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The Best Recession Sales Strategy
March 24, 2008
By Steve Martin
Selling in a recession is not only difficult, it's downright scary—especially when certain economic indicators that truly reflect the dismal state of the economy are becoming real concerns for sales management:
1. Sales leaders across all industries (technology, finance, manufacturing, etc.) feel there is a foreboding sense of gloom about the coming months. In most cases, they say that sales have been down or flat since January. Regardless of their past successes, they feel saddled with annual quotas they will be unable to achieve.
2. Over the past 90 days an ever increasing number of vice presidents of sales and other sales executives have lost their jobs through "reorganizations." They are panic-stricken they won't find work. For them the old adage applies, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours."
Bully Best Practices
Knowing how to appeal to the Bully with the Juice is a mandatory strategy in tough times like these because even though you may win the selection process, you still haven't won the business.
Who is the Bully with the Juice? The Bully is the financial decision-maker who will ultimately approve the purchase. It’s the person who controls the company's purse strings. He could be the CFO, VP of finance, VP of purchasing, or even the president. Unfortunately, this person has the economy on his mind and is less likely to approve spending money.
A bully will get his way at any and all costs. But being a bully is not necessarily a negative term, nor does it mean that the person is physically intimidating. It is simply the description of people who will tenaciously fight for their cause.
During the selection process you will encounter bullies and evaluators with varying degrees of juice—simply put, juice is leadership, authority and charisma. However, only one person within the customer's organization can be the Bully with the Juice. Even after the vendor selection has been made, releasing the funds must be approved by the ultimate decision-maker.
The Bully with the Juice is the company's equivalent of emperor Caesar. Only he can give his thumb up or down on the life-or-death decision to spend the company's money. So even though you have won the evaluation and been assured that a purchase will be made, you are actually in the most critical part of the sales process. You must win the approval of the Bully with the Juice.
There are four important rules regarding the Bully with the Juice:
• First, if the Bully does not exist in your deal—be prepared for no decision to be made. It takes a Bully to make a major purchases happen. This is a reality in today's economy.
• Second, if there is a Bully in your deal will not meet with you, always assume they are aligned with someone else or are against the purchase from being made at all. Therefore, the deal is lost.
• Third, if a Bully does exist but you aren't able to identify the person, be prepared to lose. You are in a position of extreme risk because you have no idea which economic decision-maker you must win-over.
• Finally and most importantly, you must meet with the Bully as early as possible during the selection process. This is the only way to know whether or not a deal really exists.
Salespeople are constantly placed in an environment where they must differentiate themselves and their product from other attention-getting solutions.
Under these circumstances, the salesperson's job is to create a relationship with detractors as well as supporters. Ultimately, there is one person who makes the final decision and truly matters. In today's economic malaise, it is the Bully with the Juice who reigns supreme.
Steve Martin is author of Heavy Hitter Sales Wisdom and Heavy Hitter Selling. The heavy hitter sales philosophy has helped more than fifty-thousand salespeople become top revenue producers. Please visit www.heavyhitterwisdom.com for more information.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
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