Purchasing and Negotiation Training

"Shorten your sales cycle & increase your win rate through competitive excellence"

Editor’s note: Stu Schlackman is a frequent contributor to this blog.

Recessions bring on employment worries that impact our performance. The mortgage and credit crises Washington’s stimulus package show no signs of resolution.  All this “stuff” puts fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) into the economy. Worse, this FUD is putting the brakes on corporate investment – reducing spending and directly impacting our prospects.

What can we do to improve this dismal outlook?

How can we target and improve our selling efforts to exceed expectations? When the World Trade center was destroyed, President Bush’s answer to ‘what could the American people do to fight back.’ was “continue to spend”. The foundation of America’s strength is still our economy which remains the envy of the world. This puts the sales pros in the front line troops for the war on recession. Bush’s “spend” message was more than a recipe for main street stimulus; it reached to the core of American values: optimism for our future. Our economy is a self fulfilling feedback system. If we believe times are good, we spend and the economy is stimulated.  If we believe bad times are around the corner we cut back and the economy tanks. So when bad times arrive, we must change that negative-feedback behavior to affect a turnaround. We need to be optimistic so things can improve. We need to convince our customer’s to spend now.

How do we position ourselves to be the partner of choice with our customers and prospects? These three issues are crucial: (1) Value Proposition, (2) Personality Influences, (3) the Customers’ Perspective.

1.     Value Proposition

What worked prior to the recession might not work now. Customers have different priorities and strategies when economic times are challenging. Your value proposition uniquely differentiates you from your competition. It needs to address both the real and the self-perceived needs of your customer. What is their main priority – beyond survival? How do they plan to pull ahead in these turbulent times? Is it their plan to increase revenue, cut expenses, or increase customer satisfaction?

Fine tune your value proposition specifically to each customer, knowing that each customer has a unique set of needs and plans for their projects. Be specific in what you are offering and make sure you can be explicit with tangible value. Provide references that back up your success claims. Show customers and prospects how your product and services increased revenues  or cut expenses.

2.     Personality Influences

Second, customers buy for two reasons – personal and business. Overall these split 50/50. Right brain dominant people lean towards the personal side: looking more at the intangibles and the subjective reasons to purchase. These are the Orange and Blue personalities. The Green and Gold personalities, being left brain dominant, will lean more towards the business side, the tangible and objective reasons in their decisions. In periods of FUD and downturn, all personality styles lean towards the business issues at hand.

Why? Executive management mandating cut backs in budget and a refocusing of their efforts can cause a change in priorities. Their personality styles have not changed, but the environmental pressures on them have changed. Discover what has changed for them. Perhaps, with revenues uncertain or turning down, cash is king and keeping expenses under control is paramount with your customers. Alternatively, perhaps they see the downturn as an opportunity to gain ground against weaker competitors. Understand your customer’s priorities and don’t present benefits of your solution that don’t matter right now. Find and present the benefits that do.

However, decisions are still made by people and people also react individually to our economic downturn and increased pressures from management. It is more important than ever to discover who makes the buy recommendations and the ultimate buy decision – and ease their worries.

• Blues fear lack of safety and security: for their business, their colleagues, and themselves. More than ever they want clear, positive messages and directions. Blues despise fear and worry the most; focus on alleviating their fears with compelling value and building trust.
• Gold’s business fears center on financial stress, but their personal fears are about things being out of their control. Golds will overcome these fears themselves; give them the actionable levers to pull.
• Greens business fears are about missing key information but their personal fear is about being wrong with resulting dire consequences. Greens will analyze and assess their fears, over and over again, captured in a loop; give them the information needed to pull out of this loop. Then they will act.
• Oranges fear losing the business and also losing face. Oranges will face their fears head on; leverage their optimism.  

Third, resist the urge to view each and every sales opportunity as: ‘how will gaining this business benefit me?’ View it through our customer’s eyes. How will our service benefit them! Rather than fret about the time lag in making a decision, investigate why the delay is occurring. Do not just assume it is the bad economy.

Click for Bob's 3 CD set

3.   Customers’ Perspective

If necessary, get your company to engage researchers or business development specialists to help tune your message. A relatively small investment can help focus your value message. Just as investment drives the economy, strategic focus and clear market intelligence information can drive your company’s success via your successful sales.

Recap

For this economic downturn, focus on fine tuning your value proposition, give specific tangible benefits of your solutions, and view the situation from your customer’s perspective. Build the client relationship by understanding their personality style and stay optimistic.  So, what conditions/motivations will trigger similar optimism in each personality color group? And how can we help trigger that optimism?

• Optimism is triggered in Blues through healthy relationships and trust. Work with them to earn that trust.
• Golds naturally are pessimistic but feel good when concrete things get completed. Create with them a bulleted plan and tick things off to their satisfaction.
• Greens are optimistic when they figure out something new and innovative. Send them new feature perspectives, and even better, entirely new directions to investigate.
• Oranges always see the glass half full, but look on the opportunity to fill the glass up. They are excited by new things.

So fill up that glass with positive expectations and a renewed, and enlightened, commitment to success.