Here are the variables that will affect every sales campaign you care to implement:

Location
Timing
Your product or service
The competition
Branding and Trust

Location - location, location, an expression full of clichés with little need of explanation.
Timing - product launches depend on crucial timing be it economic, seasonal or demographic. It is no good launching a new product targeting teenagers when the demographics all point to the over sixties. Neither should you open a new retail park during the onset of the worse retail recession in 60 years.
Product or Service - if it s a new product in a new market then the risks compound. This is when you have to believe what your market research is telling you. Being first to market with a new product is not always a plus since early adopters may be willing to pay more for a product but you need deep pockets to reach them.
The competition - cannot be ignored you must assume direct competitors are not going to sit back and let you take their market share. Defining your competition is part of the discussion further on in this article.
Branding and Trust - A strong brand and company that has the trust of customers will defeat even a better product. Close to home for every computer user is the dominance of Microsoft. You will not have to Google for very long to discover large numbers of dissidents who hate Internet Explorer, Windows/Vista etc; they usually have a point but in the end, it doesn’t matter what they think because Word, Excel, and all the associated programs are too integrated with millions of peoples everyday lives.

Returning to your competitors for a moment, you may already think you know whom these are - your neighbours business or the likes of Tesco. In the case of Tesco’s own competitors we will assume they see Asda and Morrisons as their big threat. But hang on you could all be mistaken since probably the biggest competitor of all is your prospective customer?
How come? Well according to psychologists, when we make a decision to buy a certain product or shop regularly in a certain store we mentally commit to a solution for a particular problem. It is very hard for us to change our minds. Even when in the face of rational evidence to the contrary we will fight to justify the original decision. In other words “A man (or woman) convinced against their will is of the same opinion still”

Let’s pretend your favourite supermarket has been Tesco and then for whatever reason you try out a new store lets call it Aldi. After a few weeks, shopping you become convinced the prices are cheaper for many of the items you regularly buy; you now develop a brand loyalty to that store.
This new loyalty comes with a degree of commitment on your part since you now go to a different part of town and maybe had to convince a partner who shops with you to make the switch also. Occasionally you may return to Tesco after receiving their discount vouchers or because of their advertising special offers. But the shopping experience is just never the same - you don’t want it to be!
This same argument applies to all products and services for example you sell advertising. Your publisher is desperate for sales and you have been given a ‘smoking deal’ to win the business, only to discover from the prospective customer that they have decided to invest in direct marketing. How do you persuade them to change their mind?

In all probability, the customer has produced a thoughtful and detailed marketing plan. Then you come along with a proposition that if implemented, would take money from the marketing manager’s proposals and he would have to change his budget and admit his proposals were wrong. The changed proposal would mean more discussions with management and the admissions that direct marketing wasn’t the right solution but display advertising was.

How does this apply to selling? Getting a prospect to change what they are currently doing - even if you have a better offer - is difficult. A salespersons instinct is to try and convince the customer they will save money/ time if they switch and their product quality/reliability is even better. Yet despite this and even though its true and a no-brainer the harder the salesperson tries presenting indisputable facts and figures, the more strongly the reluctant customer digs in and will seek to justify and rationalize what they’re already doing.

Admitting that they made the wrong decision and the time and energy invested in the new supplier was wrong is a hard choice. Instead of warming to the salesperson, there is a new feeling of conflict, which grows in the search for rationalization. This is particularly true if the decision made has been broadcast widely to work colleagues, friends and neighbours and for this reason, the customer will be very reluctant to change their mind.

For all the reasons the salesperson has expounded the customer will do everything he can to justify his earlier decision; avoid more conflict and stick to the status quo.
So what do you do?
Well for a start is not a good idea to demonstrate that your product or services are better than the choice already made.

That may seem inconsistent. But our aim must be to help the customer achieve their goals, save money, make their life easier and to do this you must discover what it is they actually want.
By not trying to sell and learning about what the customer wants, you begin to see ways of helping them achieve it. Once you have the understanding you then show ways they can enhance what it is they already do. Example, if you are Tesco and have lost customers to say Aldi then how can you adds to their shopping experience without saying “you have made a bad decision.”

