Around 90% of CEOs believe a recession is coming. Half of them are already planning for layoffs
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/around-90-ceos-believe-recession-182706418.html
Layoffs, right sizing, downsizing spending freezes, and budget cuts are the outcome of this headline.
Let’s say you own a farm with a whole bunch of different kinds of animals… cows, pigs, chickens, goats, and a few Golden Geese. The bank comes to you and says something like… “You need to reduce your animals by 30%. The feed cost is killing your budget and we are afraid if you don’t follow our recommendations you will forfeit your loan.”
After pushing back, explaining, complaining and finally accepting the truth do you reduce the entire population of farm animals by 30%, including 30% of your ‘Golden Geese’?
NO.
You would get rid of the least productive and most expensive animals that provide the least amount of return. The last thing you would do is ‘Kill the Golden Goose’!
Many companies in this economic environment take that blanket approach and reduce 30% of everything and fail to realize the Sales Department is THE GOLDEN GOOSE. The worst possible mistake a company can make is to cut their revenue machine! They make poor decisions about who to keep in their sales department based on history. Instead, companies should be looking at who on the team has the ability to generate revenue in economic hardship. They fail to understand what critical skills are necessary do to this.
We all know there are 21 Core Competencies in Sales and OMG measures all of them. They are not one dimensional either. They each have a set of attributes that make up the Competency. There are 5 that are critical to sales success in these economic times. Based on 35 years of research, 2.25MM sales evaluation with 180 unique findings for each sales person, and over 35,000 different companies, in 200+ industries.
We know for certain the 5 critical skills are:
Relationships – The ability to become the trusted advisor within a few minutes of the first call.
New Business – Daily consistent effective prospecting
Reaching the Decision Maker – getting to the person who owns the problem and has the ability to spend
Consultative Selling – listening and questioning to help the prospect discover their own compelling reasons to buy
Differentiating Value – selling value the entire way through the sales process and differentiating your products, services and company.
If you want to find out how your team stacks up on these 5 skills and the 16 others take a free test run.