When things slow down, sales can get tough. Really tough. But it’s not the time to slow down; it’s the time to adapt. Here are 6 tips on what you need to do right now to sell during a recession or face slowing down.
Table of Contents | How to Sell During a Recession
1. Stay Motivated
Number one, you’ve got to stay motivated. That is first and foremost. That’s why I have it at number one. To survive in a recession, you need to have the attitude that you’re ready to make things happen. You’re ready to get out there and help people, and you’re ready to get back up, brush yourself off and start again every time you get knocked down.
It’s not the first time a recession has ever happened and it sure won’t be the last. So circumstances change, the cause might change but at the end of the day, if you’ve been in sales long enough, you’ve had slumps before.
Now is not the time for frivolousness. Now is the time for family,
You’ve got to stay motivated. How do you do that? Remember what you’re doing this for? Why are you working so hard? Why are you fighting so hard? Maybe, it’s not why. Maybe it’s who. Who are you doing this for? If you’re like me and you probably are, you’ve got a husband, wife, kids, mother, father, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, you’ve got family.
You’ve got people who count on you that you need to fight every single day to put food on the table, to put a roof over their head, food in the fridge, clothes on their backs. That’s what it’s all about. If you have money left over, you buy a house and a car, your Louis Vuitton bag, all that kind of stuff. You treat yourself nice, but right now is not the time for frivolousness. Now is the time for family, so who are you doing this for?
Get busy, get cracking, have a photo on your phone of your family and your friends and who you’re doing for as a constant reminder of why you’re working so damn hard.
Maybe not this tough but you can still draw upon the resources that you’ve always tapped into to get out of these slumps and to stay focused and positive and focused on closing deals. It starts here with your mindset, your attitude to succeed, to help you sell during a recession.
2. Reach More People to Sell During a Recession
You gotta reach more people during a slow down if you’re going to close more deals or at least stay alive. You’ve got to reach a whole lot more people which means you need to increase your sales and marketing efforts. You’ve got to double down.
This isn’t the time to sit back passively and wait and hope that things get better because they’re not just going to get better any time soon and when and if they do get better, it’s going to be too late.
You see how many people are unemployed, on the street, homeless right now. Everyone was already living paycheque to paycheque, now there’s no paycheque so what are you gonna do?
That’s the great thing about sales is, you write your own paycheque so get out there work hard. Double down. If before it took you a hundred leads to close one deal, guess what now you need 200 leads because maybe there were fewer people buying and the people that are buying have smaller budgets so you got to double down on your effort.
Maybe you need to triple or quadruple down. You’ve got to hit two, three, four times as many people to get the same results as before but if you’ve got the hustle and the mindset and the motivation, you can make it happen so you got to reach a lot more people to sell during a recession.
3. Change your Messaging
Next, change your messaging. The same old tired messages from before just don’t work anymore, so you have got to change your messaging to what’s happening right now.
We’ve always talked about how you need to tailor your message and customise your message to suit your customer avatar and their buyer persona and their profile based on their industry and the type of work they do or the role or title but guess what?
Now we need to further customise our messaging to the situation what’s happening right now. You also need to approach people from a place of sincerity, love, compassion and empathy. Understand the things are really tough for them right now and you’re not trying to grab their money, you’re actually trying to help them solve problems and help them win because if they win, you win so change your messaging.
4. Follow Up with your Best Customers
Follow up with your best customers, your best past customers and also your lost leads. These are super important so focus on your best customers. These are the ones who are most likely to give you money right now, during a slow down or a recession. Your past customers are the ones who are most likely to take your calls, read your WhatsApp messages, answer your emails. It’s your past customers, who you already have a relationship with them.
Pick up your mobile phone, send a little WhatsApp message and just check in with your best past customers. Ask how they’re doing and say; “Hey! Is there something I can help you with?” Let them know what you’re doing. Put your hand out, right, not a handout, asking for stuff but a handout to give them something, deliver some value to your best customers and they will listen.
5. Go After your Lost Customers to Sell During a Recession
So, you need to go after your top customers but also go after your lost customers. You might be wondering why the heck would I go after my lost customers. Look, in the last five years, we’ve had over 500 lost deals! Sucks, right. Yeah but we’ve had a lot more one deals, nice, right.
But go after your lost deals because those were opportunities that you were working on before that for whatever reason didn’t materialise, they didn’t come through. But that doesn’t mean they hate you, it just means the timing wasn’t right or the budget wasn’t there or things changed. Follow up with lost deals and see what happens.
We just did a campaign last week, we went after those 500 lost deals. We heard back from lots of them and we’ve already closed some deals with those past lost deals. We wouldn’t have made that money, we wouldn’t have closed those deals if we hadn’t gone after those past lost customers. So, the same thing goes after your top best customers and go after the lost deals the people that you thought were long forgotten, not forgotten. You just got to remind them that we’re here and we’re still ready to serve you so go after him.
All right, folks. Those are the five things that you all need to be doing right now to sell during a recession. I know that you guys can do it. Get out there and go for it.
6. Upgrade your Sales Skills
Before you do all of this stuff that I’ve talked about: stay motivated, change your message, etc, if you’re going to go after way more people, you’ve got to upgrade your sales skills.
Yeah, that’s a given you’ve got to hone your craft and get better at your job. Improve your sales skills. So how do you do that? Keep watching reading articles and watching sales tip videos like this. We’ve got tons of sales training videos on our YouTube channel, so keep watching videos and reading books and listening to podcasts and sign up for SOCO Academy, our e-learning platform.
Do whatever it takes to get the skills that you need to prospect to hunt, to qualify, to demonstrate your USP in your value, to handle objections, to present effectively, to negotiate to get more repeat business from people. There is so much that you need to do and so much yet to learn so keep focusing on upgrading your sales skills
