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    How a Flexible Sales System Can Help You Thrive Through Uncertain Times

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    As companies are looking forward into the new year, one thing we can all agree on is that nobody really knows exactly what’s going to happen. According to Forbes Magazine, the world is not officially in a recession, but some economic indicators suggest we’re headed that direction.

    A recession may be likely in the coming months, but nobody knows how bad it will get, how long it will last, or what sectors it will impact. In short, the only thing we’re certain of is uncertainty.

    As we’re “pumping up for Rocky times” here at Membrain, I’ve been thinking about the power of flexibility for surviving and thriving in uncertainty. We often focus on the importance of HOW you sell, of developing and reinforcing consistent sales processes for your team.

    But a consistent sales process doesn’t have to be an inflexible process. In fact, we believe that well-designed processes for complex B2B sales must be flexible and dynamic to accommodate the complex organizational and human elements of selling. This is even more important during uncertain economic times, when the ability to pivot and shift with the market is critical to survival.

    How to Build a Flexible Structure for How You Sell

    Unfortunately, many people associate “process” with “inflexible,” in part because most of the process tools on the market are inflexible. For instance, Salesforce offers “process tools” with their CRM, but in order to get them to work, you need professional developers to build your steps into the software, and software managers to maintain them.

    If you want to change the way your process works, you have to pay for more development hours.

    As a result, most companies keep their embedded sales process very simple: Stages in a dropdown box.

    When you move a prospect to an opportunity, you change the dropdown box setting.

    This leaves your salespeople to their own devices to remember and follow the steps and activities you’ve developed for them, based on whatever training you’ve invested in, and hoping they remember the right activities based on the changing conditions of the opportunity. While this might seem a more “flexible” approach to sales than an embedded process can provide, it actually leaves salespeople stuck in old ways of doing things, even when the market changes, and inhibits your ability to help them update their approach.

    A consistent sales process doesn’t have to be an inflexible process.

    In order to establish a flexible sales process for how you sell, you need a sales platform that makes it easy to embed how you sell directly into the salespeople’s workflow. With a tool like Membrain, salespeople always have the latest best practice at their fingertips every step of the way, and you can update it on the fly to accommodate changing conditions.

    Where Do You Focus During Rocky Times?

    Knowing where to focus your team’s time and attention is even more important during turbulent economic times. You need to know which prospects and, especially, which accounts to go after, and how.

    In general, your best opportunities during a recession lie with customers who are already successful with your services or products. High performing teams double down on account growth to help their existing customers thrive, to grow their own revenues, and to prevent loss of revenue from lost accounts.

    But knowing which accounts to focus on can be a big job on its own. Inside Membrain, we provide an account growth visual called our account growth grid, that makes this job both easy and flexible.

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    You add the criteria you know are important to identify growth opportunities, such as the size of the company, their industry, the range of products they’re already using, and other factors. The account growth grid shows your accounts along two axes, with those with the largest potential for growth with you in the upper right quadrant.

    As the market shifts, it’s easy to go into the account growth module and update the criteria by which you identify high-growth opportunities. For instance, if one of your focus industries is hit hard by economic conditions and pulls back on spending, while another is still growing, you can add that criteria and help your team identify potential within likely industries.

    This enables your account management and growth team to easily identify who to focus on. Then our process tools help them quickly identify what to do. These tools also enable your management team to assist in account planning for high-potential accounts.

    How to Upskill Quickly in a Changing Environment

    It’s one thing to decide that your salespeople should do something different in order to succeed in a changing environment, and another things to get them to do it. They need to not only know WHAT to do, they need to know HOW to do it and have the correct activities reinforced consistently.

    This means your training, upskilling, and coaching must be as flexible as your strategy, process, and software platform. Again, having the right platform makes this much easier, as you can embed training and upskilling content directly into the workflow, so salespeople see it when they need it and can apply new skills in context immediately.

    Being able to easily embed training and coaching content also makes it easy for salespeople to see when an approach has changed, and to quickly adjust their behaviors and approach to accommodate the new understanding.

    Rocky times are almost certainly in the near future, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to admit defeat. In fact, the right combination of flexibility and wise investment can position your company to come out of it all on top of the world.

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    George Brontén
    Published December 28, 2022
    By George Brontén

    George is the founder & CEO of Membrain, the Sales Enablement CRM that makes it easy to execute your sales strategy. A life-long entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in the software space and a passion for sales and marketing. With the life motto "Don't settle for mainstream", he is always looking for new ways to achieve improved business results using innovative software, skills, and processes. George is also the author of the book Stop Killing Deals and the host of the Stop Killing Deals webinar and podcast series.

    Find out more about George Brontén on LinkedIn