3 Tips to Adapt Your Sales Approach in Uncertainty

Rob  00:07

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine. He’s in the roofing industry, which is part of the construction industry, and he was sharing with me that things have slowed down in general. He said the company in general. This is a big company.

Rob  00:22

Sales are down for the year and that may be due to the uncertainty going on right now. The timelines of everything seems to be slowing down. The pipeline; how long it takes to get get through the pipeline; and overall slowing down? They are negotiating on price a lot more than they normally do. Budgets are tightening. Is it because of uncertainty? All these things are starting to happen, he said, and it made me realize that there are things that you can do if you’re experiencing these things that can help you pivot the way that you approach sales. It might be time to adapt.

Rob  00:45

By the end of this episode, you should have three simple things that you can pivot, change, adapt in your sales process that will help you get more sales, especially during uncertainty. Let’s get started.

V/O  00:55

You’re listening to The Slow Pitch Podcast, a podcast about selling less and closing more.

Rob  01:03

So the first step I would recommend is, number one, is this actually happening to you? Do you even need to adapt? So that conversation that I had with him was kind of organic in nature. It just kind of happened. It wasn’t me trying to steer him towards anything. It wasn’t me having a conversation, asking these questions.

Rob  01:15

It just came out of his mouth that things are slowing down. It felt like to him, sales are slower. Sales are lower for the year, they’re missing certain numbers and so forth. And that’s kind of a an indicator that something is weird is happening, right? He asked, do I need to adapt my approach?

Rob  01:27

And so the first step you have to do really is, is this really happening to you? So if you had a few sales that just didn’t close, a couple here and there, or things didn’t move as fast as you were expecting them to, that doesn’t mean this is happening to you or that you have to adapt anything. That just means you had a couple of things that didn’t go right with those sales, that they weren’t ready, whatever the reason is, it had nothing to do with necessarily, that things are bad. That just means you had something simple happen, right? Or is there some uncertainty going on?

Rob  01:53

So the first thing is test, give it enough time. So I had a client not too long ago in the beginning of this year, who was saying, oh, you know, things are bad, things are bad, things are bad. And they were freaking out, right?

Rob  02:04

But the problem was they didn’t give it enough time. So by March, things were back to normal for them. So they didn’t give that enough time. And I would recommend that you, if you feel like something’s happening, give it enough time. Be cautious. Be aware, be curious.

Rob  02:18

But you want to make sure that you’re giving it enough time so that you know for sure that this is exactly what’s happening. So let’s, let’s fast forward.

Rob  02:26

Let’s assume you’ve given it the time or you’ve been able to say, listen, no, I know this is happening to me, because it’s not just one or two, it’s like 7, or 8, or 9, out of out of 10 times that I’m dealing with potential clients that it’s actually happening like I’m seeing it full on every client I’m dealing with.

Rob  02:42

The indicators for this really become, if you’re going to really evaluate it: Are they beginning to negotiating a lot more on price? Are they pushing it off to third, fourth, next year, that kind of third, fourth quarter or next year? Are they making decisions that just don’t make any sense for based on what your conversations have been so far? Are they sidestepping any sort of decisions and actually just pushing things along and not really going forward step by step. Is your approach simply not working?

Rob  03:04

They’re, they’re not, they’re avoiding you. They’re they’re different things that you’re that are happening, that just aren’t saying, Hey, I’m ready to buy, or I don’t know that I’ll ever buy, right? So those are the kind of the indicators that will tell you if it’s been happening. With a lot of them, that’s when you’ll start to say, Okay, I think this is what’s happening. Now, I know this is what’s happening.

Rob  03:21

So let’s get into some of the things that you should be doing right now to adapt during uncertainty. Or the things that you can do right now. So my first tip is you’re going to need to tighten up your qualification metrics. And here’s what I mean by that way, back when, when they entered your pipeline, whenever that was it could have been five days ago. It could have been five months ago.

Rob  03:35

Whatever the number is that they entered into your pipeline, you had a qualification metric that you said they’re qualified as a potential buyer or a lead, they’re qualified to be in my pipeline (even before the uncertainty).

