How to grow your sales during a recession (Part 1)

Article written by our GBO London member, Moeed Amin, founder of Proverbial Door

There has been a lot of speculation about a possible recession. Last week, billionaire investor Carl Icahn spoke on CNBC and shared his view that "there could very well be a recession or even worse". Just 3 days ago, the FT reported that one of the key recession indicators, the inversion of the yield curve, occurred. In the UK, MoneyWeek published an article on whether the UK can avoid a recession this year.?

To be clear, I am not saying that a recession is inevitable. I am simply stating that it is a very real risk. In sales, especially in sales leadership, it is your job to anticipate how buyers will change their purchasing behaviour and implement contingency plans. This makes you less prone to the winds of circumstance and change and more in control of your destiny. So, it would be irresponsible to stay in denial and not have a plan in the eventuality of a recession.?

What I share with you below is a distillation of incredible advice from sales leaders and professionals, as well as my own experiences. All the advice below has come from people who have successfully grown during recessions.?

Don't Freak Out?

It is very easy to get swept up in the maelstrom of negative energy, fear, uncertainty and doubt caused by recessions. You will be surrounded by news that will fuel your fears and cause you to make decisions from fear, anxiety and stress. This is an awful place from which to make decisions.?

Stress makes you stupid. Latest research and MRI scans show that stress hormones can erode important neural connections and can shrink your Hippocampus, which is the region of your brain devoted to memory, and the emotional centres of your brain. Stress hormones also create free radicals that can kill your brain cells. The result is that you become more forgetful, you will find it more difficult to focus, it will be harder for you to drive towards achieving goals and you will struggle to make better decisions.?

I would love to share all the powerful techniques you can use to avoid stress, but that is a mammoth topic that cannot be covered in this email. If you are interested, you can contact me to learn more. You may already have some effective methods to help reduce stress and recessions are a time when you will need to double down on those methods.?

Finally, make sure to separate the diamond from the noise. In recessions, there will be a lot of "noise" in the media and marketplace. It can be difficult to identify reliable information, especially on buyer trends and changes (see further below). If you are a leader, use your knowledge and experience to recognise noisy information versus accurate and reliable information to inform your decisions.?

It's Only Temporary

All recessions (so far) have been temporary. That means they can present opportunities for you to grow and outpace your competitors who may be paralysed by fear. Christophe Martel is a business veteran who has led businesses and sales teams through recessions over the last 35 years. He likens recessions to a Formula 1 race where you have a chance to "win in the turns". Turns are the recessions and your ability to overtake your opponents during those turns can determine your position at the end of the race.?

Gartner found that senior leaders of successful companies accelerate performance during times of uncertainty. They strike the right balance between strategic discipline and bold action. They are also careful about what they focus on.?

By remembering that recessions are temporary, you relieve yourself of the burden of the perception of disaster and the handicap this can create in your decision-making process. What you focus on is your reality. So, if you focus on the disaster, then you will be in constant fight or flight mode. But, if you focus on the transitory nature of recessions, you will realise that this creates an opportunity for you to outpace others and set the stage for your success over the next few years.

Read on to learn what some of those bold actions should be for your sales team.?

Stand Guard at the Door of Your Mind

A large part of mindset has been covered in the above section. What you focus on creates your?perception?of reality. However, your mindset will also impact how you engage with your buyers. Whether you are a sales leader or a quota-bearer, this is a critical point to remember. What you think will determine how you engage with your buyers. Recessions are times when you must have an elevated view of yourself and the value of your products and services. If you get sucked into the recession narrative and that money is suddenly tight, then you will likely go down the road of discounting. To be clear, I am not referring to the harm that discounting causes you as a seller or supplier (we all know them), I am talking about the harm from the buyer's perspective.?

You might be thinking "How can discounting be harmful to the buyer? Surely they would benefit from such a situation?" Imagine you are a buyer who is being courted by a desperate seller; a seller who is constantly knocking at your door with a discounted offer that is progressively getting lower and lower as they become more desperate. That is not a good experience for the buyer and they will either avoid working with you or have a lower perceived value of you.??

Such an approach also has a negative impact on the seller. The more you discount, the more you reduce your belief in the value of what you offer. Together with the negative buyer experience, these 2 perceptions create a negative spiral that will severely damage your success.?

Remember that mindset is everything. It is the doorway through which our brain translates and creates a view of the world and your place within it. If you are a sales/business leader, then you must ensure that you create an environment where you are both protecting your sellers' mindset from harm and elevating their mindset to have a more empowering view of their own self-worth and the value they can deliver. With the right approach, you can actually demonstrate to your buyers why your offerings are exactly the antidote they need to the harm caused by a recession.?

Solder any gaps

It goes without saying that sales leaders must remain confident during recessions and provide their sellers with the assurance they need to grow in a recession. Of course, this does not mean that you should be delusionally positive, but you should get clear on why recessions are actually good for your growth and focus on the right things needed to win.?

However, sellers don't just look to their sales leader for such reassurance. In a recession, sellers will also look to the whole leadership group (HR, Product, IT etc.) for support. They will notice any break in the leadership chain and this can lower their confidence, even if the sales leader is doing all the right things.?

