Most of us are living on the continuum between uncertainty and chaos. During turbulent times, organizations often launch major commercial initiatives to combat fears of missing revenue expectations. They may challenge sellers to shift their approaches, engage in account planning, search for new potential buyers, or make significant shifts in messaging.
This all seems reasonable in the moment, but it usually backfires. When times are uncertain, our customers and prospects often seek stability. They want to decrease risk and complexity. Flooding their inboxes with new messaging and having salespeople stumble through unfamiliar presentations delivers the opposite. Similarly, major product pushes or discount programs often communicate desperation, not “we are a competent and capable partner.”
So, how do you balance maintaining sales momentum while projecting strength and galvanizing your troops to do the right new things to drive more revenue? These seven pillars will guide your way.
1. Stay rooted in what works.
I’m not advocating for unquestioning allegiance to the past. I’m suggesting a more scientific approach that maximizes productivity and customer confidence. Figure out what’s working, clarify expectations, and (when appropriate) do it more often. Unfortunately, few of us ever take the time to truly understand which of our marketing and sales tactics are getting the highest return. Most successful sellers likely execute tasks from memory that can easily be scaled for wider adoption. Ensure everyone understands the high-value activities and challenge your teams to do more of what you know works.
2. Clear the clutter.
Now that your team is doing the activities that get results, focus on freeing up more time. This is critical, as turbulent times often create the need for market intelligence, which can turn into new surveys, requests for analysis, and meetings to discuss the findings. Eliminate zombie reports and meetings from the past that people don’t even remember why you started doing in the first place. We, as leaders, must aggressively guard team members’ time and be loud about canceling low-value meetings, redundant reports, and useless processes to make space for them to do the most important work.
3. Relentlessly focus on customer outcomes.
There are moments when marketplace trends and challenges demand significant change. It’s critical to ground any strategic or tactical shifts in the customer outcomes you hope to achieve. Answering a few key questions can get you there quickly: What are the compelling events causing customers to change their behaviors? What are the obstacles to your customers taking the next step? How will this shift help remove barriers and inspire more confidence at each step? While it may seem very tactical to jump to this level of granularity, any initiative that can’t show a direct impact on improving the customer experience or accelerating their journey is not likely to be a winner.
4. Experiment thoughtfully.
Now that we’ve identified new strategies and tactics to deliver better results, it’s time to tell the team what you want to try and why. Create a few small teams to experiment with different approaches, evaluate the impact, revise, and improve before doing a large-scale rollout. Most of us grew up in sales and marketing. So, we know that the time lost in failed initiatives or in our commercial teams wanting to “wait and see” before fully committing far outweighs the time we need to conduct these experiments.
5. Democratize change and demonize bureaucracy.
All the strategies above apply even when big changes, such as restructuring, are required. Historically, this has been done with small teams of executives sitting in windowless conference rooms and thinking that business as usual was happening just outside the doors. Unfortunately, human nature is to fill in the blanks in communication with worst-case scenarios. Instead, we should democratize change. Develop a series of workshops with people from all levels of the organization. Be clear about where decisions have already been made, where you want people to contribute, and any open questions. After each workshop, send a brief and transparent recap to the entire team. Make every effort to push decision-making to the lowest possible level to eliminate bureaucracy.
6. Use data as a windshield instead of a rearview mirror.
Too many commercial teams primarily use data to look at past results. We have meetings to explain the numbers versus using the information to create insights and take action. The rest of the organization will be looking at the outcomes, which is why it’s important for leaders to look at the inputs and shift activities based on the leading indicators. By creating a system of predetermined gates and pivots, we can use data to make better decisions faster and add credibility to our experiments.
7. Be a leader.
The best commercial leaders are realistic, humble, and authentic. The days of the always-optimistic and unwavering executive are over. Today, the best leaders can assess situations through the lenses of what’s possible and problematic. We’ve got to listen to those doing the daily work and change our minds when presented with evidence contrary to our current positions. All great sellers are “true believers.” Sellers need us to be authentic — especially in uncertain times — because when they believe in our direction and leadership, that belief will transfer to the customer.
The formula I have shared for leading your sales and marketing organization through turmoil to support growth and customer success is a clear and practical one. But it requires your confidence, vision, focus, and calm to guide your team to stay on course. If you catch yourself veering off into panic or yielding to the temptation to crank up the volume on new ideas across the board, take a breath and remember: You already know what to do and how to do it. And you and your team can do it again.
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