To begin with, see it from the customer’s perspective. They visited Aldi and enjoyed the product choice seeing items not available in your store - and the perception was it’s cheaper. Okay, that’s a fact so now remind them about something you can do and invite the to try it our. This could be Tesco’s own brand products …and here is a few discount vouchers have a nice day. Keep chipping away and staying in contact.

This way you accomplish two important things. First, you are helping the prospect maintain their sense of consistency, which will make you an ally. Second, by starting with this approach, you may make a small sale initially but you now have the door open once again to larger sales and the beginning of a long-term relationship. The strategy is to obtain a large purchase by starting with a small one. Almost any small sale will do, because the purpose of that small transaction is not profit. It is commitment. Further purchases, even much larger ones, will flow from the commitment.

Your prospect repeats a question that has been answered fully.

• Your prospect asks for a sample
• Your prospect makes “positive noises.”
• * Your prospect makes “any comment or question about price”
• Your prospect asks for references.
• Your prospect asks for your guidance or opinion.
• Your prospect mentions a negative experience with a previous supplier.

Are these buying signals? Maybe. Maybe not. They could simply be questions that serve to clarify or gain an understanding of what you can do for them. Certainly, queries or comments like those listed above indicate that your prospect is at least “playing ball” with you - that they are engaged in an active sales process, and have some level of interest.”

Prospective customers can be very indecisive when it comes to spending money and probably rightly so especially if they know little or nothing about the product or service on offer. Whilst having a detailed knowledge of cars or computers when it comes to choosing a domestic household gadget, furniture or even a holiday, some will go blank and are unwilling to make a quick decision.

Back in the early 1900’s when a certain Booth Hoover, began selling vacuum cleaners. He discovered people found it hard to make a decision buying such an unfamiliar and very expensive electrical gadget especially when only 6% had any electricity installed in to their house. To get round the problem he came up with a novel idea. He advertised in regional newspapers all over the USA offering a home free trial. This method produced enough sales leads to appoint a commission only agent in each region, usually a local storeowner, who took care of the demonstration and sale. The free trial was the key, a perfect low risk strategy for the customer, a product that worked and with the help of a local agent, almost certainly known to many of the customers, the sales rolled in.

Countering indecision

The truth is helping people to make up their mind is not being pushy and in most cases can be an act of kindness. Aesop acknowledged the problem in his fable about the Ass, which starves himself to death while standing between two stacks of hay, unable to decide the more desirable to eat.  A customer will more often be grateful for your assistance in helping them identify the right product so they can easily come to a decision, than resent your efforts to persuade them to buy. If the customer has established a need for your product and still cannot make the decision to buy, there will be a feeling of anxiety and discomfort because of not reaching a positive decision. The prospective customer will feel resentment because they do not have what it is they wanted. Moreover, the salesperson will have failed through not adequately explaining the benefits of their offer or managing to remove any associated risk to the purchase.

Whilst Professor Quelch does not advocate playing dirty, this is clearly an occasion for ‘taking the gloves off’ and building revenue from sales at almost any cost. If this means taking sales from the competition however cosily you have worked together in the past then so be it.

There is little doubt the current recession will dictate business strategy for several more years to come and by following these eight recommendations you will at least increase your own chance of survival:

1. Research the customer. Instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers take more time searching for durable goods and negotiate harder at the point of sale. They are more willing to postpone purchases, trade down, or buy less. Must-have features of yesterday are today’s can-live-with outs. Trusted brands are especially valued and they can still launch new products successfully, but interest in new brands and new categories fades. Conspicuous consumption becomes less prevalent.

2. Focus on family values. When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village. Look for cosy hearth-and-home family scenes in advertising to replace images of extreme sports, adventure, and rugged individualism. Zany humour and appeals on the basis of fear are out. Greeting card sales, telephone use, and discretionary spending on home furnishings and home entertainment will hold up well, as uncertainty prompts us to stay at home but also stay connected with family and friends.

Now may be the time to drop your weaker distributors and upgrade your sales force!

3. Maintain marketing spending. This is not the time to cut advertising. It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times. Uncertain consumers need the reassurance of known brands, and more consumers at home watching television can deliver higher than expected audiences at lower cost-per-thousand impressions. Brands with deep pockets may be able to negotiate favourable advertising rates and lock them in for several years. If you have to cut marketing spending, try to maintain the frequency of advertisements by shifting from 30-second to 15-second advertisements, substituting radio for television advertising, or increasing the use of direct marketing, which gives more immediate sales impact.

