The topic for this month’s newsletter and blogs is focus and persistence on your company’s goals for 2023. The year has started on shaky ground—massive layoffs from major companies such as Microsoft and Amazon, amid an economic recession. The only way companies will make it is to persist and keep focused.
Trying to sell in such an environment can be very destabilizing for salespeople. How can you keep their attention on sales and keep them producing?
Distractions Galore
There are many distractions for salespeople in times such as these. Rumors are flying in from every quarter, aided and abetted by the media—rumors about the economy, the direction of the market in which they are selling, rumors about the company’s customers, and more.
Not only are they subject to such distractions on the job, but at home as well. The unstable economy makes it difficult for everyone, and their spouses are most likely sharing the media-fed bad news over the dinner table without even thinking about how it might be impacting the salesperson’s job performance.
A salesperson’s attention is easily drawn to such distractions, and they can immediately impact their sales negatively. Instead of robustly reaching out to prospects as they would ordinarily do, salespeople tend instead to take on the influences in their environment: being cautious and careful. This attitude affects their ability to sell, as no salesperson ever succeeded by acting in such a way. Sooner or later, this approach can descend into excuses for lost sales and failed closes.
Such a scenario is the nightmare of every sales manager, who is doing everything possible to keep salespeople motivated in the best of times. If salespeople are additionally distracted by the turbulent environment in which they’re selling, keeping them motivated becomes much more challenging.
How can you keep a salesperson’s attention off of these distractions and on what they’re supposed to be doing—selling?
Feeding The Leads
In our earlier article in this newsletter, we covered the vital necessity of a company maintaining its marketing budget in uncertain times, despite the temptation to cut it along with all the other cutbacks being made in a company during turbulent times. Keeping the marketing budget is the only way to guarantee a constant flow of leads to salespeople so that sales are maintained.
Guess what? A robust lead machine is also how salespeople are kept focused and distraction-free. If a salesperson has to follow up a great number of leads, they won’t have time to pay attention to rumors, the media, or anything else. They’ll be too busy selling!
This also helps handle the motivation issue for a sales manager. What better motivation is there than a flood of leads for the salesperson to handle?
Once again, this comes back to another reason to keep those leads flowing. Salespeople tend to complain about leads anyway—don’t turn a lack of leads into yet another distraction for salespeople. Keep them coming, and make it possible for salespeople to keep at their jobs no matter what, with no distractions or excuses.
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