Rob  03:46

I want you to reevaluate that metric. What I want you to do is look at that and say, Are they really qualified? What do I know? And you know your tendency is going to say yes, but I really want you to say, what do I know? Do I know that they have enough budget? Do I know that they have enough pain? Do they do I know their timing? Do I know when they need to have this fixed by? So to the pain thing too, are they looking at it in terms of,removing the pain of whatever this is costing them right now, or are they looking at it I need this for the future. It’s a general positive feeling of, I’m trying to buy this in the future.

Rob  04:19

I always equate to it this way: if you’re going to try to buy a boat, there’s no logical reason why you’d want to buy a boat, right? It’s cost a lot of money, okay, but what you’re looking at is saying, I want to buy a boat because of the pleasure that it’s going to bring me, right?

Rob  04:31

And so I always look at it and say, does somebody have that pleasure focus in the future, or do they have a pain that’s happening now, which is, I’ve got expenses that are going out, that are costing me money, or there are things that are happening that’s making me expense, things that I shouldn’t have to do, right?

Rob  04:46

So that’s that’s the pain piece, or the pleasure piece that’s coming out of this. Do they have enough? If they don’t have enough, they’re probably not supposed to be in your pipeline. And that’s one of those that you’re going to have to evaluate.

Rob  04:55

So I want you to make that threshold more difficult, and. I want you to take a look at every person in your pipeline, and I want you to split it into two or three different groups. The first group these people are long play. They’re worth it.

Rob  05:08

And you know, they fit with the right metrics of, are they qualified? Do they have enough pain? Do they have the budget? Does it fit their timeline? Does that fit with your timeline? So they’re going to be people that in the future. You know that at some point they’re moving into going to buy, and they do buy, right? You can feel it. You can see it. They’re just stalling you out, because there’s some how they’re tightening things up.

Rob  05:28

The second group I want you to split it into are high certainty. These are people that are really close to buying right. They’ve got all the pieces, all the measurements that you need. I want you to say, Okay, here’s some people they’re gonna do in the future. I think here’s some people that are gonna do it more urgently or more in the near future.

Rob  05:41

And the last group I really want you to do is look at and say, who doesn’t belong, force them out. I want you to call the people on the bottom there to close them out. Get them out of there. I want you to call them up and say, hey, listen, I’m just going through my list here and it’s been a while since we’ve had a conversation. Or it’s been a while since we’ve made any movements on this thing.

Rob  05:56

I feel like this isn’t going anywhere. I’m assuming there’s some things happening on your end. Am I correct? There am I reading this right? I want you to go in there, and I want you to really push them to say, yeah, that’s right. This is true. I’m not going to make any purchases at this point.

Rob  06:08

Because if you push them that way, some are going to come back to you and say, no, actually, we were just talking about this. We were going this way. We’re going to, we’re working on, trying to make some decisions, and then we’re going to come and do this next, right? They’re going to push back.

Rob  06:19

There’s also a lot of the other people that are just going to say no, to say, nope, you’re right. We’re never going to buy or no, we’re not interested right now, and that’s okay. And when they say we’re not interested right now, your statement or question should be back is, I’m assuming by right now you mean probably never, right. I don’t want to assume anything, but you’re probably not interested anytime soon, meaning ever, maybe the next 5 or 10, years, right?

Rob  06:42

I just want to make sure that I’m reading this right. I need to know because I want to take you out of my list, and I don’t want to pester you anymore, and a lot of times they’ll agreewith that.

Rob  06:47

So the second tip I would give you is I want you to go back and look at your key accounts, and I want you to figure out how to retain your most important accounts, because if other people are starting to evaluate their budgets, I guarantee you that some of the people that are currently working with you, even if they’re ongoing clients, they’re probably looking at budgets and saying, do we need to keep doing this or not?

Rob  07:06

And so you want to make sure that you’re having a good relationship with those individuals and you’re retaining them as best you can. What I want you to do here is create a list, whether you print it out or on screen, a list of all your current clients.

Rob  07:18

I want you to organize your clients into the most important to the least important. That could be income levels. That could be value that they add to your business, in terms of being able to say, these are my clients, even though they don’t pay the top dollar amount, they could be a variety of different reasons why they’re important for you to continue to work with. Maybe they don’t make a lot of money for you every month, but the value of their lifetime is significant, right? It could be any one of those.

