Good Conversations in a Bad Economy
October 12, 2008
This post on the Tuned In Blog, along with a conversation with a colleague on Friday, got me thinking about how many IT services companies react in a down economy. Whenever business gets a little slow, a typical response is to increase sales-related conversations with current and prospective customers. The business development team feels the pressure to perform, so more sales calls are made and aggressive follow-up is encouraged. All at a time when buyers are likely becoming more conservative as their budgets are being closely scrutinized, frozen, or even cut. Seems like a Tuned Out response to me. One that can actually damage customer relationships and company reputations if you are not careful.
We can have two types of conversations with our customers:
- sales oriented conversations — trying to coerce the buyer into buying something we are selling through sales tactics, aggressive follow-ups, and polite persistence.
- market focused conversations — listening to the buyers situation given changing economic conditions, understanding how their needs are changing and how they need to do business now, and discussing how your solutions can help solve their most pressing problems in a way that fits their current situation.
I would argue that market-focused conversations are the better conversations all of the time, but in a bad economy they are the only conversations that are likely to maximize revenue capture in the short term while preserving customer relationships for the long term. Get out and meet with buyers to understand what they are facing. Devise new ways to engage with them given their budget situation. And help them think through their strategy for the coming year, while being flexible on how you can help them.
Buyers still have pressing jobs to get done, even in a bad economy. Your goal is to understand how their needs have changed and to devise new ways to help them. Tune in to your customers now and you will not only limit the impact of the bad economy on your short-term revenues, but you just might come through the downturn as a more market-focused organization.