Do you set your own course or follow the herd?

The Challenge of Selling in Difficult Times

Many forces can make a company’s ?market? difficult. The challenge is how best to react to those forces, make the ?twist? where necessary and profit from even the most challenging times to keep your organisation moving forward. It’s a bit like sailing – regardless of which way the wind is blowing, an expert sailor can make progress towards the goal. Can you? How does your organisation react to these situations? 

• A general decline in economic conditions that affects your market sector (and potentially those around you as well)
• Market disruption through technological development or innovation by a competitor such as digitisation or leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT)
• Economic or other factors that change the behaviour, policies and practices of customers to increase focus on centralised procurement to maximise transparency and optimise purchasing through the lowest-cost sources (particularly if you sell to customers in multiple geographies at different prices for similar products)

This may lead to a re-focus by the organisation to restrict access to others in the decision-making process, particularly once a Request for Proposal (RFP) has been issued 

In many industries there is a trend towards ?open book? (only the vendor’s of course) negotiation designed to ?leverage? the customer’s buying power on raw materials that the supplier would in any case use, and help them to determine (and of course price) the value added that the supplier brings to the process 

• Pursuit of the panacea of ?more with less? by increasing productivity through technology, streamlined processes, and of course more outsourcing of processes to vendors – which of course will be ?included? with the price they charge on the product or service itself, lowering the overall margin for the supplier, and reducing costs for the customer 

Your ability to react positively to these kinds of circumstances depends a lot on the kind of product or service you have – is it ?aspirin? (must have) or vitamins (nice, but not needed). If you provide your customers with something essential for the creation of their product or service, you are potentially in a more protected position – this does not, however, mean they will not seek to optimise pricing, service delivery, or other factors that will help outsource some of their costs to you as the supplier, or simply seek alternatives that will. But it may create less pressure. If, however, you provide vitamin-like products or services, things customers want to have, but in a pinch, could live without at least for a while. Here things are more challenging. 

Where we find this more regularly are companies that have a strong technically oriented and relationship-focused sales organisation whose activities are generally not underpinned by a cohesive sales methodology. Why? Because while these organisations are terrific at Identifying (technical) problems and offering – or even creating – offering solutions, they are often challenged by trying to differentiate from their competitors, all of whom can likely do the same, or very similar, things. Thus, the way they sell does not help them differentiate themselves in the customer’s eyes during the decision-making process. This brings the price far more into focus as the value is often not as well articulated for the non-technical people in the buying process.  

This argument is not an academic one – it affects me and my colleagues business very directly, because sales performance improvement enablement (don’t dare call it training, that’s for dogs), coaching and consulting generally do not fall into the ?aspirin? category – unless the timing of our contact to them is just right, and the organisation has recognised a problem with sales, and actually decided to do something about it. There, we can offer a solution. Normally, however, we must create the need, identify the value-creation areas, and of course, deliver a package of services that help them to ?move the needle? on sales. As we have no ?product? to deliver (or demo, for that matter), our sales process is in and of itself the proof-of-concept or demo. 

When times are tough, investments in sales performance improvement, which should be top-of-mind for sales (and company) leaders, often fall to the bottom of the list. The need to show shareholder that they are ?doing something? to address the situation, and sales enablement is often not tangible enough to justify investment. This is what I call the herd mentality. So let’s come back to that question in the title of this article – do you set your own course or just follow the herd? 

For those who set their own course, there are benefits to be had. Those with the courage to plot their own course can use the opportunity of difficult times to gain market share, increase customer loyalty and be better prepared for when times are good gain. So, what would improving sales performance during challenging times do for an organisation? Our experience shows that one clear benefit is improved hit rates – the number of leads that turn into real opportunities because they have a higher chance of winning. 

How? Through more systematic qualification and making those tough ?no-go? decisions earlier in the sales process to focus resources on the opportunities that best match the organisation’s strengths (rather than just filling the pipeline to meet some imaginary 3x or 4x figure) and thus have the highest chance of winning. Focusing on the quality of the opportunities in the sales funnel rather than just the quantity is one way to actually ?do more with less? – by stopping wasting resources on the no-hope opportunities that clutter up the sales funnel. 

This idea of an inverted-cone shaped sales funnel is so common – perhaps because it’s the traditional characterisation of the ?funnel? concept and visually depicted in most CRM systems. But is that really the best form…? I think not. My preferred shape is a T, with a very wide top to bring in all the potential opportunities that could be in our domain. But then, they must be rigorously qualified to allow only those that match the organisation’s capabilities to go forward – and then winning most or all of them! Remember, activity (just keeping busy) is not equal to productivity (doing the right things). Just working on opportunities because there is nothing else there can hurt the organisation more because resources that would otherwise be used to win great opportunities are being squandered on mediocre ones just to keep everyone looking busy.  

Beyond qualification, though, there is much more – when times are tough, customers delay decisions because each one requires lots of internal discussion and justification. So, the ability to develop the right kind of ?sales tools? to help your contacts sell the project internally can help them navigate these challenges more effectively in tough times. If your team helps them better articulate and present the benefits (not just the costs) that the project would create, quantify those benefits in a cohesive business case, and help your contacts look like heroes for bringing this to the attention of top management – your chances of winning increase. 

So the choice comes down to this – do you set your own course, or follow the herd? 

Gopal RajGuru with Pierre Martin