Step right up and get your chickin-pluckin’

pickle-packin’ bagel-bendin’ dirty double

disconnected semi-circled rubber baby

buggy bumper!  Or buy three

and get one free!

Sit down, salespeople!  Listen up!  The slumping economy is no reason to panic, but it’s also no reason to think you need to be MORE hardsell, or give MORE stuff away. 

Here’s a great example: just look at how whacked out all the car dealers are.  First came the ridiculous gas price hikes and then the doom and gloom media reports.  Who could blame crushed automobile and truck sales on anything else? 

Unfortunately, the truth is that dealerships have been doing themselves in.  They’re still playing the old-time sales game with old-time pre-economy-catastrophe rules.  They haven’t adjusted to the current market. 

I saw no fewer than six (!) car commercials in a row the other night, each one trying to out-shout and out-give-away the other.  And each, no doubt, was afraid to back off the increased media-trap schedule because the competitors would get a leg up.  So all were spending money they weren’t taking in.

There are new rules out there today!

When times are tight, sales presentations are no longer about giveaways (even free gas ploys!) and no longer about hype and drum-beating.  In fact, sales presentations need to fade away in favor of people presentations! 

It’s not about being more pushy (or, as I recently read about a “trend” to be angry and let customers know you are angry on their behalf!  That’s BS!).  Sales momentum in periods of market stress are all about building trust and relationships and communicating more effectively (especially the “listening” part) with customers and prospects. 

It’s remembering that your greatest source of new business (and most economical to cultivate . . . emails and phonecalls, for example, instead of expensive media advertising) is from existing and past customers! 

It means putting more reliance on personal contacts and community service.  It means depending more on solid public relations programs instead of space and airtime package deals that put you on the air at 3am or tuck you neatly into the newspaper’s obituary section . . . good obscure places to die if that’s what you choose for your sales program. 

This isn’t rocket science, folks!  Just think about what works now that triggers YOU to want to buy now.  Odds are it’s that someone you feel you can relate to (because you’ve interacted with that person at church or school or in some community activity. 

OR it’s because you’ve purchased from her or him in the past and he/she has taken the trouble just to stay in touch without trying to “sell” you. You are likely to choose to purchase from that individual, even at greater expense than from the guy down the street who never stops trying to hustle you. 

What’s it all come down to? 

Remember the old song:  R-E-S-P-E-C-T