When the Selling Gets Tough, the Tough Keep Selling

TL;DR:
● Focus on data-driven selling with hard metrics and business outcomes as customers are likely more receptive to messaging about saving costs or increasing efficiency than exploring unproven innovations.
● Shift the sales team away from the transactional to the relational: Build rapport and shift from prospective vendor to partner.
● Consider reassessing traditional target customers. In these times “conservative” companies may now be better prospects.
● Keep your team motivated by setting relative expectations and celebrating micro wins.

When the selling gets tough

Anyone who believes selling is easy has likely never carried a bag in their career . With that being said, the boom that our economy has realized over the past 15 years has been nothing short of stunning. Several categories of companies have witnessed exceptionally strong demand for their solutions and organizations have benefitted from a climate of growth and expansion. Companies in most market categories have grown rapidly, budgets have expanded, and many sellers have benefited handsomely during this growth cycle.

Like all good things, the days of interest free capital and trend of growth over profit have come to an end. Organizations across the board are tightening belt buckles in response to slowing market conditions and uncertainty over the economy. Tech and software sales are no exceptions. Coming off a decade plus of digital transformation-driven buying, the current market, pace of decision making, and budget availability can feel a little rough. Part of what we do here on the DTC Platform Development Team is leverage our decades of experience to help companies understand the evolving mindset of customers and their buying behavior through both thick and thin times.

There’s been a shift in buying habits across enterprise customers over the last 18 months. We’ve heard from dozens of sales leads recently that the buying climate is notably more complex. Deals are happening but are moving slower with incremental inspection. Customers are spending (albeit prudently) and often in correlation their company’s quarterly performance and forward-looking perspective. While the average sales cycle may be lengthening, not all the news is negative. Gartner’s latest projections predict an overall 5.5% increase in worldwide IT spend this year.

But being real here, no matter what the analyst reports say, sales leads at early-stage tech companies agree that market conditions are making things tougher on enterprise sellers. So how do you continue to capture share despite a slowing economy? We’ve seen success with a three prong approach: recasting primary target customers and the buyers within, honing your value proposition to focus on tangible ROI, and leaning into building long-term value in your customer relationships.

Reevaluating your target customers

“Pay attention to consumer spending patterns and company earnings to identify which verticals are still performing well and where demand and budget will be stable or increasing.”

With economic markets shifting, the Fortune 1000 that were once bullish buyers of tech startups’ services are now slowing digital transformation plans and tightening innovation budgets. Even financial services companies and banks that have been the haven for stable innovation budgets are tightening their purse strings and unfortunately in some cases consolidating or merging to survive. Now is a great time to pay attention to consumer spending patterns and company earnings to identify which verticals are still performing well and where demand and budget will be stable or increasing. Case in point, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby recently said, “The word ‘recession’ wouldn’t be in my vocabulary, just looking at our data,” which makes sense considering consumer spending patterns have been shifting from goods to travel and services as pent up demand continues unabated.

“Even in market downturns, subsets of enterprise customers are constantly expanding and require investments in enabling technologies to help power their businesses.”

Researching which segments/companies are still performing can signal which of your existing customers do and do not fit your ideal profile. Once you’ve found this alignment, don’t be afraid to break up with accounts if they’re outliers. In times of limited sales and support resources, not every deal dollar is created equally. If a company is the only CPG customer you’ve got but you see a clear path to a rinse and repeat strategy to gain new logos in healthcare, the choice is obvious.

Adapt to the increase in decision by committee buying: consider every possible stakeholder involved in the process.

Another thing to note about your customers right now: in modern enterprise selling almost every meaningful purchasing decision is done through consensus buying with multiple stakeholders, particularly when bringing in a new vendor. It’s no longer enough to win the hearts of individual sponsors like the developers or the CISOs. Your sales intelligence needs to consider every possible stakeholder involved in the process, their differing priorities and value drivers. Adapt to this increase in “decision by committee” behavior by getting wide in an account to build relationships that drive broader awareness about your company and solution value.

Bottom line-driven differentiation

Buyers are allocating more time today justifying their spend and demonstrating to upper management that they have fully explored viable and cost-competitive alternatives. Instead of focusing on evangelical messages about innovation, organizations should consider orienting their messaging around specific, tangible business metrics. Hard cost takeout, tool displacement and consolidation, and any proposals that generate in-budget-year return on investment are music to a buyer’s ears in this climate. Get detailed about how your product or service is easier to implement, saves money, and/or increases productivity relative to its competitors.

