Train Your Sales Team While the Sun Still Shines

The sun is shining in America. I’m not talking about our summer sun, necessarily; I’m talking about the good times, strong markets, bright outlook of growth-focused, credit-backed clients.

Everyone seems happy. And clients seem plentiful.

As a sales effectiveness trainer and coach for over 30 years, I’ve witnessed a consistent, telling pattern among major financial services and professional services firms: they rush to train their sales people just after a market downturn. But by then, it’s too late. In 1987, in 1999, in 2008 – and let’s face it, sometime soon – the market inevitably corrects itself, the economy pulls back, and your once-happy clients pull back, too. Clients become more panicky, more demanding, even a bit less loyal in their decision-making despite years of your good service and good returns. (Candidly, some of our best years as a sales training firm are those right after a market downturn…!)

In all our years of working with tens of thousands of client-facing Advisors and their Teams of Experts, I’ve come to see how sales leaders often don’t truly know how effective (or ineffective) their sales teams are until the sales climate becomes more dire. It’s not until after their market is under attack that these Sales Managers discover who’s truly skilled and strategic on their teams and who is benefiting by the up-market.

Most sales reps can sell in a good economy; that’s called order taking. But when the market shifts, sometimes the sales professionals who were “killin’ it” in the up-economy begin to fail.

They lack the skills they need to be more proactive, client centered and therefore, more competitive, when face-to-face with a more demanding, discerning clientele.

Selling under duress takes skill. Your go-to-market strategy will come under attack – from a shifting economy, a new competitor, a market disruptor. Doesn’t matter. What matters is determining how skilled for the hard times your sales people are.

The power of your current approaches to client interactions – including the skillfulness of your Trusted Advisors and Teams to engage clients and to make a compelling case for how your offerings are better – will be tested. Just as seasons change (winter is coming*), a market correction after a strong showing is inevitable. The question is: are you and your client-facing Trusted Advisors ready for the tough times?

*shout out to Jon Snow fans