Why Just Survive During a Recession When You Can Thrive?

by Gilbert E. Cargill, Cargill Consulting Group, Inc

You can take advantage of current economic difficulties confronting our nation to maximize your sales and marketing efforts. We all know that business does not come to a complete halt during a recession. In fact, many businesses are still buying. From your point of view, however, they may not be businesses with which you currently have a buying/selling relationship. During tough economic times, you can and, indeed, should put extra effort into expanding your marketshare.

Let's take a close look at some of the circumstances that occur during a recessionary period. In all probability, most of your competitors have decided to reduce and/or eliminate their marketing expenses. This means they are lowering their profile in the marketplace. Rather than retreat, as your competition may be doing, you can increase your sales by ramping up your marketing efforts. Later in this article, you will see exactly how to do that at remarkably low cost. Good times or bad, the name of the game is to obtain and maintain top-of-mind awareness with all desirable opportunities in all markets all the time.

Additionally, many salespeople compound the effects of a recession by spending time communicating the bad news and"sad blues" to each other. In other words, the media attention on the poor economy becomes somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy for these salespeople. In their minds, they have become conditioned to the fact that they will, in all probability, not enjoy as much sales success as they have in the past. They accept these circumstances as the reality of the times and do not try to overcome these problems and challenges aggressively or persistently enough.

Your sales force could use this situation as an opportunity to differentiate your company, products, and services. This will require more face-to-face sales calls, which the competition isn't making. You can heighten your prestige by increasing your marketing efforts with more introductory letters, follow-up letters and stay-in-touch letters, while your competitors allow themselves to be demoralized by current economic conditions.

These self-fulfilling prophecies can be your ticket to sales success, if you ignore them and view these tough times as an occasion for you to thrive. While your competitors are reducing their marketing expenditures and experiencing low morale, you could be taking advantage of some great opportunities. Following are some red-hot ideas to help your sales force prosper during this recession.

• Recruiting. Some of the best salespeople in your industry could become available during this time because their management team may have changed compensation plans, marketing structures, territories, et cetera in an effort to shore up their business. Based on thirty-three years of personal sales, sales management and consulting experience, I have observed that salespeople often respond to these changes with significant displeasure. Consequently, this may be an excellent time for you to recruit good talent.
  
  Even if talent were not available, the mere fact that you're recruiting sends a very strong message to your team, your customers, as well as your competitors. By actively recruiting for both inside and outside sales, you are telling these people that your business is enjoying dynamic growth, which you wish to sustain, in spite of tough economic times.
  
  
• Marketing Touches. The number one strategy that will work consistently and predictably during tough times is to dramatically increase the number of touches your marketing"machine" launches into the marketplace. The least expensive way to do this is with monthly email newsletters.
  

If you have any questions or would like to discuss ideas for possible marketing messages, feel free to contact Gil Cargill by phone at (877) 597-9267 or by email at [email protected]. He would be happy to hear from you.

GOOD LUCK & GOOD SELLING!!

©2005