To get even more granular, “buyer-focused selling” directly orients conversations around near-term economic return on investment. Data-driven proposals focused on total cost of ownership, where all the expenses, hidden and otherwise, of a competitor’s current state solution are benchmarked against the values and savings of your future state alternative can yield positive results. Done well, discussing the model can demonstrate your understanding of the customer’s environment and challenges, quantify the benefits in hard dollar terms, and help your stakeholders build the internal business case justification to move forward with your solution.

“They’re complacent, you lean in. They’re rigid and cookie cutter, you’re nimble and responsive. They’re a vendor, you’re a partner.”

It may also be a good time to sharpen your elbows against stalwart competitors. It is not uncommon for incumbents to be perceived as inflexible order takers that are too comfortable. Entrenched competitors are often less inclined to proactively drive savings if they feel they’re in control of the relationship. In this environment, customers will consider alternatives to keep vendors honest. Even if there is some “flight to the known” purchasing happening, it’s smart now to play to the strengths that being an early-stage company confers. They’re complacent, you lean in. They’re rigid and cookie cutter, you’re nimble and responsive. They’re a vendor, you’re a partner.

(SingleStore taking aim at the incumbent competition on an infamous billboard in Silicon Valley.)

Going above and beyond

The human side of sales has never mattered more. People buy from people, and genuine relationships are formed by showing up informed and when there is no commission check involved. These are often the moments customers will highlight when they sign on, re-sign, or expand an engagement.

In speaking with a senior technologist at a top 10 bank, they shared that for early-stage companies to earn their business, they have to take the time to learn their environment and understand the entrenched competitors. They look to companies that are willing to invest the time and resources to work jointly to help build a value-driven solution. This may mean embedding technical and presale resources or helping solve a hairy technical problem that’s only adjacent to what your product does. This may seem like a costly use of resources but for the right logo in an advantageous vertical, it can make all the difference.

Personal touches shouldn’t stop when the ink dries on a deal. Once, a customer of mine had a catastrophic data center shut down. The issue had nothing to do with the product we sold, but our team still drove to the data center with coffee in the middle of the night and asked how we could help. Later, that customer recounted how we were the only partner to show up. Their lasting appreciation reminds me that partnerships are built in difficult times, not when everything is going great. Your customers will remember who called and offered help when there wasn’t a deal on the table, and who’s gone above and beyond to be in the trenches with them. Building trust through in-person interactions starts with simply showing up. You’d be surprised how far a cup of coffee will go.

This back to the basics approach to consultative selling is likely going to be a difficult adjustment for many that have never experienced or sold through a downturn. Sales leadership teams that consider these suggestions and drive their organizations to adapt to current conditions will have the best chances for surviving and thriving in this market.

Motivating the field

As a sales leader, you’re working both sides of the equation. You’re winning customers but also managing the expectations and performance of a team. It’s easy for field teams to get frustrated as they put in more work with potentially increased inspection only to experience lengthening sales cycles and potentially shrinking deal values. These all weigh on a team’s motivation and morale. This is an opportune time to come together and reinforce the qualities that shape your organization’s culture and value system.

It’s important to actively distinguish with the team between the factors within their control and influence and those unavoidable customer-imposed speed bumps. Team members want to feel that their company strategy is sound and that their leadership has their back. Execute consistently on the basics… activity levels, demand gen, quality opportunity management, and training and messaging. Discuss the importance of continued innovation during down cycles and out pacing the relative performance of competitors. Celebrate how you are all in this together, outworking your competition that has gotten used to working three days a week from home in their sweatpants.

Stay on top of broader sector-wide sales trends and modulate expectations relatively. It can be helpful to break goals down into smaller steps. Celebrate the micro wins like landing important demos or POC’s, and when new logos are added to a pipeline as meaningful and exciting milestones on the path to deal closure.

The tough keep selling

We’re in a slight ebb after an unprecedented period of flow in technology sales. For those of us who’ve run this script before, we’ve got the comfort of having experienced the rebound. For those who haven’t, they can take heart in that enterprise technology is the backbone of the modern world. While things might feel different than the gangbuster 2010s – early 2020s, hard work, focus, and a people-centric approach are proven strategies that will continue to stand the test of time.