2024 heralds 41 years in professional selling for me and like many who’ve been around as long as I have, we’ve sold through several major crises including the GFC and major recessions, learning many lessons along the way. However, starting in 2020, we all had our mettle tested during and beyond the COVID pandemic. In all my years in business I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed as much change as we’re experiencing now. It reminds me of the quote ‘There are decades where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen’.
Global supply chain disruption, numerous government elections and political scandals, wars and conflicts, escalating climate change, growing inequality, volatile economic conditions coupled with a cascade of incredible innovations, the ascendence of AI and renewable energy, changing societal norms and demographics, expanding digital markets, growing consumer activism, and the rise of purpose-led businesses are some of the changes in a post-pandemic VUCA* world. That’s a lot to deal with and navigate as the PESTEL** winds of change swirl around us at great speed. So how do we lead businesses and keep selling better in uncertain times? How do we find opportunities in crises and major change? How do we adapt, stay relevant, and meet our sales targets?
Selling in the good times is easy, it’s only when things get tough that highly effective salespeople, teams, and leaders really stand out.
In times of crisis and change, smart business and sales leaders and their salespeople see through the fear and regularly examine trends and markets, assess their situation, their people, and their offerings and refocus their efforts to go to market in an adaptive, proactive, positive manner looking to build and re-build effective, strong relationships with new and existing clients to make more and better sales. They don’t fall prey to gimmicks and tricks, and they don’t sit there waiting for the phone to ring or the crisis to pass, instead they turn disruptions into opportunities and ramp up their prospecting efforts to keep on selling better.
Here’s to selling better in 2024 and beyond.
*VUCA: stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. It describes the situation of constant, unpredictable change that is now the norm in certain industries and areas of the business world.
**PESTEL: stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environment. This unit of analysis assesses these six external factors concerning the business situation. The analysis examines opportunities and threats arising from these six factors.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
Stories from the field
Since our workshop yesterday:
Steph sold 80-100hrs this morning with his customer.
Robert has followed up 3 or 4 leads and booked a number of customer meetings.
I sat in a meeting and did a WWW with a customer, got 3 Fs out. Got another one in 30mins.
And it’s before 11 am.
A little confidence goes a long way eh. I’ll need more delivery capacity…
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