Rob  07:41

Then I want you to take a look at your top 20% and I want you to reconnect with them right now. What you need to do is take that top 20% reconnect with them and do a review. I want you to sit down with them and do a review.

Rob  07:52

In an upcoming episode, I’m gonna talk about how to do a review the right way. So right now, I’m just assuming you’re gonna go through all these motions to make sure that you have all of the pieces that you need to make sure you can take some steps now to set yourself up, but if you want to go back and listen to a previous episode I did about doing a review, it’s episode 37 where you turn a review into a new client.

Rob  08:15

So I want you to do that with the top 20% those are your most critical, important people, and you’re going to go through the client review.

Rob  08:27

Then I want you to take your next 20% and do that with them. But a shorter version. I don’t want it to necessarily be as deep or as as in depth of the of the conversation. What I want you to do is go in have that same, similar conversation, and on both the groups, there’s going to be a point in that conversation where you’re going to want to ask, are there any other players, other people in this organization that might be able to use my service.

Rob  08:44

And what happens is, is they invariably think about how they’ve used your service for their division, their section, their whatever they’re in that company, and think about people that they interact with in other areas of the company, and they say, hmm, yeah, I should probably introduce you to whoever right in another department.

Rob  09:00

And if that happens, you’ve just gotten a new basically a new client, right? It’s just added and expanded your your client base, but within the same company. So it’s an easiest way to acquire a new quote, unquote client, because they are now expanding you into a different department or division.

Rob  09:17

Before I go to tip number three, if you found these things helpful and you need some extra help, or you want to just bounce something off me, or you have a question, I invite you to reach out. You can contact us at questions@theslowpitch.com

Rob  09:28

The third tip I would give you that you should be doing right now are reviewing your key performance indicators. And here’s what I mean by that, I want you to think about what worked for you before, what brought in your new leads. If it worked before it’s going to work again in the future, more than likely, maybe not all of it.

Rob  09:43

If you’ve done things in the past that you know work, if you go to networking events, you make cold calls, if you get coordinated lists that you work with another vendor, and you work on making the connections through them, whatever your process is that you get, and you find that that’s very effective for you to acquire new clients.

Rob  09:59

I want you to look at that. And I want you to increase the things that really work really well. I want you to decrease the things that don’t work very well. And I want you to be disciplined. I want you to look at the things that work really well.

Rob  10:10

And if you used to do those things, let’s say two times a day or 10 times a week. I want you to double it, if you can physically do it, double it. And I want you to take that time and double down on the things that work really, really well. And I want you to measure it. I want you to track it.

Rob  10:27

I want you to say, okay, usually I would do this a couple times a day, and that actually brought me this, okay. Now I’m doing it four times a day. Maybe I’m doing five times a day, if I can get away with it. What I want you to do is track it. Does it work?

Rob  10:38

And if it works, then I want you to track this work really well. What you need to do is focus on your actions. Focus on the metrics or the actions that actually do lead you to get you what you need. And they’re the things that you can control.

Rob  10:48

You’re going to focus on the metrics or the actions that will give you the control back. Because right now, if you’re feeling like things are slipping out of your hands, you’re feeling no control. These are the things that you can control that will drive business in the future.

Rob  11:02

Essentially, what I’m asking you to do is look at what can I control? If that means, when you look at all your metrics of all the actions and activities that you do, what’s most effective? That’s the stuff you should be doing.

Rob  11:12

All right, we’ve gone through the three tips of what I would recommend doing. If you have verified that things are actually slowing down for you. I want you to review your qualification metrics. Are they up to snuff and up that standard that you need to have?

Rob  11:27

Number two, go back and retain your most important accounts. Have another touch point with them, do a review with them and see if you can widen who you’re working with within that company.

Rob  11:36

And third, review your key performance indicators of what works and what doesn’t work, get back into the things that you can control and stop focusing on the things that you can’t control. Remember, Slow Down and Close More.

V/O  11:47

Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question at (608) 708-SLOW. That’s (608) 708-7569. Or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com, Slow Down and Close More.