In preparing for our Sales and Marketing Summit and visiting with some of the world's top sales and marketing thought leaders, as well as CEOs whose firms are seeing dramatic increases in revenue during this downturn, several actionable ideas have emerged which you can act on immediately.
The first is from Dr. Victoria Medvec, negotiations expert from Northwestern University and author of the series High stakes negotiation: ten steps for maximising outcomes and building relationships. Nothing improves cash flow (CFOs are fans) and revenue more than reducing your sales cycle time.
And an important technique to dramatically reducing it is to use synchronous communication throughout the sales process.
"This starts with NEVER presenting a sales proposal to a customer without being on the phone or in person with them," notes Medvec. Emailing a proposal to a customer ahead of a meeting doesn't give you the opportunity to react immediately to potential concerns and objections that might arise as they read through your proposal.
And the more time the customer the more difficult it will be to move the sales process forward.
Even if the customer is adamant about receiving a proposal ahead of a physical meeting, suggest it will save them time if you can review the proposal over the phone and that you'll email it to them a few minutes before a scheduled phone call.
Of the four P's of marketing, price is the only one which directly puts money in your pocket. Yet I find companies setting price with very little strategy behind their decisions. And panicked decisions about pricing in turbulent times can be costly in both the short and long run.
For answers, it's imperative you read Pricing with confidence: ten ways to stop leaving money on the table by Reed Holden and Mark Burton. Pay particular attention to Rule Three in their book where they outline three simple pricing strategies all firms can use.
Noted Burton in a recent conversation, "too many firms have gotten caught flat-footed and are using price discounts in a panic to try to keep demand that is going away no matter what they do. The firms that do this are creating two very significant long-term problems. First, they are destroying the integrity of their pricing and the value of their brands. Second, they are training their customers to negotiate for every last penny thus undermining their most valuable asset trusting customer relationships."
Burton suggests the way around this is to look objectively at pricing as a strategic tool that must be managed systematically based on value, market demand, cost structure, product lifecycle, and firm capabilities.
This view leads one to make decisions on the basis of preserving and gaining pricing power be it through reducing capacity to match demand, introducing low price - low value offerings, or making systematic adjustments to price lists so that list and street prices are more in line.
