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Episode Transcript
Alex Chan | Paul O’Donohue
Here’s a question for you. If you’re a business owner or CEO, Are You Recession Ready? We’ve started every episode in the series with the same question. So are you recession ready? This session discusses step number eight Skillset of the SalesStar nine step high performance pathway. And I’d like to welcome back SalesStar founder and CEO Paul O’Donohue. Paul, previously we talked about the importance of mindset, but now we’ve got a separate but related topic and that is skillset. So let’s just say we’ve got the right mindset now. What are the things that don’t work during a recession and what are the things that people need to really, really bone up on and get good at with the window of opportunity that we have before a recession hits Let me go to the first question. What are some of the things that don’t work during a recession?
Well, we’re authorized to talk about this, Alex, because all of these methodologies, we actually learned and had a lot of success with through the global financial crisis. So one of the things that stands out for me that does not work is relationship selling or the dependency on it. Right. So and there was a survey through the Global Financial crisis that led to relationship sellers being like only 3% of top performers in the world.
They were the least effective.
They were the least effective, absolutely. Because, you know, think of the change in buyer behavior. You know, buyers are going to be harder to get to in the first place. So you have to have really, really good prospecting strategies, you know, features and benefits don’t work because all your competitors have the same features and benefits. So we’ve got to go from selling tactically, which doesn’t work to really selling strategically. So by strategically, I mean really honing in to your strategic buyer. Like, who owns the problem in their company? So versus tactically, tactically would be maybe most salespeople pull on a procurement officer because, you know, they had the intellectual buyer, they are easy to access, but they don’t always make those quick decisions and they’re always the one KPI is getting the right product at the right price. So they’re very price sensitive. So we’ve got to elevate our sales up core hire in a company that takes a different level of skill. So you’ll also notice that buyers are more considered, but they will spend money if we give them a good reason to like, if there’s a compelling problem that they need to resolve. They will spend money to resolve that. So our strategy needs to change. And talking of strategies, the methodology that absolutely works is the consultative selling strategy. So it is a strategy. It’s a methodology. It’s a skill set. But those that do it can identify where that company, where that prospect is going in terms of the objectives, what are their challenges, what are the pain points, and what is the cost of not fixing or eradicating that? So in other words, they’re able to build up a really, really good business case. And this is what’s required people spend money if they have to and they see a return of investment. So if we can showcase an ROI, a return on investment and we can demonstrate value, then we give more reasons for our prospects to buy from us. But you also need to be more boned up in terms of the put offs that you’re going to get, the objections that you’re going to get. You know, like the objections might be sharpen up your pencil, we’re looking for the best price. You know, people are, your competitors are going to be hyper competitive. They’re going to be low balling you. We need to better deal with that. We need a better deal to put offs in terms of, you know, we need to think about this. This is a big decision for us. So we’ve got to be on our game. So all the fundamental things of selling, the consultative selling, you have to be really good at negotiation. And Alex, I absolutely 100% believe that you have to be really good on your account retention and management.
Okay. We’re going to talk about that later on in our strategic moves, that is a really important point that you just raised. But if I can just summarize, there are certain things we shouldn’t do, the old relationship, coffee and donut calls that doesn’t work in a recession. Research actually shows that’s the lowest that has the least that’s the least effective type of selling. You were just saying earlier on. Benefits you were saying we’re too subject to comparison because everybody does the same thing. You were saying that the thing to do is to sell consultatively on the basis of value. That was a really important point, Paul, thank you. Selling on the basis of value and being able to provide a business case to help their business to to actually be better. And you mentioned negotiation. Well, I really identify with that negotiation comment that you make, because customers are always trying to cut costs, but particularly during a recessionary climate, aren’t they.
Yeah. 100% Alex. And that’s, it’s a good way to erode margin but you know you can sell effectively without being pushy. So in fact there’s a really good asset down below there. It’s called Stop Selling and Start Consulting. So if you want to bone up on your skills around consultative selling there’s a really, really good asset to download and get a ton of value from.
Thanks, Paul. And you make a good point that we’ve got the small window of opportunity to really improve and hone our skills before things get really, really difficult and challenging. So download the asset, ladies and gentlemen. And remember, if you want to know more, reach out to a SalesStar high-performance coach because they are there to help. And remember to keep on following the series to get the full overview of how to be recession ready as we continue our journey through the SalesStar nine step high performance pathway. Oh, and one more thing. Remember to watch out for key strategic moves later in this series. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.
