How to Pump Up Your Sales Team for Rocky Times

Challenging economic times are, well, challenging. For sales teams, they can be brutal.

Cold calls go unanswered. Warm emails remain unopened. Great leads turn into duds. Exciting opportunities go cold. Contracts you thought were going to close go silent. Almost everyone who remains in the pipeline demands discounts and extras to justify the purchase.

You work harder with poorer results.

Keeping a sales team motivated and their eyes on the prize can be tough when times are tough.

At Membrain, we’re a small, hardy little team with a go-get-em attitude and a lot of energy. And we get it. Tough times can be tough for us, too.

The good thing is that we’re used to being up against a challenge. One of our core values is “challenge the mainstream.” We operate in a crowded industry, against big, well-funded players, in a field with entrenched views and lots of heavy opinions.

We know a few things about getting pumped up for a big challenge so you can crush it.

If you want to win the big fight against the tough economy, we’re here for you.

Here’s how you can pump up your sales team–and keep crushing your numbers through the Rocky (excuse the pun) times ahead.

Don’t Pump the Brakes When You Need to Pump Up

Tough times are not the right time to pull back on investment, especially if you’re a small company. In Sweden we have a phrase: “Man kan inte bromsa sig ur en uppförsbacke” that means, “Don’t apply your brakes to go uphill.”

In Rocky terms, this means: Don’t stop going to the gym, eating nutritious food, and planning your fight strategy when you know you’re up against a major competitor. In this case, the competitor is the economy (and people’s expectations about it.).

Large, VC-backed and/or publicly traded companies set the wrong example by massively cutting costs during economic hardship. They can afford to because they can afford to lose a few fights as long as their short-term quarterly spreadsheet doesn’t show too heavy losses.

With the right strategies and investments, position yourself to succeed through and beyond the recession.

Smaller, medium-sized companies, especially underdogs in heavily populated industries, need to take a longer, more strategic view of tough times if they’re going to survive and thrive, and be ready to come out of the ring pumped up and ready for the next fight.

In sales team terms, this means:

• Don’t lay off salespeople just to cut costs (it never hurts to evaluate whether you have all the right people in all the right seats, but laying off the revenue generators when you most need revenue is not the right move)
• Invest, don’t cut, in getting to know your customers more intimately (people don’t fire people they know and love)
• Invest, don’t cut, in messaging and stories and strategy to differentiate your company and lift your perceived value in the marketplace
• Invest, don’t cut, in improving your sales process to win more and better deals
• Invest, don’t cut, in effective training and coaching to ensure your team is following the process and executing effectively
• Invest, don’t cut, in providing exceptional and targeted value to your customers, partners, and prospects
• Invest, don’t cut, in hiring and retaining top talent to help you navigate the choppy waters of the downturn

Instead of cutting, invest in getting your team focused and pumped up, so they can win this fight and come out of it ready for the next.

With the right strategies and investments, your company can be positioned to succeed through and beyond the recession.

Pump Up Your Team By Focusing on What Matters–to Them

Let’s start with the human element. Your sales team may be feeling restless, worried, or demotivated by changing economic conditions.

So before you invest in boxing gloves and gym time, invest in understanding what matters to your team, and help them win the internal battles they’ll fight before they can win the sales battle.

Managers and coaches should be spending time understanding where salespeople are struggling, what their priorities are, and what success will look like to them through and on the other side of the downturn.

Only when you understand your people can you appropriately motivate and compensate them for the changes and efforts they’ll need to make to survive and thrive through the downturn.

Pump Your Team Up By Helping Them Focus Where They Can Win

Help your salespeople identify where they can have the greatest impact and reach their numbers most easily.

In hard times, more than any other time, your best source of growth is often account growth with existing customers.

But it can be hard to know who to focus on and how to help them in a way that increases their investment in your services.

Within the Account Growth module of the Membrain platform, we have an account growth grid that helps sales teams visualize where their biggest opportunities are among existing customers.

This is groundbreaking for a lot of companies, because most sales managers don’t know who their #3 or #5 most profitable customer is, which customers are most likely to grow over the coming year, or which ones are most enthusiastic about exploring new offerings that can help them to grow.

The Membrain account growth grid helps you identify this quickly and easily, so your salespeople can spend their time on the customers most likely to yield good results for them.

Coach Salespeople to Coach the Customer

When things are tough, people fire contractors and vendors. They don’t fire friends and confidantes.

One of the most valuable things your salespeople can do is become valued coaches to their customers and prospects. When they understand what matters to the customer, how their business works, and when they can ask them valuable questions that lead them to understand their own needs and opportunities more clearly, then they not only win more–they lose less.

In order to become successful “prospect coaches,” however, your salespeople need coaching. Invest time and money in making sure your managers have the time, training, and support to effectively coach salespeople.

And, of course, keep your own eyes on the prize of the customers and prospects you can help the most. If you’re helping them survive and thrive through the downturn, they’ll help you.

After all, when you’re in the fight of your life, the most important thing you can have is strong allies.

So, what are your best tips for pumping up for rocky times? I’d love to hear.