(Regardless of the Economic Environment)

Talking to a local business the other day reminded me of something that all businesses need to be aware of. My friend told me that they had suspended direct sales activity to focus on longer term marketing. This was because all the good conversations resulted in a “not ready to buy – yet”.

Once I had recovered my composure, I offered a single piece of advice:

Never Stop Selling

Another business I know has recently had “the best January ever”. The reason: they suffered a down-turn in business several months ago, went back to basics and came out marketing and selling targeting old and new customers with new propositions (better ways of taking their existing products and services to market in the current climate).

What to do?

1. Never stop selling

2. Listen to the people that you speak to – if they are not buying what you are promoting:

   1. What are they considering buying that you already offer?

   2. What might they buy (rent, lease, ….) that you could easily offer?

3. Refine your targeting – speak to different people

4. Keep positive

Things to consider

• If changing customer requirements take you too far from your comfort zone, look for alliances and other mechanisms to satisfy these opportunities with minimum risk;

• Use Segmentation tools (or get someone to do it for you) to better understand your suspect universe;

• Additional products with lower costs or new processes;

• New, higher value, products / services may be appropriate for some.

A Simple Exercise

• List 5 things that are preventing you from winning enough good quality business.

• Against each of the 5 items on your list, assign a score from 1 – 10 where 10 is something you can directly control and 1 is something over which you have no control at all.

• Now, re-write your list in descending order of assigned scores.

• Plan time for each of the top 3 on your new list.

This was a guest post by Paul Fileman of SPS who are a national team of proven senior management professionals, passionate about working to help businesses achieve their next level of development and performance. Whether they are facing market changes, financial problems, people/skills issues, or are preparing a major project, they offer dedicated support from a multi-disciplined team of experts.

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