You Can Grow Your Business in a Downturn
Market downturns can cause severe stress for many organizations as they come to terms with reduced revenues and profit margins, increased financial risk and ensuring costs are kept under control. The most extreme outcome for many is the exiting of markets or closing down altogether. This is particularly true for those organizations considered to be mature. Product innovation and disruption may be difficult to achieve for many. However, there are others who thrive on the challenge of a downturn to better position their business for future growth without losing the integrity of the overall corporate culture.
A particular area of interest is that of sales organizations. Many businesses simply scan the horizon of their existing customer base and align their expectations with those of the customers. This is a perilous exercise if you have little control over your customer’s financial position, their market pricing, resources and accounts. Which of course, you don’t.
Organizations act to a set of processes that allow them to be as efficient as possible but also minimize costs on known activities. This may appear to give those operating away from head offices or individual departments little flexibility to act in a manner different to what is the company norm. However, this is not the case. These processes and norms give staff a level of comfort in knowing that they are behaving in a way that is expected. This exemplifies the old maxim that if you keep doing what you’ve always done, then you will get what you always got.
So how can employees and managers work within a corporate structure and still grow their business? There is no golden bullet or one piece of enlightenment that helps. If there was, it would be getting done by somebody already. The key is to look for continuous improvement at a micro level to those activities that generate sales. To do this employees, managers and leaders need to question the status quo continuously and do so in an environment that encourages this behavior.
Holding a sales meeting generates little in the way of new business and if it does, it’s normally by the way of an agreed pricing promotion. Spending scarce resources on functions and entertainment may assist in some relationship retention but generally never translates to new and ongoing sales growth. This can be true also for many other activity’s sales people perform.
There are activities that can assist in growth though. Product training helps but is not a panacea. Sales people need to embrace the data they create and use it to become more efficient in their activities. Organizations are becoming more adept at generating useful data through CRM’s other software platforms. Training staff to look at their own behavior and encourage a level of freedom for them to continually realign sales activities will be far more beneficial than a sales meeting for sales growth.
There is a catch though, demographics. While it may be easier for younger generations to accept an increased level of technology, it is generally the more mature sales people that carry all the product knowledge. This is the challenge. It can be done; it just needs solid determination support from within the business.
