🚨   Defensive Growth Strategy
🎧   Learn From Selling
🥊   Provocative Selling
🚨 Defensive Growth Strategy
In a slowing economy, buyers naturally become more selective:Â scrutinizing every purchase, demanding discounts, and delaying decisions.
Take a defensive stance. The marketplace has shifted, and you cannot rely on existing customers or lead sources to meet targets.
More marketing won’t work, and neither will more selling. Doubling down on campaigns wastes time and burns cash in a market that isn’t buying.
Instead, rapidly find and replace the customers and revenue taken by the slowdown.
During the recession of 2008 and 2009, the unemployment rate jumped from 4.7% to 10%. At the time, I was leading my family’s recruiting business, and this was devastating for our industry.
Recruiting agencies were going out of business, but our business thrived. We grew revenue and profitability by rapidly targeting smaller markets with specific needs.
This required a different approach. We couldn’t rely on search engine optimization or traditional marketing to fill our funnel. We proactively hunted companies with a Burning Need we could serve.
We stumbled on a niche of American companies diversifying their sales organizations to Toronto. This was a small niche, but it was big enough for us.
As markets slow or contract, take a defensive stance. Discontinue or reduce tactics that worked in a growth market, and shift your approach to find new markets and revenue streams.
This will position you ahead of your market when things open up.
🎧 Learn From Selling
Your customers will tell you what they want to buy, if you listen.
A powerful place to listen is in every sales call:
- Questions: What questions were you asked? What information were they seeking? How were they evaluating their options?
- Objections: What were their concerns or objections? What caused them to hesitate or pull back?
- Resonance: What worked well in the sales call, such as questions, value statements, or demonstrations?
- Trigger Events: Why did they meet with you? What symptoms, issues, or events are motivating them to seek out solutions?
You may learn something from a single sales call, but you will start to see patterns after ten or more meetings, such as common questions and objections. This knowledge is invaluable because you can learn how to proactively answer and resolve questions before they are even asked.
One Stat to Watch
4 Months
Buying cycles are taking longer. 49% of buyers took 4 months or more on purchase decisions over $20,000, up from 41% in 2023, according to G2.
🥊 Provocative Selling
Provocative selling is a fast, efficient sales process that focuses on solving your customers’ Burning Needs.
Geoffrey Moore writes in HBR, “Provocation-based selling goes beyond the conventional consultative or solution-selling approach, whereby the vendor’s sales team seeks out current concerns in a question-and-answer dialogue with customer managers. And it differs dramatically from the most common approach still in use — product-based selling, which pushes features, functionality, and benefits, usually in a generic manner. Provocation-based selling helps customers see their competitive challenges in a new light that makes addressing specific painful problems unmistakably urgent.”
Provocative selling leads from a position of expertise. You know your customers’ challenges, and you help them diagnose and solve them:
- Target Burning Needs: What are the thorniest business issues your customers are facing? What are issues a CEO might create a budget for, even if none is currently allocated for the service?
- Lead with Expertise: Provide your customers fast, relevant insights that help them diagnose the Burning Need, and then demonstrate how you can resolve those challenges.
- Qualify Fast: Don’t dilly-dally in the sales process. Get to the point, qualify fast, and assess if you have the right solution. If not, politely inform the customer and move on to the next opportunity.
Customers value companies with expertise that can solve their issues and help them achieve their objectives. Be an asset, not another salesperson.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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