How to Perform under Economic Downturn
By Increasing the value provided to customers and doubling-down on training.
The Challenger Sale demonstrated that few individuals were outperforming the others by 200% during economic downturn (quota achievement).
Challenging times always offer vast opportunities to those who take advantage of the situation.
Remember: your prospects might come to your company for its products in the first place - but your clients will perform and stay for your level of expertise and support.
Let's start by asking these questions:
Does your company have sales reps over-performing right now? How so?
How does the economy impact your prospects and clients?
What are their biggest challenges?
What does your company solve and can bring to the table?
How can you help your partners? What can you provide to get them overcome the situation?
When it comes to interacting with your partners:
Do you have powerful questions? Do they help your partners to asking themselves the right questions? Do they teach something?
Do you lead your calls with educated hypothesis?
Do you truly understand their pain points?
What is currently provided by your Lead Gen & Marketing teams?
Do you share insightful recommendations and clear path to success?
Do you consider yourself a coach?
Do you have customer-centric alerts?
So what can Salespeople do?
Be agile: be prepared to pivot your strategy and adjust your sales approach as necessary to accommodate changing market conditions.
Focus your pitch on cost-savings: when facing a poor economy, many businesses are looking for ways to cut costs. By emphasizing the cost savings your products or services can provide, you may be able to attract new customers or retain existing ones.
Build strong relationships: by staying in close contact with your prospects and customers and by offering them valuable support, you may be able to retain their business and even expand it.
Demonstrate the value: of your products or services and how they can help your partners to save money, increase productivity or efficiency.
Identify how the economy brings new challenges/change their strategy/increase known challenges. How does it concretely translate into their day-to-day, staff, time spent on low value tasks.
Fine-tune your discovery phase:
Create Leading Questions
Better prepare your calls by having drafted hypothesis
Have ready-to-use success stories, industry insights and company’s best practices
Sat down at your key partners’ HQ and spend some time with their teams to understand their internal challenges better
Tackle churn like never before: be more reactive and more open to discussion/alternative solutions with your clients. Every client matters.
And what can you do as a Manager?
Review the company’s benefits and refine your pitch to solve specific / trending biggest customer pain points.
Train your team on the Challenger Sale.
Create Personas (ICP) in collaboration with Growth / Lead Gen / Marketing teams.
Review your team’s line of questioning.
Continue to provide on-going learning and development opportunities to your team. Now is not the time to reduce your support. If the budget decreases, be creative and find new ways (leverage your network, create trainings yourself, liaise with L&D department...). Have industry experts to deliver trainings (monthly)
Identify new opportunities: a poor economy can also create new opportunities for businesses that are able to adapt and pivot their strategies. Look for new markets or untapped customer segments that may be more receptive to your products or services during a downturn.
Lead a workshop with your team to demonstrate the value of your products or services and how they can help your partners to save money, increase productivity or efficiency.
Anticipate churn increase: set a specific focus on how to detect it, counter it, what are you expectations (SLAs) and allocate time during your 1:1’s and/or dedicated weekly slots.