From the Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept
Sadly those in a Leadership role simply cannot relax. Remember, if leadership were easy, everyone would do it. So while you have been pacing up and down your living room worrying about your business, employees and customers during this lockdown, your employees have not had such pressures. There is no doubt they will have had other pressures (and none of us ever can start to gauge the weight or worry others may carry and certainly not judge), but from a business perspective they are not the ones trying to work out where the cash will come from to pay for the salaries, lights or stock.
You have spent lockdown in full worry mode, putting out fires and trying to keep your bankers and investors calm (yes, we did say ‘trying’), now you need to reopen AND bring cash in. Sadly, simply by putting the ‘We are open’ sign up guarantees absolutely nothing. You actually have to now go out and sell.
So let’s take a moment to look at your sales team…
It is a frightening fact that most, if not all of your eager, super fit salesforce has been in total relax mode during this lockdown. As we have discussed before, to be in sales means you have to be an optimist (a pessimist would never cold-call yet another potential customer when the last 27 have been failures), but good sales people know the value of their time and when there is zero chance of a sale, such as in Lockdown, they move swiftly onto something more productive. Outside of Lockdown, they would look to work on bringing in a different customer, inside Lockdown, it means sitting back and watching more reruns of The Nairobi Diaries (yes, we know it’s good - but this is not necessarily keeping the sales mind in tip-top condition for the fight to come!).
Your salesforce has been relaxing at home doing very little other than supporting a Lioness by drinking Melvin’s Teas (or maybe something a little stronger!) and certainly assuming that when lockdown finishes, when businesses reopen, sales will automatically start and with such a pent up demand, sales will be easy. Perhaps so, as liquor stores found in South Africa to their delight when they were allowed to reopen their doors, but for those businesses not in such an ‘essential’ area of the economy, life has changed. Cash will remain to be king for all and that includes your customers. They too know that their business or household will struggle over the coming months, so if they are going to purchase, they will do it sparingly.
Every time cash moves from your potential customers to another point, you want to be part of that. How do you do this? Firstly, you have to wake your sales team up from their slumbers. This cannot be done by yelling at them, nor by thrusting the 2020 sales targets done at the end of 2019 (remember that year - a lifetime ago it seems!) under their noses. Sorry, this will simply turn these optimists off completely. Sales people are like highly prized boxers or Olympic sprinters, they have to be nurtured, encouraged and supported in a way to bring out the best in their sales minds, to sniff out and search for that difficult sale, and bring it home. They have a different mind from your brilliant warehouse manager who sees things in efficiencies, maximizing storage whilst ensuring the quickest route in and out of the warehouse (we shall get to your warehouse and supply chain very soon). Neither is more important than the other, both are essential to your business, but now? Now you need sales and they have to be firing on all cylinders…
There is no way the original 2020 sales targets have any relevance now. Either you will have a supply shock or a demand shock (as discussed in one of our earlier blogs here) where you cannot keep up with demand, or where there is silence and tumbleweed blowing between your warehouse shelves. If you cannot keep up with demand then your role as a leader is to work on supply, but in this blog we are concerned with those stranded in the Gobi Desert of sales, where the silence almost deafening.
You now need your sales team like never before.
As a leader you have to inspire your sales team, to:
build up their confidence,
show them the way,
bring them into your inner circle,
explain the issue, clearly and confidently
tell them that you are there to give them whatever they need to bring business in (Ferraris not included of course)
and finally,
be inspirational.
How do you do this? Call them all together and publicly rip up the 2020 sales targets (a bit of theatre always works!). Next tell them that we are no longer going to call our customers and tell them that we have 10 widgets, do they want them? Instead we are going to ask our customers the very important question. “Given the Coronavirus, what is going to work for you right now? How can we support you to help you through this?”
Make it about them, not your product.
Tell your sales team to find out where their customers are currently hurting and then adapt your product in some way to fit this. Obviously if they are not hurting and do want 10 widgets, then great - sell them 20! But sadly the chances are high that this will be a new world when we step back outside.
We previously discussed The Buyer’s Journey in this Blog. This is essential for all of your sales team to know and understand. It’s no longer about your product, it is about solving your customers’ pain and problem.
Work with your customers.
If your sales team find it is about money (lack of), then you can devise a payment plan, or perhaps a quicker delivery so the customer knows they can rely on you as they sell.
If it is about storage (“We still have old stock of your products”), then perhaps you can in some way take back the old stock and supply the new collection (which will sell better and quicker). Sounds a shocking result for you and certainly something you cannot do without first looking at ALL other options, but if this really is the big pain point for them and you insist they keep the old stock 3 things will happen:
they will not sell, so they will not order again for a very long time,
the customer will probably put your competitors’ goods in the best selling areas of their shop and leave yours gathering dust at the back
you will lose their loyalty.
Perhaps you know of a customer who is happy to take old stock off your hands at a knock down price, so could be a win-win. Perhaps this customer would be happy with a knock-down price on the old stock so long as they take some of the new collection (not discounted).
In one of our earliest Blogs for the Coronavirus fight-back we talked about communication. This must be clear and unambiguous as you welcome your sales team back. Your employees are not stupid, they do have to be told that either we all work our way out of this together (and this is where that rumour of you having cut your salary will start to impact in a very positive way), or we all perish as the business dies.
Sales will be the priority and all sensible suggestions from the customers will be considered. Remember, even if you cannot supply exactly what the customer wants, the act of asking and thinking about how your product can best solve their problem at worst shows the customer you are thinking of them (which will put you in their good books and will keep their loyalty for when they are ready and able to buy your type of product); and at best gets the conversation flowing and may well in the end actually get you the sale.
Ex customers must be called. In good time many sales people get lazy and simply do not follow up with customers who leave them, as there are many customers available. In tough times, we need to talk to our ex customers and find out why they left. The conversation will always start with: “Disappointed that you did not contact me at the time…”, but at least you are now talking now. This should be done by you in person as you may find out something about your product or business or sales team that will now help you change, adapt and grow. You may also find that with a small tweaking of your offer this customer returns. Now that is worth a few moments of awkwardness.
Do not avoid the difficult discussions with your customers.
Finally any sales should be celebrated by the whole team as this is a whole team effort from the Sales person, to the book-keeper and invoice writer, to the warehouse manager who looked at you as if you were crazy asking for an immediate delivery and who then called in a few favours with the delivery team and got it done (you can thank them again over your Friday afternoon beer in the Warehouse).
The Team that works together and celebrates together, wins together.
Stay safe!