There are great advantages to periods of economic contraction and once you know the secrets of exploiting those, you will expand and conquer while others shrink and submit. Many of the economists, pundits, and media talking-heads are predicting doom and gloom, end of the world scenarios, with their 24 hours a day-round-the-clock ranting and raving only focused on the problem and who is to blame, without offering much in the way of any solution as to what you can to survive and prosper.
You have probably already experienced a slowdown, as business has slowed down significantly in most parts of the world. Regrettably, I’m sure you are feeling the effects of the recession and hopefully you don’t like it. I hope you don’t like it and in fact would encourage you to hate it and hate it so much that you are willing to do anything to fight back against it. This will be a time when many people suffer and also a time when others using specific strategies will expand and conquer their markets.
Identify what the losers/quitters are doing:
1. Complaining
2. Making excuses
3. Blaming
4. Contracting
5. Cutting budgets
6. Not advertising and marketing
7. Reasonable in their thinking and actions.
Now is the time to know what the “losers” do, and do exactly the opposite. Don’t spend anytime on the activities above! Invest all your time and energy in doing the exact opposite.
The last three are vital to your survival because now is the time to expand your activities and commitment to prospecting, follow up, mail, phone calls, and personal visits. I recently spoke to a large group where I got a commitment from them to become unreasonable with their follow up clients that didn’t close, where the company would continue the sales process by following the customer to their home or office even after the client had thought they had escaped. While this is not “socially acceptable” it immediately resulted in an increase in sales.
Another reader got his entire company on my Sell to Survive Book and Audio program using it to deliver product in a tough market. The sales person used one technique from the book, called the ‘no close’, where his follow up using this technique resulted in the buyer saying, “no way I can resist that let’s do it.”
Now is the time to expand and conquer and to become completely unreasonable with the marketplace. Knock off all the loser activity and replace that behavior with expansion actions and effective solutions.
