Business agility in sales means challenging your customers to accomplish more, especially in times like these!
Business agility means selling, even in tough markets
Although I cannot remember, nor find the study in question, the following research is more relevant now as it was when it was first published. There was a study done* regarding selling behaviors during the Great Recession of 2009-2013. Its purpose was to discover what type of sales behavior was most successful in those dark, no bid, recession days.
The different selling behaviors were divided into five groups and I do not remember how three of these groups were defined. What I do remember as important was of the remaining two there was only one behavior group that maintained its sales performance and most importantly, only one of these five groups that actually increased theirs.
The one that maintained their performance during those tough selling days were those salespeople who behaved by building strong and loyal relationships. Their performance maintained a balance during both the preceding good times as well as the bad. They normally did not out-perform in good times nor under-perform in bad, or vice versa. Yet you could always count on them for reliable delivery. In short, they made sure to take care of their vital customer relationships, regardless of the current economic environment.
The behavior group that exceeded their sales budget in hard times consisted of those sales personalities who dared challenge their customers to be better. They encouraged them to be bolder; to dare more and take more risk. This led to their customers succeeding more while they succeeded in selling more. Win/Win!
Urban Business Agility myth or not, who really cares?
As I heard of this study second hand and have never seen it directly, despite looking for it desperately for many years*, please discount its accuracy 100%. Yet is there some common-sensical part of this that we could successfully sell better with, especially during hard times?
Being Liked versus Respected
Although these two groups maintained or outperformed the other 3/5’s of the salespeople interviewed, I heard no mention of the relationship quality the fifth group, filled with challengers, had to their respective customers. Chances are, those relationships were also good AND maybe they kept pushing their limits as well. What if this is Business Agility?
Relationships can stagnate or suffer when we try to remain comfortable and liked for too long. We often become too reasonable, too nice, offer too much and end up discounting our personal integrity. Yes, you may remain likeable, but you inevitably lose the respect (and margin?) of the other person or people in the relationship. Worse yet, in a deep economic downturn you may indeed remain likeable, but your customer’s wallet still remains safely and politely hidden away.
On the other hand, those we have respect for often encourage us to accomplish unreasonable results. We may not even like them and often they don’t seem to care but somehow, they still earn our respect and then get us to do stuff way out of our comfort-zone. They help us to test and exceed our limits, to develop and find success on a higher level. They may not be reasonable, but they are masters and they get results.
Especially in a downturn, you may be able to prolong some payment dates with reasons, but you can only pay your bills with results.
Consider yourself and your colleagues challenged!
In these unprecedented times, results have become quickly and drastically hard to come by. You now need to dare WAY more to succeed. To do that you need to challenge yourself, your customers, your co-workers and your suppliers to be better, more effective and to generate results. There will be fear and there will be resistance!
To counter this, you need better presentation skills, more effective sales, marketing and business agility skills to win the day.
If this sounds interesting and you want to learn more please contact us below.
Or we invite you to order one of our books: Called Mastering Agility, Successfully Navigating Uncertainty!
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* If you happen to know which study I am referring to and looking for, I would be extremely grateful if you would let me know.
Board Member Catalyst Acquisition Group, Minerva Group
Kurt Larsson is an American who has been living in Sweden since the late 1980s. With a background and degree in Finance, he has sold everything from Automobile tires in Houston, Texas to retail banking delivery systems in over 20 countries. He has driven his own educational consulting company, Expanding Understanding, for more than 20 years. His niche is transforming consultative business teams into collaborative ones.
To do this he specializes in effective selling, leadership and customer service practices, focused on more conscious and efficient use of the most important communication tool we have, our body language. His skills work perfectly in line with transforming management, sales and customer service teams from a transactional to a collaborative business model where customer loyalty is the prime goal. He has now become an active member on both Catalyst Acquisition and Minerva Groups’s Board of directors. He has written many articles on Ezine, his own blog and is also co-author with Hans Amell of the book: