Tips For Selling In A Down Economy

If the market you sell into has been one of those effected by the current recession chances are the same sales and marketing strategy used 12 months ago will not sustain (or grow) your level of business. What worked against the competition last year to win orders won't cut it this year. Your competition is in the same boat you are - fewer dollars being spent for capital purchases. In a down economy it is not just about beating your competition. You must convince your customer that spending a larger proportion of a much smaller budget on your solution will provide them a better return on their investment than spending their money in another totally disparate area of their business. Here are some tips:

• Tune up your value proposition - To compete for budget dollars against a variety of internal initiatives, your value proposition must go beyond defining the value relative to your competition. It must define and quantify the total value of your solution so that it can be compared to "unknown" initiatives fighting for the same unallocated budget.
• The fact is, fewer purchases will be made. Train your sales people to quickly assess whether or not your solution will provide adequate value in specific situations so that they do not waste their time on sub-prime prospects. They are going to need extra time to spend on qualified prospects to close business in this economy.
• Even for experienced value sellers, now is a good time to sharpen and refresh value selling tactics. We all know it takes less skill to sell in a good economy than in a poor one. Now is the time for refresher training. Sharp selling skills are important to sustaining your business.
• Increase availability of sales support resources - we are not suggesting that you add headcount, but make executives, engineers, marketers, and projects people more readily available to evaluate opportunities, provide customer process knowledge for assessing value, and to help close orders.
• Don't abandon prospects that say they don't have a budget or that "budgets are frozen" if your value assessment indicates that they are a qualified prospect. If you can present a compelling value proposition, the same people that froze the budget can unfreeze it. It has been done many times before.

The strong will survive. Value selling skills and a compelling value proposition will strengthen your organization to permit it to sustain and perhaps even grow business in this difficult time. You will emerge from the recession ready to increase market share and margins.