If you are a business leader or sales leader, it is vital you ensure that the whole leadership group are agreed on the right narrative and especially agreed on how they will present a united front to the business. Again, I am not advocating lying or being delusional and saying that everything is ok when it may not be. What I am saying is that the leadership group must be clear on why a recession is actually good for your company, communicate this with clarity and exude a sense of confidence and calm to everyone. Your brain is designed to very quickly recognise saliency or incongruency. All it would take is 1 person in the leadership group to go off track and the whole thing crumbles. In times of heightened anxiety, even the smallest deviance can create a large effect. Make sure that you are the pillar of confidence and leadership that your colleagues need during just tough times.?

Buying Patterns will Change

There is no getting away from this. This is not a surprise as purchasing habits, both as a consumer and as a business professional, have always changed in a recession. Yet, for some reason, I have observed sellers and their leaders pretend that either nothing will happen or that it is their job to force buyers to keep their purchasing behaviour constant. This is delusional. The reality is buying patterns will change and the successful sellers are those who embrace this and seek to deeply understand HOW those patterns are changing and WHY they are changing.?

Smart sellers use recessions as an opportunity to get even closer to their customers. They learn more about those changes to adapt their approach and continue making the purchasing process easy and enjoyable for their customers.?

There are several ways that you can acquire a deeper understanding of what is changing:?

1.??Leverage your Account Managers and "intellectually curious" sellers to speak with customers and learn about those changes. Intellectually curious sellers is a term used in research conducted by IBM and HBR contributor, Steve Martin. They found that intellectual curiosity was a common trait amongst high-performing sellers.?

2.??Capture & Share - make sure that you support your AMs and intellectually curious sellers with methods to capture what they learn and share their findings with the rest of your sales team. Everyone needs to understand those changes!?

3.??Leverage your marketing team, especially if they are a mature function who have close connections with the buying community. Your marketing team should have great customer and market insights through either primary research or secondary providers they pay for.?

4.??Speak to your partners -?I would hope that you have partners who also sell to your buyer profiles and they should have additional insights and experiences to share.?

5.??Speak to your internal buyers - I am still shocked by how few sellers actually speak with their colleagues to understand how they buy. If you sell products & services to HR leaders, then speak with your own HR leader to understand what is important to them and how they would like to buy from someone. Speak with your procurement team or a relevant leader aligned with who you sell to. Ask them how their buying patterns would change in a recession.?

Upgrade Your Talent

Recessions expose the extremes in human nature and competencies. You will quickly see those in your team that are up to the task and those who are struggling. Recessions are not a good time to hold on to those underperformers so you will need to make some tough decisions.?

I know how this sounds, however, downturns are an opportunity for you to strengthen your team and optimise your cost of customer acquisition and growth. A word of caution: don't be too quick to fire people based on just their performance prior to a recession. I have seen several examples of sellers who struggled before a recession and then something switched and they became high performers. I have also seen the opposite. Take the time to?really dig deep into your team and truly understand each person; what motivates them, what they care about, what are their strengths and where can they develop???Your ethics as a leader will be tested and I recommend that you stay true to your values. Recessions should not be an excuse to cut away at your talent. It should be a chance to strengthen your team and create immense loyalty in them.??

Downturns also pose a risk to your top talent. Smart companies know that such top talent is extremely valuable in a recession and they will do their best to poach them from you. Your behaviour during times of stress will determine how connected your top talent will be to you and your business. If that starts to fray, then you risk them becoming open to offers from your competitors. Again, get close to your top talent. Understand what makes their job easier and harder. Double-down on the former and seek to solve the latter.?

A final point on talent. Recessions are a chance for you to also strengthen your team's skills. Assess how effective your team is at each of the critical stages of the sales & buying process; especially those stages that are changing in the recession. Where are they strong and weak? What impact will those strengths and weaknesses have on your results? How can you upskill your team in those critical areas and can you do so in a profitable way that will also quickly improve results???

Host Regular Deal Clinics

During tough times, connections are vital. They provide encouragement, understanding and an incredibly valuable forum for people to share ideas and learn from each other on what to avoid and what works.?

Facilitating regular deal clinics will be vital during a recession. I recommend at least 1 a month, although take into account things like the velocity of your deals to decide if you need more frequent clinics.?

These sessions should be no more than 1 hour and you want each seller to come prepared with a deal that they are working on and would value advice from their colleagues. It is important that you facilitate advice to mainly come from your team, not just from you. You can, of course, share your advice, but make sure that you are not monopolising the clinic. You want to strengthen the bond in your team so they can support each other more during a recession. These clinics are one powerful forum to do this.

Since you only have an hour, I recommend that you have no more than 5 people in one clinic so that each person has a chance to share and receive advice.?

There are another 4 major things that are important to ensure growth during a recession. I will send these in part 2 of the Recession Growth series next week.?

Pictures by Kenny Eliason, Gaelle Marcel, Zac Durant and Pascal Swier on Unsplash