MANAGE SMARTER: IS YOUR SALES FORCE READY FOR THE DIP AND THE BOUNCE?
Manage Smarter’s Michael D. Maginn suggests your sales team get ready for changes in the sales cycle and buying process, saying “The implication is that sales teams are going to have to listen even more closely to what the customer needs from them. Smart sales teams are going to have to adjust how they approach customers so the sales process itself delivers value that meets customers where they are.” Are you ready to listen?
Manage Smarter Excerpt:
“The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling to them.” —Peter Drucker
While current market conditions are forcing some sales teams to play their best game, others are wondering how to react to their customers’ current situations. Others are guessing how to approach vastly different customer situations when the market does return. What does a sales team do when customers simply aren’t buying now or are slow-rolling buying decisions? How do salespeople maintain relationships so they are well-positioned when the bounce does come?
Here’s a glimpse of what might lie ahead for many sales teams. A February 2009 McKinsey Quarterly Economic Survey revealed what is on the minds of 2,000 executives who described what they were doing or planned to do to recover from the economic crisis. While most companies (75 percent) are cutting costs, almost 40 percent said they also were going to restructure; another 36 percent said they were going to introduce new products and services to gain market share from competitors. Approximately 20 percent said they were going to hire new talent that would not have been available otherwise, and the same percentage said they were going to leave certain markets.
It appears a significant number of companies are going to take some bold steps to take advantage of the recovery by reorganizing and fielding new products and services. At the same time, many other companies appear to be hunkering down, with cost cutting and productivity increases as the primary steps to take to weather the storm and eke out what profits they can.