The saying “If it were easy everybody would be doing it” certainly applies to selling today. It requires more effort, skill, and courage than ever before to achieve sales success. With this in mind, here are five recession sales tips. 1. Crank Up the “New” Call Volume. With less business happening, your ability to take deals away from your competition is the most critical factor that will determine your success this year. Therefore, you must unabashedly contact and strategically penetrate your archrival’s customer base. This should be one of your top goals during a recession. 2. Be a Human Vacuum Cleaner. No business is too small not to be interested in during a recession. Furthermore, you should consider it a personal insult when a deal goes down in your territory that you aren’t aware of. 3. Qualify, Qualify, Qualify. “All buyers are liars” is a fundamental philosophy of all Heavy Hitters (extremely successful salespeople). Buyers lie for a variety of reasons. Sometimes to protect themselves and hide their biases, while other times to make salespeople feel better about themselves. Therefore, you must continually qualify every buyer both formally (by asking questions) and intuitively (by using your sales intuition). 4. Keep Your Wins. Do you take your existing customers for granted? Are you giving them the attention and respect they deserve even though they aren’t buying as much as they used to? If not, see point number one and remember your competitors are not sitting idly by.
5. Try Something New. If what you’re doing isn’t working then take time to figure out why. Put yourself in the position of being your own customer. Honestly, ask yourself if you would buy from you? Do you convey a compelling message? Do you have the wherewithal to reach key decision makers? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” you must not be afraid to try something new. Remember Albert Einstein’s quote, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
Here’s some critical final advice... Be happy. A recent study of 4,700 people over a 20 year period found that happiness is contagious. It seems that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers. The study also found that misery really doesn’t want company because people seek to surround themselves with happy people. This also applies to your potential customers and most importantly, you. So be happy, your next sale may depend upon on it.
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