Don’t Chase 2 Monkeys!!
Heard a great presentation on Wednesday at the ISMM Successful Selling Conference in Birmingham by Neil Rackham, the author of the groundbreaking SPIN Selling system based on his research into successful sales techniques, and one of the world’s leading authorities on selling.
His key message was that in hard times and recession, the winners are those that focus on selling smarter not harder. In other words it’s NOT about simply stepping up business generating activity, it’s about focussing on the quality of the opportunity. Too many businesses panic, he said, and spread themselves too thinly. “If you chase 2 monkeys, both will escape” he explained.
In tough times, it’s also about making customers feel ‘safe’, and that includes your existing customers too.
He also suggested that the worst thing a business could do was to ‘defend’ existing business. It’s about treating all existing customers as ‘new’ customers and working on the principle of “attack is the best form of defence”.
The recommendations were not just a few random ideas, but are based on research into how businesses performed in the last recession, which he pointed out, many people in sales today did not experience.
What are you doing to adress your approach to winning business in these ‘harder times’?
|