Despite these uncertain times, many salespeople are flourishing — and recent studies have identified the nine strategies top salespeople are using to ensure they stay on top.

Here’s what they are — and how your staff can put them to work to boost sales:

1. Be a true business consultant to customers. Decision makers crave new ideas and insights gleaned from your experience and expertise. What have you learned from current customers that can relieve prospects’ pain? Talk results with decision makers. Show how your product or service will help them meet their goals. Create solutions for their problems. Be innovative. Increase credibility by acting as a trusted adviser who’ll bring innovative, highly differentiated solutions to the table that are built around customers’ unique business challenges.
2. Do your homework. Strive to know more than your customers do, and turn your knowledge into value. Invest time and energy in researching your customers’ customers, markets, competitors, employees and challenges. Prepare insights you can share with customers during sales calls that they can turn into action steps.
3. Clearly differentiate. Try harder to have your company, product or service clearly differentiated from the competition. If your customers can’t quickly and easily explain why you’re different from others in the same field, it might be a good idea to review your presentation. And don’t just assume they’ll see your uniqueness — ask them to be sure they see it.
4. Identify hot industries or sectors. A downturn doesn’t hit all companies, all sectors of the economy or all industries the same way. There are always some areas still experiencing growth. Concentrate on finding and penetrating those areas.
5. Market yourself more. Keep in touch with prospects and current customers through letters, postcards, newsletters, e-mail, text messages and phone calls. Try to share something of value each time you make contact.
6. Stay in touch with customers who are not buying. By not staying in touch with customers now, you risk sending the signal that you only want to talk with them when you want them to place an order.
7. Keep your enthusiasm. Prospects and customers are influenced by your enthusiasm or lack of it. Customer surveys report that they prefer doing business with positive, enthusiastic sales professionals. Complacency by a salesperson almost always leads to disaster.
8. Avoid negative self-talk. It’s easy to get caught up in negative thinking, especially during tough times. Resist the temptation to think about all of the things that are going wrong. Instead, focus on the things you can do to turn things around. Positive thinking is the best way to recharge your batteries.
9. Focus on long-term versus short-term goals. Take the time to renew your goals weekly, and make sure they are long-term goals. This will keep today’s problems from affecting tomorrow’s sales.

Tags: drive more sales, economy, Recession, salespeople