As companies lay off workers and freeze spending, sales people need to become laser focused on building solid solutions and business cases and leveraging relationships to get deals done.
According to Forrester, businesses have cut back on tech purchases as they try to weather the recession. Worldwide spending on information-technology goods and services is expected to fall 3% year-on-year in 2009. Software sales are expected to hold flat.
But not all companies will adhere to the average so if you want your company to have above average growth, I would focus on building a solution to a problem that is top of mind for your customers hopefully that increases their revenue and/or cuts costs. Then I would build a bullet proof business case and make sure everyone has bought in.
Unfortunately if you are selling virtually it gets even harder to do this. So:
- Create a strong business case tool in Excel or whatever you prefer that can you can send to the customer and let them play with the assumptions to see how your solution could work. We have even played with exposing the tool at the end of our online demo to let people begin to see what kind of return they can get.
- Validate your assumptions with as many stakeholders and influencers as possible to head off objections later in the sales cycle. There are hints below on how to build relationships with these other people in a virtual environment.
- Continue to build consensus around your solution. You are fighting to the end with each sales in this environment. No matter how many people say yes there is always a chance that things get frozen at the very end.
Good luck.
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