So what businesses grew out of the tough 1930s? Perhaps the humble cough drop can inspire us.
In the 1930s Halls invented its Mentho-Lyptus formula, using a combination of menthol and eucalyptus, and began producing its popular cough drops. The brand is currently owned by Cadbury .
Halls products though are sold differently depending where you are.
The northern hemisphere knows them as a cold relief product with licensed medical status in the USA , Canada and the UK. Whilst in hotter drier climates they are sold as mouth refreshment .
(Maybe we can sell our existing products and services to different market segments likewise.)
Currently Halls menthol lozenges have a series of huge posters on the Cromwell Road / Warwick Road site of Clear Channel, London suggesting whatever 2012 holds we can all take a deep breath to engage with the challenges of the new year by sucking on their cough drops.
A double dip recession is an especially tough business reality check. The shock of the first dip will have been an uncomfortable experience to many who had only known selling in the 18 years of previous uninterrupted growth.
They may have had a few colleagues in their team (quite possibly not their team leader) who sold in the last double dip recession (1980s), and whose brains they could pick but such experience was quite rare.
The Cost cutting in the first dip has had to be brutal and sometimes businesses have cut through the bone and into the marrow.The low hanging fruit have all been picked.
The smart salespeople realised that the comforts of account management and relationship selling would not see them through so it was time to adapt or die.
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| One of the Halls Menthol lyptus cough sweets campaign on posters in UK Jan 2012 |
The three basic adaptations are:
1. PROTECT your key
clients from attacks from the competition. Don’t rely on client loyalty indeed
a recession is a good test of quite how much of a trusted adviser your clients
really think you are or whether they just see you as another commodity supplier
to be pruned.
The vulnerability of the 80:20 rule is exposed. To lose any of
your key clients will require you to replace the significant lost business with
more business from less developed accounts to keep on target.
2. EXPAND your reach within existing accounts. Seek out and
exploit opportunities to up sell, cross sell and plus sell. Having built a
momentum within an account, expand your contacts with both the influencers and
decision makers. Many purchasing departments will be looking to reduce the
number of suppliers in cost saving drives, so make yourself indispensable to
many parts of the client’s organisation.
3. DEVELOP new
clients.
Let's be clear we are
talking about PROSPECTING and being genuinely pro-active, digging out your own
leads. If prospecting has not been part of your recent routine, begin it now.
It may mean a spot of “cold turkey” from the addictive
delusion of being busy processing the self perpetuating round of emails. It’s
time to get off your backside pick up that phone, proactively work that PC, work
those numbers and attend more networking events .
Do some scouting on
that new Industrial estate. Take a note
of new firms and then "Google" them maybe with a title of your
typical contact level. e.g. Operations Director, HR Manager etc. You might even
come across sites about your prospect, try "images" and you may even
strike lucky with a photograph of them!
The TACK research study “Selling to today’s Corporate Buyer”
2010 revealed that Buyers’ consider the communication methods above for
salespeople to arrange a first appointment with them as acceptable:-
Adapting effectively is about embracing change, learning or
re-learning skills suited to the recession. It’s time to sharpen your saw one more time as
Stephen Covey might put it. It will give you that motivational push to adapt
that bit quicker than your competition to not only survive but thrive in
recession.
Whilst soothsaying pundits wonder whether their predictions for 2012 will turn out right, those of us in the proactive realities of selling just have to get on wth it or as the English idiom goes ' suck it and see'.
Maybe we can be helped along by a soothing Halls cough drop!
Whilst soothsaying pundits wonder whether their predictions for 2012 will turn out right, those of us in the proactive realities of selling just have to get on wth it or as the English idiom goes ' suck it and see'.
Maybe we can be helped along by a soothing Halls cough drop!
Related Link
Event report of Planning for Success 2012
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