Tweet

Count your chickens

Written by: Sue Barrett

Article Overview: Everyone I am speaking to, at least, are aware they are working in a softening market. Some businesses of course are counter cyclical, meaning they can make money in these tougher times i.e. outplacement firms for all the obvious reasons, but they are more the exception. If you market is softer or heading or a down turn it doesn't have to be all gloom and doom. It's true now you have to earn your real money through proactive sales practices. So with on the agenda, one of my clients in regional Australia kindly sent me a great article on "The three basic sales strategies in a softening market".

Count your chickens

Everyone I am speaking to, at least, are aware they are working in a softening market. Some businesses of course are counter cyclical, meaning they can make money in these tougher times i.e. outplacement firms for all the obvious reasons, but they are more the exception. If you market is softer or heading or a down turn it doesn't have to be all gloom and doom. It's true now you have to earn your real money through proactive sales practices.

So with on the agenda, one of my clients in regional Australia kindly sent me a great article on "The three basic sales strategies in a softening market". It was presented at the client function of a regional accountant firm he had attended. The article is by Robert Miller, who wrote Strategic Selling and set up Miller Heiman group. Here the excerpt from the article:

"Here are three strategies proven by winners to work in a downturn:

1. 1. Count your chickens. Make sure that you are looking after your existing customers better than usual (if that is possible) because there'll be plenty of hungry competitors out there to do anything to steal them from you. If you step up first, and raise service levels when everyone is talking doom and gloom, you're going to be a beacon in the dark, and attract both old and new customers alike. You'll also raise the bar so high your competitors will waste a lot of valuable resources trying to jump over it.
2. Find your lost chickens. Lost and lapsed customers - and ones you just plan mislaid, are still more likely to buy from you again, than a new client. So it makes sense to go back, find those lost chickens, apologise, crawl over broken glass if need be and win them back into your pen. We all lose customer in good times for the simple reason that sales people like the thrill of chasing new customers more than the drill of looking after the old ones, so there will be lost chickens on your books. If you dropped them because they would not meet your price, see if there is a way you can meet their price point profitably with and economy offering.
3. Steal someone else's chickens. With competitors cutting service levels you have the perfect opportunity to raise yours (having first done if for your own customers, you should be good at it!) and steal their chickens. If you've retained all of your sales force when the market is rife with lay-offs, you're in the perfect position to ask your entire sales and service teams to step up to a new mark and secure their company's future (they know they are thereby securing their jobs, so you don't need to raise this as a threat).

The odds are in your favour

Here are some interesting odds calculated for four types of sales behavior. They might not be precise for your industry, but I'll guarantee their relativity is accurate regardless of your market:

1. Sell a current customer a current product: 2:1

2. Sell a current customer a new product: 4:1

3. Sell a current product to a new customer: 8:1

4. Sell a new product to a new customer: 24:1"

I found this to be a true in most situations and a useful guide to keeping your sales pipeline fresh and full in these softer markets.

Happy counting chickens and selling.

Related Articles
  Flying Chickens
  Wisdom and Association Lead to Success
  How to Find Clients that Fit Just-Right
  Lesson #4: Nice Guys Finish Last
  Are You an Eagle Hiding Your Talents in a Chicken Coop?

Article Tags: accountant, broken glass, count your chickens, doom and gloom, downturn, excerpt from, existing customers, good times, li li, miller heiman, outplacement firms, proactive sales, real money, regional australia, robert miller, sales practices, sales strategies, strategic selling, tougher times, valuable resources



Related Forum Posts
surviving an economic crisis - I'm moving to Idaho then I'm building a bunker and stockpiling 2 years worth of supplies. I'm buying a fishing rod, a hunting rifle and bunch of chickens to produce eggs... I like chickens because they don't care about recessions or depressions. OK... that may be Plan C - let's hope it doesn't get to that. So far, our business is doing well, we often target affluent markets and from our experience in the early 90's recession this worked well. BUT - what we're seeing this time around is not a simple recession. I think it could get bumpy. What type of businesses thrive in an economic downturn?
Re: Testimonials Needed for Business Plan Workbook - Hi Evan, Count me in. I am sending my email immediately
KeywordBox.com - Thanks theFranchiseMarket - like bennyboy7, I'm a user of Google's tool (after all, if you're optimizing for Google, why not use their own database?) I put in the keyword "entrepreneur" into keywordbox and got the following top 12 results [quote:13n1aucz]Count Keyword us 51255 entrepreneur 7139 entrepreneur magazine 2569 famous entrepreneur 2441 business and entrepreneur 2256 change child educate entrepreneur leaving microsoft odyssey world world 2243 successful entrepreneur 1918 social entrepreneur 1574 young entrepreneur 1536 book book e entrepreneur from infopreneur information make money product 1504 woman entrepreneur 1358 filipino entrepreneur 1340 book book else entrepreneur free free free get money money money rich somebody wont working[/quote:13n1aucz] It seems strange to me that "change child educate entrepreneur leaving microsoft odyssey world world" would get 2256 searches and would outrank successful entrepreneur and young entrepreneur. Further down the list are other strange keyword combinations. Have you had a better experience using the tool?
You Can Start From Some Where! - I have always found stories like these interesting. When you can see and understand that many famous, successful people like these usually start off in places worse than we're at. It think they brings our goals a little closer and makes them more tangible... * Dan Akroyd was a mail sorter for Canada's national postal service. * Jennifer Aniston was both a telemarketer and waitress before hitting it big. * Halle Berry worked at Higbee's Department store in the children's department. * Sandra Bullock worked as a bartender. * Before his big break, country singer Kenny Chesney worked as a valet attendant, telemarketer and mail sorter. * Chubby Checker plucked chickens at a poultry market named Henry Colt's. * Before Nirvana, the late Kurt Cobain worked as a janitor for Lemons Janitorial Service. * Diddy was an intern at Uptown Records where he did grunt work like washing cars & fetching coffee. * Bill Cosby shined shoes and sold produce when he was young. * Simon Cowell started out as a mail room clerk for EMI Music Publishing where his father worked. * Michael Dell washed dishes at a Chinese restaurant for $2.30 per hour. * Danny DeVito was a formally trained hair stylist before his break on Taxi. * Michael Douglas once worked as a gas station attendant. * Tom Hanks once worked as a hotel bellman and carried bags for a number of celebs. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that everyone starts at the bottom... * So what does this have to do with your business? You can add to the list!


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

African Technology Development

What is Give Back Marketing?

Halloween Howl Seven by Author Paige Agnew

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.