Strategies for a Recession

A. The Plan

Tough times demand an innovative plan that gets results.  When faced with falling sales, action is needed immediately since your payroll obligations and other fixed expenses will drain cash from the business quickly.  Decide if the dip is seasonal, event oriented or short term.  Can you “ride it out” until sales recover?  If not, assess your immediate and long term needs and make changes. 

With a strategy in hand, now address the sales problem.  Every company should review critically its sales performance on a regular basis and find areas that can be improved.  With demand falling in most industries, now is the time to have that planning meeting and adjust the strategy and the tactics.  Change may be essential to your survival.  Sales strategies and sales tactics must be creative since pressure to lower sales expenses will limit marketing budgets and travel expenses. 

In small companies, management often holds back bad news with the mistaken idea that it will de-motivate employees and force good employees to start looking for a better or safer job.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Employees need to understand that sales are down and a renewed effort is needed.  A focused group that understands the objectives will be a powerful force in the market.  Communication is always important but essential in bad times. 

Look carefully at your leaders.  Often the real stars shine in a crisis and leadership may not come from where you expect.  Listen to the troops.  They usually have a pretty good pulse on who gets the results.  You may have the wrong sales manager or your largest account may need another sales rep to get the results that you need to survive.  Evaluate performance more in a recession - not less.  Be prepared to act before it is too late. 

The sales planning meeting should have an agenda with specific goals but, as the senior manager, be prepared to listen.  Creative approaches to lead generation, distributor motivation, proposal writing, and closing techniques should be allowed and encouraged.  A pre-meeting announcement and published discussion topics will allow ideas to be discussed ahead of time and will generate better results.  Pre-formed committees can accomplish much prior to the meeting if given a chance.  An outside facilitator can be helpful at the meeting to encourage discussion and ideas.  In a small company, management or the company owner can dominate and prevent less secure employees from contributing good ideas or creative comments.  The meeting should also generate action items with assignments and time commitments.  Action items should be agreed to and shared in writing after the meeting.  Finally, please review results monthly and adjust your plan or the entire exercise is wasted.

Also see:

Strategies for a Recession - Customer Contact

Strategies for a Recession - The Sales Call

Strategies for a Recession - The Future