The pressure is building. Prospects are more knowledgeable, demanding more concessions and more results. The good news: Even in these uncertain times many salespeople are delivering impressive results. Want to know how?

A recent study conducted by the business experts at Forum identified nine driving principles that top salespeople follow during an economic downturn:

1. Be a true business consultant to customers. Customers value new ideas and insights based on your experience and expertise. What have you learned from other customers with similar issues that can relieve a new customer’s pain immediately? Talk results with customers. Show how your product or service helps them meet their goals. Create solutions for their problems. Be innovative. Increase credibility by acting as a trusted advisor who brings innovative, highly differentiated solutions to the table that respond to customers’ unique business challenges.
2. Do your homework. Know more, connect to more information than your customers do and turn your knowledge into value. Invest time and energy in researching your customers’ customers, markets, competitors, employees and challenges. Study before a sales call, so you can prepare insights to share with the customer during the call that turn into meaningful action after the call.
3. Clearly differentiate. Try harder to have your company, product or service clearly differentiated from the competition. If you customers can’t easily and quickly explain why you’re different from others in the same field, it might be a good idea to review your presentation. Don’t just assume they see your uniqueness — tell them.
4. Identify hot industries or sectors. A downturn doesn’t hit all companies, all sectors of the economy or all industries. There are always some areas that still grow. Concentrate on finding those areas.
5. Market yourself more to both prospects and existing customers. Keep in touch with them through letters, postcards, newsletters, e-mail, voice mail and sales calls. Try to have something of value to share with them every time.
6. Stay in touch with customers who are not buying, for whatever reason. By not staying in touch with them now, you send the signal that you only want to talk with them when they’re ready to 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 tell yourself all the things you’re not doing right and all the things you need to improve on. Recharge or renew yourself and then put in enough effort to get where you want to be, not just enough to justify where you are now.
9. Focus on your long-term vision versus short-term goals. Keep telling yourself that it’s all about the bigger picture. That’ll keep small failures from affecting your overall mood and approach.

Source: Ron Koprowski, Executive Vice President, Forum, Forum@forum.com

Tags: credibility, downturn, economy, Forum, hot industries, marketplace, principles, sales, sales call, study, Value