just because the stakes are higher, but also because the payoff can be lucrative.

As I pointed out to participants at the May 2009 Engage Powerhouse Sales Event, a recession is a terrible thing to waste. Truly, there are great opportunities out there for top performing sales people to capitalize on right now. However, you can’t seize them if you’re hiding from your customers and retreating from the proven, field-tested methods that you should be relying on to bring in sales.

Don’t get sucked into the cutback mindset.

“How can I succeed when they’re cutting back everywhere?” That’s a rejoinder I hear an awful lot these days, and too often it seems to be accompanied by a sense of resignation. While it’s true that many organizations today are expecting staff to do more with less, this is not an excuse for letting your sales performance slip. Hardly. There are things you can do today—even in this tough market—to grow your sales without necessarily spending more money.

How?

• By focusing on existing relationships;
• By boosting your risk-busting communications skills;
• By obtaining testimonials from customers;
• By being shrewd and creative about who you target; and
• By getting management out in the field.

By engaging in all of these field-tested activities, you demonstrate to your clients and prospects that you’re motivated and on the move at a time while so many others have retreated (and I’ll come back to that point in a moment). Not only do these activities help increase the number of prospects who will return your calls, they also can play a key role in reducing your discounting. It also helps you compress your sales cycles. There’s an important added ingredient you need in addition to these activities—one that’s shared by top performing sales people in organizations of all sizes—and that’s perseverance. Breaking sales records, month after month, year after year, in good times and tough times requires that you be relentless in your pursuit of your goal.

It’s up to you to ensure perseverance isn’t on the chopping block.

It always pays to be persistent, particularly in this economy, because you’re bound to pull in a substantial return on your efforts only after most of your competitors have given up. Consider to the findings of ongoing sales research conducted by organizations such as What’s Working in Sales Management, The Canadian Professional Sales Association, Sales and Marketing Executives International, CSO Insights and Stanford University. They all share the following similar observations about perseverance in sales.

Approximately 40% of clients make buying decisions after sales people have completed 3 to 5 conversations (or meetings). However, by this point, two out of five sales reps have already given up! Another 30% of sales happen after six to nine conversations…and that’s after 95% of sales reps have given up. In today’s economy, we’re seeing that it often takes more conversations than ever (even as high as 15 tries), but that there continues to be a healthy reward in terms of the percentage of prospects who make the decision to buy.

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