How to Succeed in a Recession (Selling Against Time: In a recession, some crash, others fly)

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of talk about recession. Ever since the sub-prime crisis, every expert has an opinion about whether there will be a recession and how long it may last. Speculation aside, if there is a serious recession, learning how to sell through this time will be vital.

Are you among the many beginning to worry? People are battening down the hatches and getting ready for trouble. But many have weathered recessions before — some have even begun or grown business in bad times. Now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to check your sales activities, sharpen your sales training and apply solid principles. Here are five ways to sell during a recession:

1. Believe and stay positive

Once people believe there will be a recession, they start to feel negative about their business prospects. The nature of belief is that people tend to see only what they believe, rather than believing what they see. Once you believe that there is going to be a recession, you tend to only notice articles, comments and statistics that support your beliefs.

What’s more, your negative beliefs quickly affect your outlook and how you feel about business prospects. Having a positive and supportive belief structure is essential to success in any market, but it is especially vital if you want to keep on selling in tough times.

Having a winning belief system does not mean being deluded. In the middle of the darkest recession, you don’t want to have your eyes shut! But you do need to realize that, in these times, people want to work with the suppliers they can rely on — the companies that support them and that are going to be around tomorrow. If your competitors struggle, that means more business for you.

2. Get proactive

If this year is tough, then you need to be more proactive — much more proactive. You need to do more marketing and more selling. You need to attend more events and do more networking while you are at those events. You need to do more promotion and more canvassing. Bottom line: You need to increase your sales activities — perhaps dramatically.

In a recession, many companies and individual salespeople cut sales activities, perhaps not even consciously. They figure, “If we’re not going to sell anything, what’s the point?”

The reality is that if you cut your activity, you cut your sales — which makes you a living, breathing, self-fulfilling prophecy! You believe there is not much business out there, so you feel negative. That, in turn, affects your activity and destroys your results.

If there’s not as much business out there, you need to be more active, more focused and more targeted. If your competitors are easing off a little, now is the time to up the ante and grab your share of the market. Even if sales do slow temporarily, you will be in prime position when things pick up again.