Monday 28 July 2008

Recession-Proof Attitude

Oil prices, sub-prime meltdown, banks in crisis, property crashes - things look tough.

There's no question that life in business is going to get tougher. But is that really a problem? Necessity is the mother of invention and when times are good there is very little innovation in business. Staff can charge high salaries and often deliver less results. In selling, less is required from sales people as the money just rolls-in from all the businesses flushed with cash.

Come the first winds of recession however and everyone starts to 'dig-in'. Businesses retrench, budgets are slashed (often reflexively) and people start to hoard their cash.

However to take an attitude of retrenchment in business and especially in selling is disastrous at a time like this. This is exactly the time to start ramping up your sales operations. Coach and train your people now in the best of relationship management techniques - how to find, engage and keep the customer. Many of your existing sales people probably have little skills in networking, influencing and closing business.

As others start to believe that there is less opportunity in the market place - this is the time when we train our sales teams in believing that there is more opportunity. The 'mind set' of the competitors removes them from the market as they fail to see opportunities that their 'attitude of loss' blinds them to.

Whatever we believe sufficiently in - we manifest. This is not  psycho-babble but real psychology. Our perceptions are created by our beliefs and expectations. When we expect things to happen they often do - because the brain and our perceptions re-aligns itself with what we expect to see  - thus if we see  opportunity, the brain will make what opportunity there is clearly stand-out from our everyday reality.

It still means targeted, effective, sales activity is required. But with more opportunities spotted, the competitors hiding in their recession 'bunkers ' and a greater expectation of success in the minds of our sales teams - we can recession-proof our businesses.

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