Selling Skills for a Down Economy

During periods of economic slowdown, especially during this recession, salespeople need to understand the changes that happen to the customer. In good times, customers buy things. During tough times they are more conscientious about where their money is going, and therefore, they have to be sold. Fortunately, it's not all bad news. You can still succeed in sales during the downturn, if you focus on a few key principles.

1. Understand the customer's situation - what is happening to your client's business that is having a significant impact? Take the auto industry as an example. The economy, demand for fuel efficient cars, federal bailout money, union contracts and changing buying habits, all have a huge impact on how they must adjust their way of doing business. The more you understand these situations, the better your chances are of making a connection.

2. Goals and objectives - Not yours, but those of the client. Is your client focused on reducing costs? Are they building a new plant in another part of the country? Are the introducing a new product to the market? Once you understand the things that are important to that customer, focus on the goal that you can help them reach by using one of your products or services.

3. Forget the features - Especially during tough economic times. When money is tight, the fact that your copier can produce documents with purple ink that smells like grape, and yellow ink that smells like banana will not resonate. What they want to know is whether or not they will save money to achieve their cost cutting goal. Start with the goal, show how you can help them achieve the goal (benefit), and support it with a feature when absolutely necessary.

In short, by understanding what the customer is dealing with, and helping them to reach their goals, you can still make sales in a tough economy.

Would you like to improve your sales results?

Skywalk Group can help! Click here to find out about our Customer Oriented Sales training program.

Contact Mindy Seiffert for more information and ask about our "sales stimulus" package.