Companies are still making pre-2009 decisions when it comes to trying to do business in 2010. They are trying to do what they did before but more of it and hoping that this will improve their situations. Instead more marketing, more selling activity and more prospecting for clients is wearing out the sales team and lowering morale.
In a recession the entire model that companies are running on needs to change. Companies are no longer responding to a demand that exists but must start to create a demand where there is none.
Companies have made dramatic cuts to staff, budgets, and in-house costs, and are prepared to live with existing products and services. Survival is the name of the game, growth a distant memory. There just isn’t the money around to invest in new services or products to get ahead of the competition.
When companies have made the decision not to buy from anyone, it no longer makes sense to prove to them that you are the best. To be able to sell you must create the demand by showing the buyer that the solution you offer is not just the best choice but the essential choice.
The questions you need to ask must uncover problems that the buyer did not know they had by challenging their perceptions of their situation. By illustrating that the problems are greater and more urgent than the buyer recognizes, you increase the value of what you have to offer. You have just the product or service to help them with the problem they did not know they had.
Discussions need to be based around the buyer’s most immediate problems and preferably these discussions must be carried out at the executive level where decisions are made.
Networking is as important as ever, as are referrals but strategically focused. A bird in the hand is worth far more than all the birds in the bush. Handing out leaflets indiscriminately is a thing of the past. Leaflets need to be mailed to only semi-definite prospects and no others.
All the marketing materials produced must reflect this approach by focusing clients on thinking differently about their problems and about your proposed solution. You need to get inside your clients’ skins and think the way they are doing to be able to make them see that you are the one they need.
Isolate the target; use the best weapons, aim and fire.
