When The Going Gets Tough

Unless you are selling AI computer chips or tariff predicting software, this is an especially challenging sales environment as many organizations have put a pause on new spending or have reduced their budgets.  What is a sales leader or CEO to do?  Unfortunately, there is no perfect playbook for this situation but here are a couple of suggestions we have collected:

1) Stay positive while being pragmatic

Leadership is about being inspiring.  Stay positive yet at the same time don’t be Polyana.  Emphasize that the economy is not at a standstill and organizations are still spending.  Get creative, help people and teams revise strategies, change course as needed, but don’t change too frequently. 

2) Sales is about making the number

In a similar vein to suggestion #1, ensure you continue to maintain a culture that sales is about exceeding the target.  Yes, this is an especially tough environment and leaders should be empathetic to how challenging it is, but help people rise to the occasion versus opening the door to accepting excuses. 

3) Understand the roadblock

How are generic terms such as “budget freeze” being implemented at each and every prospect?  Is there an opening for spending on something new if existing and recurring expenses such as labor, services, processing fees or contractors could be reduced?

4) Go Small

Although the solution you are selling has a positive ROI and other benefits, if it does not “materially” impact the business it may be difficult to get access to someone who can make an exception to the budget freeze mandate (see #3 above).  However, smaller organizations are often more flexible and executive access is easier.  You will have an opportunity to show why the organization should make an exception.

5) Hard benefits

Soft benefits are not going to cut it.  Ensure you have modified your sales approach to quantify the benefits and that the team is comfortable talking in financial terms such as ROI, payback period, and hard savings.

 6) Tighten the Progression Criteria

Now is not the time for surprises.  Ensure you have well defined progression steps, that the steps can be validated and/or measured, and that the steps are being followed and reflected in the forecast. 

7) Don’t “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie”

Assume your rep’s primary contact at the prospect may not know about new investment restrictions.  Furthermore, dispel the notion that asking about budget freezes or purchasing process changes, “let sleeping dogs lie”, is self-fulfilling.    

8) All hands-on deck

Now is the time to be visible, accessible, and out meeting with existing clients, prospects, partners, and influencers.  Leverage the entire executive team as I have worked at companies where people in the roles of the CFO and VP of Customer Support were excellent executive sponsors and great at helping with sales.   

9) Frictionless

With resistance to upfront investments as well as shorter payback windows, now is the time to see what else you can do to make your offering frictionless.  Frictionless includes not only seeing if you can package a version of your solution as a service, such as PaaS or “servicizing”, but also focusing on specific use cases in order to increase immediate value. 

As an example, I once sold software that translated large complex computer code bases into a database that could be queried for changes or remediation.  The software was amazing, but it was a long-complicated sales cycle.  We decided to add an offering where instead of the customer needing to invest in the software and build the model themselves, the customer could choose from three common use cases, and we would build the model for them (targeting under two weeks).  We had three deals in the first week at +$175K apiece.     

10) POC in a box

Instead of resisting POCs, get very good at doing them fast and keeping them simple (as well as pre-qualification).  Make them a step in your sales cycle.  Help your prospect create the internal business case and de-risk the investment by demonstrating results on their data and processes.  Your going to be asked, so spend the energy on simplifying versus resisting.

 11) Plan for the unwanted

Know what you are going to do if sales come in lower than target - where you are going to cut, how people rank, and where you can consolidate territories.  Avoid creating additional harm with a period of uncertainty by having plans for the unwanted.