Selling through a recession... why automation is your best friend
Early this month I noticed an announcement where Dell is cutting 8800 employees. CA is cutting 2,400. The Department of Labor says the country lost 63,000 jobs in February and 80,000 in March. Many say that we are now in a recession...
Last week in conversation with an executive at a Fortune 100 company, he asked me, "so how do you feel about launching a new company in the midst of a recession?" My response, "I'm fine with it. There is always some sector that is down and another sector that is up. I'm not overly concerned. I recently saw a chemicals company that is raising prices by 25% because demand is so high."
This comment may come back to haunt me, but if your company is suffering the ill effects of a recession and you're laying off sales people, automation can be your best friend.
Let's consider a simple view on a company with 10,000 customers. We'll assume some are large, some are mid-sized companies and some are small. True to form in most companies, if sales are down and headcount is being cut, then upward migration in your customer base is happening. The sales force will be re-aligned to serve the largest and most profitable customers. The small customers, those on the bottom of the stack will be left behind, under served or simply ignored. If the bottom 20% are ignored, suddenly there are 2,000 customers that become ideal candidates for automated marketing solutions.
Automated marketing can keep in contact with these 2,000 customers via email, print, telephone and personalized web sites to name a few. Personally visiting or calling each of these customers may not be the most effective use of your sales team in tough times but their needs can be partially met through the use of business rules, relevant content and pragmatic uses of technology.
Having said that, the same can be true for caring for high-value customers. Your approach may be, that instead of cutting customers from your sales team, you're doubling the quantity of customers for each person by cutting head count. Again, automation can be your best friend. In this scenario you need to identify those repetitive tasks or communications that can be automated. Think of it in terms of enabling your sales person with tools that double their efficiency and productivity. One experience in my past where this worked exceptionally well was in the sales of personal computer products and the establishment of company extranets. Headcount was cut, customers were enabled with self-service procurement portals and revenue went up significantly.
In both cases mentioned above, automation really was a "best friend" solution. In tough economic times, you need to think through the business logic and your customer needs to find those situations that are best suited to automation. It can be done - it just requires patience, an ability to pay attention to the details and pragmatic use of technology.
www.iangilyeat.com
Last week in conversation with an executive at a Fortune 100 company, he asked me, "so how do you feel about launching a new company in the midst of a recession?" My response, "I'm fine with it. There is always some sector that is down and another sector that is up. I'm not overly concerned. I recently saw a chemicals company that is raising prices by 25% because demand is so high."
This comment may come back to haunt me, but if your company is suffering the ill effects of a recession and you're laying off sales people, automation can be your best friend.
Let's consider a simple view on a company with 10,000 customers. We'll assume some are large, some are mid-sized companies and some are small. True to form in most companies, if sales are down and headcount is being cut, then upward migration in your customer base is happening. The sales force will be re-aligned to serve the largest and most profitable customers. The small customers, those on the bottom of the stack will be left behind, under served or simply ignored. If the bottom 20% are ignored, suddenly there are 2,000 customers that become ideal candidates for automated marketing solutions.
Automated marketing can keep in contact with these 2,000 customers via email, print, telephone and personalized web sites to name a few. Personally visiting or calling each of these customers may not be the most effective use of your sales team in tough times but their needs can be partially met through the use of business rules, relevant content and pragmatic uses of technology.
Having said that, the same can be true for caring for high-value customers. Your approach may be, that instead of cutting customers from your sales team, you're doubling the quantity of customers for each person by cutting head count. Again, automation can be your best friend. In this scenario you need to identify those repetitive tasks or communications that can be automated. Think of it in terms of enabling your sales person with tools that double their efficiency and productivity. One experience in my past where this worked exceptionally well was in the sales of personal computer products and the establishment of company extranets. Headcount was cut, customers were enabled with self-service procurement portals and revenue went up significantly.
In both cases mentioned above, automation really was a "best friend" solution. In tough economic times, you need to think through the business logic and your customer needs to find those situations that are best suited to automation. It can be done - it just requires patience, an ability to pay attention to the details and pragmatic use of technology.
www.iangilyeat.com
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