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The Secret To Sales Success During Lousy Economic Times!

by Bill Todd    

Remarkably, when top sales professionals change jobs, their success continues. This is because the foundation of their long-term success rests on an adherence to a few basic sales principles. There's no magic formula, and it's not rocket science. Instead, these are common sense sales practices that anyone in the travel industry can begin using today to deliver extraordinary results tomorrow.

Even more amazing is that top sales producers continue to outperform the competition during both recessions and economic slowdowns. Like the Energizer Bunny, these top performers seem to just keep going, and going, and going.

So what is their secret? Simply put, they kept their feet on the gas! For example, when the economy got lousy, the vast majority of your competitors probably instinctively hit their sales and marketing brakes. Immediately, any and all dollars associated with promoting their businesses were perceived as expenses and not investments. The result is that your competition drastically reduced expenditures for sales, direct mail, advertising, trade shows, promotions, and so on.

Last year, when the economy was healthy, it was a safe bet that your most prized clients received an array of marketing, advertising, and promotional impressions from your competitors. In addition, your clients got lots of one-on-one attention from your competitors in the form of regular sales visits, association meetings, cocktail parties, and trade shows.

What a difference a year makes! These very clients are now lonely! Today, far fewer  companies are calling, writing, sending e-mail messages, or visiting. Ironically, clients who would only grant you few minutes on a sales call (or not return your call for weeks, if at all) will now welcome you with open arms. Your company was just one voice in a choir of vendors last year—today you could sing a solo, but you have to hurry.

McGraw-Hill has studied each of the recessions and economic slowdowns for the last five decades. The researchers’ findings clearly prove that those companies that continued to be aggressive in sales and marketing during these economic downturns experienced revenue growth of 275% during the first full year of the recovery. In contrast, those businesses that cut back on sales, marketing, and advertising enjoyed only a 19% increase in revenue during the same period.

That means that "persistence, persistence, persistence" has replaced "location, location, location" as the three most important words in business. The most powerful strategy you can employ in pursuit of success during lousy economy times is to just outsell the competition. No rocket science is required, just good, old-fashioned determination.


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Bill Todd, is a sales trainer and motivational speaker who has  enjoyed over 22 years of front line sales and marketing experience For additional information, questions or suggestions please contact Bill Todd at WFTSpeaks@aol.com or 301.332.4685