I was asked by my friend Charlie Green representing The Customer Collective to contribute to an e-book that was just published. I recommend that you download it, read it and use it.

Selling Through A Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook

A Guide by Salespeople for Salespeople on How to Sell Your Way to Recovery

Download this Free eBook

Selling in a recession is tough. And simply doing more of the same is not the way to survive, much less thrive, in a recession. There are important dos and don’ts in times like these. This eBook is your industry-specific roadmap out of the economic slump.

Selling through a Slump: An Industry-by-Industry Playbook brings together sales strategies and best practices from 11 top sales experts from 11 distinct vertical market sectors, ranging from retail to health care to telecom—because one size doesn’t always fit all. The practical tips and experience-based wisdom here aren’t just limited to any single industry, though. Regardless of your market sector, you’re bound to find value in this arsenal of great sales ideas.

Get access to exclusive tips on how to sell in a recessionary market, from renowned
sales experts like Jill Konrath, Charles Green, and Dave Stein. We know you’ve
got questions—this eBook was created to give you answers.

Click here for valuable sales strategies from experts in every industry:

Charles Green, Founder and CEO, Trusted Advisor Associates Selling for Accountants and Consultants

Mike Wise, VP, Insurance Technologies, IdeaStar Incorporated Selling for Insurance Agent

John Caddell, Caddell Insight Group Selling in Telecommunications Markets

Skip Anderson, Founder, Selling to Consumers Sales Training Selling for Retailers

Mike Kujawski, Founder, Centre of Excellence for Public Sector Marketing Selling to Public Sector Clients

Matt Homann, Founder, LexThink LLC Selling for Lawyers

Anne Miller, Founder, Chiron Associates Selling Media

Dave Brock, President and CEO, Partners in EXCELLENCE Selling to Manufacturers

Jill Konrath, Author, Selling to Big Companies Selling in Services

Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO, PhoneWorks LLC Selling in Health Care

Click Here to Download

(A simple registration is required)

Brought to you by The Customer Collective and Oracle CRM. Welcome to the conversation.

Read McKinsey’s recent article, The downturn’s new rules for marketers (registration required).

I was pleasantly surprised to see some sound advice about sales organization function and structure in the article.   The real meat for those of us on the sales side is near the end of the piece, beginning with, “Reprioritizing sales function.”

There is no shortage of advice about selling during this recession floating around the Internet these days.  What ESR’s clients are more interested in is not quick sales tips, but alternatives for territory coverage, resourcing, sales organization structure, and value proposition relevancy.

What concerns me is that many sales leaders in trouble will jump at any idea.  Some of those I speak with are doing exactly that.  The McKinsey article will hopefully convince you to assess your situation carefully first.  A strategy that can help one company reduce a projected revenue shortfall by 10 or 15% may make things considerably worse for another.

Your sales people need direction, motivation and firm leadership (among other things).  There couldn’t be a worse time than now for the ready, fire, aim approach.

Graphic credit: © Adrian Hillman – Fotolia.com

For the moment, we’re busy at ESR.   During the past few weeks, even during this economic high-speed wobble, a number of companies became actively involved in exploring with us how they can improve the effectiveness of their salespeople.  Another good sign:  we’ve been selling more reports, especially our 2008 Sales Training Vendor Guide and our Understanding, Defining and Meeting Your Sales Training Requirements.  How long will this last?  I wish I knew. 

One client’s senior executive said to me, “We have to make sure we get a bigger piece of a smaller pie.” 

York Baur of The TAS Group told me on the phone today that he expects some of his company’s clients will figure, “Hey, my P&L is blown away anyway.  Wemight as well take the time now to invest in sales productivity.”

Another of our clients is on a quest to refine their selling and client relationship processes with an emphasis on competing more effectively.  They are going to be impacted by the inevitable mergers and acquisitions that will take place and want to be competitively advantaged when they have to either displace an incumbent or protect their own account.

Smart moves by smart executives.

I was on the phone today with an associate from a private equity firm. 
He found ESR on the web and was interested in our opinion on a number of topics
as a foundation for his firm acquiring one or more sales training companies.  He
asked how sales training companies were generally doing during this
recession.  He pondered how a services-based company could weather these types
of economic downturns, correctly observing that it’s hard to find good talent
when the economy is strong and when there is a downturn, you run the risk of
having expensive, non-billable talent on the bench.  “Tough to grow a business
that way,” he said.

Next the comparison of training classes versus daily consulting came up.  I explained how sales training companies make significantly more margin from training classes than consulting.  In fact, many training companies only  do classroom training and are not at all interested in the assessment, methodology, process, customization, design, technology enablement, coaching and post-program support work that we believe is vital to a successful sales performance improvement intervention.  Why is that their approach? Margins!  A classroom day generates a lot more margin than a consulting day.  As a rule of thumb, a training day generates between 600 to 800% more margin than a consulting day. 

Companies that only offer out-of-the-box training rarely deliver the kind of long-term sustainable results that those that take the holist approach do.  The guys at Think, Inc! are proving that what was formerly considered a stand-along skill like negotiation really should be integrated with the client’s selling methodology.  As a result they have a consulting component, which they believe is required for success.

On the other end of the spectrum are companies that will not do any classroom
training unless it is part of a complete solution which would include the
components mentioned above.  Performance Methods is one.

There is another piece to this—non-classroom vendor-provided content, such as
e-learning modules, podcasts, remote coaching, opportunity management support
(White Springs, for example) and other web/software-based IP.  Vendor that
license this type of content to clients should be seeing highly profitable
business. 

What’s the point here?  You, the client, need to have the proper mix of consulting and classroom time as well as post-program support that will result in the greatest level of sustainable performance improvement for your team.  Don’t jump for what the training company proposes.  Don’t be willing to slash what’s required for success (like post-program coaching) because a vendor recommends it.  They may be willing to drop a less profitable but more important line item in your proposal because it suits them.