Sales and Marketing in an Economic Meltdown

In a sick sort of way, I embrace economic downturns. When the economy and our businesses are humming along, many of us have the tendency to get a little complacent. We all work hard in good times and in bad, but in better economic climates we do have the luxury of spending time on more lofty notions and we often spread our time, energies and resources too thin.

Challenging times force us to focus our energies and resources in very targeted manners. My professional experience has shown that if we keep our cool and if we are strategic, we will come out at the end stronger and leaps and bounds ahead of where we were prior to the downturn.

The reality is that in times of uncertainty, people become nervous and scared. When we are nervous we have the tendency to do really dumb things—we shut down (I will put my head in the sand and wait for the storm to blow over), we become erratic (something will work if I try enough different things) or we become too cautious (my job will be safe if I just don’t mess anything up).

Now, we are all intelligent people. For most organizations, a period that is being dubbed as “the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression” is probably not the time to go to management requesting funds for unfocused, grandiose ideas. However, this is most definitely the time to think long and hard about what we want our organizations to look like in six months when the economy is in recovery. In six months or so when the sun is projected to begin shining on the economy again, do we want our organizations and our strategies to be gutted, or for our customers and competitors to see us as weak and without resolve?

Or, do we want to confidently stride out into the sunlight after having spent difficult months working closely with key partners, after having strategically kept our sales pipelines moving and after having given thoughtful consideration to our organizations’ futures?

The following are six thoughts for managing sales and marketing efforts in this challenging economic environment.

1. Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs from Psychology 101? Maslow asserts that we cannot move up the pyramid of human desires without fulfillment of the needs underneath.

Thankfully, most of us have our basic physiological needs met. We are breathing, we have food and water, and maybe we are even getting some sleep. So, let’s move up to safety. Do most of us feel safe right now? Many of us probably do not and our customers don’t either. The times are very uncertain. So, our sales and marketing messaging should focus on making our customers and prospects feel that working with us is the safe choice. Maybe you are the leader in the market for your products or services—leaders are a safe choice. Make sure that your customer and prospects know that you are a leader.

Maybe you organization is smaller and more nimble than that of the market leaders. You offer the ability to assure your customers and prospects that you will work very hard to make certain that their needs are specifically met—also a safe choice.

2. In uncertain times you do need to make your customers and prospects feel that you are a safe choice, now is not the time to become silent. Keep communicating, let them know that you are alive, healthy and weathering the storm.

3. Tough times dictate that we should all work closely with key partners. This is not the time to spread time and energy resources around foolishly. Whether we use this approach for working with customers, vendors or both, we need to use our energies and perhaps diminished resources to their best effect.

4. To quote Warren Buffet, “Be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful.” In times like these, people are fearful. Your competitors become scared and make bad decisions. Although this is not the time to spend money like a drunken sailor (unless you are the government or are “too big to fail”), move forward bravely and thoughtfully. If you take this approach it will take your competitors months to catch up, if they ever do, when the economic environment improves.

Interestingly, according an Inc. magazine article, recessions are often the best times to start a business—“Starting a business in a recession is like vacationing in the off season.” Some of today’s leading businesses—Microsoft, FedEx, CNN, GE, HP—were founded in periods of recession. If HP, founded during the Great Depression or GE, founded in the wake of The Panic of 1873, survived, thrived and grew into the juggernauts that they are today, is it reasonable to say that this might be a good time for us to think about pulling the trigger on a new product or service idea?

5. When times are good many value statements in our sales and marketing messages focus on helping customers to grow their businesses. During challenging times, our messaging needs to focus on minimizing risk, saving money, providing measurable and concrete results. This does not mean that we should automatically lower our pricing, but it does mean that we need to focus on utilizing our products and services to help our customers feel secure , to reach measurable goals and to help them to stretch their resources. Do your products/services save labor costs, help to better manage assets, save time, decrease waste, save energy? If so, this is a great time for this messaging.

6. Rethink trade show and conference activities. My trade show and conference organizer friends are going to kill me. However, it has been said that marketing budgets are always the first to be slashed. I don’t think that this is true anymore. From my observations, travel budgets are now the first to be slashed. The first measure many companies now take in uncertain economic climates is to implement travel restrictions. This means trade show and conference attendance will be lighter especially in the first half of 2009.

This could mean that we should not decrease trade show exhibition and conference sponsorship participation, but rather take advantage of lighter traffic and have more involved conversations with the customers who are in attendance. On the other hand, maybe it means we should reel in our presence at trade shows and conferences and spend energies and resources communicating with our office-bound customers and colleagues. Perhaps online opportunities or other elements of the marketing mix might be more effective in reaching these customers and prospects.

Hopefully, this post sparked an idea or two. We will all get through these challenging times. I am just thankful to be working in an industry that, at its heart, is fairly recession proof. At least we are not selling products and services to housing developers—talk about indigestion. Yet another bright point, as members of an industry that treats indigestion…opportunities abound.