The global economy is headed for an economic recession – at least, that’s what Wells Fargo believes. According to the American financial services company, the world may witness an economic downturn sometime during the second half of the year. While businesses are currently in a “wait and watch” mode, it is expected that many will cut budgets, fail to meet revenue targets, downsize, and more.
Luckily, sales leaders can turn these hardships into opportunities by acting now.
Yes, you read it right. All businesses can become recession-ready if they create a game plan for their sales team that talks about investing in tools, training, and developing an effective sales strategy. This protects the company from the impacts created by the recession and readies them to seize opportunities.
Go through the below tips from our in-house sales experts who have experienced an economic downturn before and helped businesses navigate the recession turmoil.
- Focus on delivering value to your customers
Instead of slogging for hours to hit your sales quota, identify potential ways to deliver value and support to your existing customers. This will make your customers happy, improve the possibility of repeat business, and lower their chances of disappearing. Salesforce research found that 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience.
Start with questions like-what are the changes you can make in your business systems and processes to serve your customers better? Speaking from our experience of delivering business process automation, changes in payment options and contract terms can help customers relieve their budgetary concerns during a recession.
Some easy value wins that work include allowing changes in the agreement terms and offering smaller packages.
- Train your reps
When you invest in training (upskilling and cross-training) your reps, your sales organisation will be able to respond to complex market changes more quickly, take on new responsibilities, and adapt to shifting market demands.
As the recession is approaching, it is critical to spot the sticky points in your sales cycle – poor ramp time, deal complexity, long sales cycle, etc. – and create training modules inclusive of instruction and quizzes, examples, or interactive activities. A report said companies that invest in training are 57% more effective at selling than their competitors.
Ensure the training is cross-functional as it will empower your reps to handle basic questions and won’t increase the query resolution time. To ensure its success, consolidate all your sales data with the help of a leading CRM services platform like Salesforce so that your reps can access critical data when customers reach out.
- Define the performance expectations
Creating expectations for your sales reps will help them understand what they need to achieve to help the company grow. Ensure that the key sales responsibilities are in place, set clear guidelines for performance expectations and model them.
Let’s understand this with an example. Train your reps on pipeline maintenance, team alignment, etc. Lead the initiative by maintaining weekly pipeline reviews to display the importance of accountability. Include training as part of your own weekly tasks, and sync with teams to ensure everyone understands the relevance of alignment.
- Automate the tasks to improve productivity
There are no two thoughts that automation is the only way forward for today’s businesses. It reduces risk, human error, and manual dependencies and lets you work on mission-critical tasks.
Implement technology and solutions like Salesforce CRM that help reps maintain focus on selling activities instead of manual tasks. A recent research said that 90% of organizations globally use the Salesforce CRM tool. In this research, it came to light that Salesforce acts as a catalyst for company growth, and organizations consider Salesforce “very important” or “extremely important” to the success of their business.
Salesforce CRM has everything that businesses need to sell faster. It automates steps in the marketing and sales funnel to drive better outcomes. The automated workflows, scheduled messages, and automatic record updates scale up the sales efforts without spending dollars to increase the team. It is accessible on the go at anytime, anywhere. It can be integrated with other technology stacks. No wonder Salesforce CRM is rated as the #1 sales CRM.
Leverage Forsys to Magnify the Power of Salesforce CRM
Forsys is a full-solution systems integration partner for Salesforce, specializing in revenue operations, with experience in 200+ engagements across industries. We have executed complex Salesforce CRM integrations and customizations to help the world’s most valuable businesses generate new contacts, grow accounts, create opportunities, and close and win deals faster.
To build winning sales processes and gain advantage of our Salesforce CRM expertise, speak to our team now.