Top tips: On healthy sales during a recession

John Lees. Photo / Supplied

Sales and marketing specialist John Lees says positive aggression will create healthy sales during a recession.

What do you mean when you use the term "positive aggression"?
Positive aggression involves fighting back and taking control of the business effort. For example, when businesses find that demand exceeds supply, they go into overtime and shiftwork to meet the higher demand. When companies face an opposite situation, in which supply exceeds demand, they must go into overtime and shiftwork of the management kind to think their way out of trouble.

In your experience, do companies know how to use positive aggression?
No, most cut costs, which is understandable and often necessary, however positive aggression involves serious and urgent action in a number of key areas. The first challenge is to identify where sales potential exists during a recession. In my experience it can be found in abundance in the form of selling improvements to the market.

During lean times, markets are desperate to find better ways to do business, involving either revenue development or cost savings. This, in turn, relates to the next test, which is the assessment and improvement of sales propositions so they offer much better ways to do business for the market. Most propositions offer just products, not obvious improvement.

How can an organisation measure sales potential when demand levels are low?
By asking "of the people who possess the kind of product or service that we sell, how many enjoy real success with the product they have bought?" As an example, if an insurance company were to ask "of the people who have home insurance, how many have a sufficient amount of cover?", the answer would be very few, which means that such people have been sold insurance product but not insurance success.

What is the secret to improving sales propositions?
The most powerful sales stories are driven by a promise to find the best possible result for customers, which means we must sell intelligence and not just products. If we return to the example of home insurance, a strong sales proposition would a) show the customer what they should have (intelligence), and b) show the customer how to buy what they should have in a way that is manageable to them (more intelligence). Customers do not know how to achieve
the best results with the products and services we sell - if they did there would be no need for salespeople.

* John Lees will be speaking at seminars held by The Knowledge Gym in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch in March. For more information visit www.theknowledgegym.co.nz