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Sales Training Consultancy
Sales and Sensibility Coaching Limited |
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Impact of reduced customer spend
The impact of reduced customer spend
In today’s economic climate all business are making plans to recession proof their business, therefore if you are taking steps to recession proof your business you can be confident that your customers are doing the same. This is the time when the ‘nice to haves’ for a business are scrapped and the must have products and services are selected based on the price and value that vendors and suppliers can deliver. The knock on effect of reduced customer spend can be huge for sales organisations if the sales team are not equipped to overcome this challenge and your customer message is not in line with the current challenges your customers are facing .
The impact includes:
• Sales teams not achieving target leading to reduced earnings and a de motivated sales force.
• The ‘blame game’ begins and sales reps blame the current economic climate for not achieving and in extreme cases not trying to achieve results.
• Losing existing customers as they look for an alternative product/service that can deliver on value and they can gain at a more competitive price.
• Panic sets in and sales organisations that have previously been achieving results are not adequately prepared for the changes and task in hand.
• As sales teams begin to realise that results are not where they should be and hear about other organisations making redundancies fear sets in and they become in fear of losing their jobs which in many cases leads to uncertainty and inaction as achieving results may seem impossible.
• Customers feeling that vendors/suppliers do not understand their current challenges.
During these times many sales organisations will increase new business targets and introduce incentives to fill the existing customer ‘leaky bucket’ with new business. This method may place more focus on new business however it does not necessarily mean that your team will achieve.
Other organisations, the ones who will make it through the economic storm will:
• Look deeper into the reasons of why customers spend is reducing and have plans in place to ensure your customers objectives are being met.
• They will have successfully managed the change and effectively communicated the reasons and benefit of the change to their sales team.
• They will ensure that their sales teams are fully equipped to handle the objections, to deliver a message and value proposition to their customer base that will ensure they retain existing customers.
• They will equip their sales teams with the skills they need to develop new business sales and create the behavioural change needed in order for sales teams to view this challenge as an opportunity to gain more new business, win competitive accounts and earn more money.
Steps you can take to overcome the challenge of reduced customer spend
• Retain your existing customers by creating a value proposition that delivers both on price and on value. A Value proposition is a statement or message that tells your customers what you’re doing to maintain service and quality levels, and what you’d like to do to control or reduce costs while creating more value. The key to retaining existing customers is to ensure that your sales force have the skills and attitude needed to ‘carry the mail’ by delivering this message to your key accounts.
Since most companies ‘pull in their horns’ during a downturn, and cut back on their developing their sales teams , this is an opportunity to step up your sales team development activities while your competitors are relatively less active. Keep in mind that most customers leave their current suppliers due to ‘perceived indifference.’ This perception of ‘perceived indifference’ tends to heighten a slowdown.
• Provide your sales team with a structure to handle early objections on the current economic downturn. Our advice would be to teach your sales team to agree with all early objections until you can get to bottom of discovering the real objection and then teach them a structure for handling real objections.
• Remove the fear of cold calling for new business. This can be easily achieved by firstly providing your sales team with a tailored sales structure that will help them to win more new business. Secondly create an environment where employees can see the benefit of a downturn and why now is the right time to start looking for new business.
Equip your sales team with an effective sales structure that will enable them to win competitive accounts and new business sales.
An effective sales structure should include:
1: A successful introduction
Including your unique value proposition and a ‘what’s in it for them’, i.e. Why your potential customer to take your call.
2: A Fact Find to establish your customers needs & buying motives. Without establishing customer needs you have no basis to make a recommendation for your product or service. Teaching your team on how to hold a successful fact find with your customers means that they must master the art of successful questioning techniques.
3: Gain commitment to needs
Customers need to have confidence that you understand their needs therefore encourage your team to summarise your customers needs and check if they have any additional needs before making a successful recommendation on how your products /service meets their needs.
4: Establish the consequences of not going ahead
By establish the consequences and the ‘pain factor’ of not going ahead with your product or service you will encourage existing customers to stay and put your team in a better position to handle the current economy objections when they are closing a sale.
5: Needs appreciated
Getting your customers to understand and appreciate that your product / service delivers on value, price and meeting their needs will prevent objections and cement your sales.
6: Close the sale
When closing, be prepared for customers wishing to trade, expecting discounts and again giving objections to why they can not purchase your product or service in the current climate.
Equip your team with a structure for handling objections.
In times this it is important that your sales team demonstrate that they empathise with your customers. Once your customers can see that empathise and understand their challenges your team can them start to refine the objection to find the real objection, they can isolate and they can go ahead and start to answer the objection.
Create goals and action plan to get your sales team from where they are today to where they need to be. Targets show that we have achieved what we needed to do however it is small and achievable goals that will get your sales team to final point of the journey which is achieving target. Therefore remember that issuing targets is not enough, you need to break that target down and have your team members set actions along the way to achieve the target.
Build and sustain team motivation
If your team members are increasingly getting rejected by their customers their levels of motivation can take a huge dip. In difficult times many employers feel that their team are just not committed to making their business grow however in reality many of the team are probably in fear of losing their jobs which creates a sense of panic and instability leading to inaction. By learning how to challenge your teams fear and turn it into a positive motivator you will be able to move your team by using their greatest fears and the consequences of failing to your advantage.
By developing your team’s attitude and providing your team with the skills, tools and technique to retain existing customers and gain more new business you are taking a vital step to recession proofing your business.
Click here for a free consultation to discuss how we can create a tailor made sales coaching program from as little as £99 per delegate.
or phone Fiona Challis on
0118 976 7658
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