4. Adjust product portfolios. Marketers must reforecast demand for each item in their product lines as consumers trade down to models that stress good value, such as cars with fewer options. Tough times favour multi-purpose goods over specialized products, and weaker items in product lines should be pruned. In grocery-products categories, good-quality own-brands gain at the expense of national brands. Industrial customers prefer to see products and services unbundled and priced separately. Gimmicks are out; reliability, durability, safety, and performance are in. New products, especially those that address the new consumer reality and thereby put pressure on competitors, should still be introduced, but advertising should stress superior price performance, not corporate image.

When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village!

5. Support distributors. In uncertain times, no one wants to tie up working capital in excess inventories. Early-buy allowances, extended financing, and generous return policies motivate distributors to stock your full product line. This is particularly true with unproven new products. Be careful about expanding distribution to lower-priced channels; doing so can jeopardize existing relationships and your brand image. However, now may be the time to drop your weaker distributors and upgrade your sales force by recruiting those sacked by other companies.

6. Adjust pricing tactics. Customers will be shopping around for the best deals. You do not necessarily have to cut list prices, but you may need to offer more temporary price promotions, reduce thresholds for quantity discounts, extend credit to long-standing customers, and price smaller pack sizes more aggressively. In tough times, price cuts attract more consumer support than promotions such as sweepstakes and mail-in offers.

7. Stress market share. In all but a few technology categories where growth prospects are strong, companies are in a battle for market share and, in some cases, survival. Knowing your cost structure can ensure that any cuts or consolidation initiatives will save the most money with minimum customer impact. Companies such as Wal-Mart and Southwest Airlines, with strong positions and the most productive cost structures in their industries, can expect to gain market share. Other companies with healthy balance sheets can do so by acquiring weak competitors.

8. Emphasize core values. Although most companies are making employees redundant, chief executives can cement the loyalty of those who remain by assuring employees that the company has survived difficult times before, maintaining quality rather than cutting corners, and servicing existing customers rather than trying to be all things to all people. CEOs must spend more time with customers and employees. Economic recession can elevate the importance of the finance director’s balance sheet over the marketing manager’s income statement. Managing working capital can easily dominate managing customer relationships. CEOs must counter this. Successful companies do not abandon their marketing strategies in a recession; they adapt them.

Editor’s Note: Harvard Business School professor John Quelch writes a blog on marketing issues, called Marketing Know: How, for Harvard Business Online. It is reprinted on HBS Working Knowledge.

The problems of small start up businesses entering new markets with a new product is legendary for its list of failures some quite spectacular.

This has been highlighted further in a white paper produced at Aberdeen University Which investigates the successes and failures experienced by 80 companies.

It is easy to be too carried away with the products being super complex and therefore requiring some special tailored formula for marketing. The simple fact is that regardless of what it is you have, invented or produced it has to be explained in the simplest of terms and the customer must be able to get-it almost immediately.

One past example is the Anita electronic calculator. The first electronic calculator in the world invented in the 1950’s by Bell Punch in England. When this product went on sale no one apart from the electronic engineers who invented it knew how it worked yet it was immediately a success. By the late 1960’s it was causing a sensation at office equipment exhibitions and in no time the Anita and other competitors soon came along and replaced the old mechanical adding machines that had ruled for over 20 years.

A high technology product produced by a company known only for making excellent mechanical devices for punching tickets on buses and a superb mechanical adding machine they should have owned this industry - what happened?

Well technology happened. An article in the journal ‘New Electronics’ of February 17th 1970 describes the ANITA at its zenith and as the bees-knees in calculators. This was however, looking-over-the-shoulder-time and signs of change in the form of the “Integrated Circuit” was on the horizon - a new device that replaced 200 individual transistors. (Who are they?) The word Japanese is mentioned and at the end of the article a prediction was made that, “perhaps one day the Anita would be made small enough to fit into your pocket!”

The point of this history lesson is that here was a product instantly recognisable, very useful and requiring minimal marketing since once it was demonstrated to customers they got-it. Most of the early Anita calculators were sold to businesses and like the photocopier market; they relied on renting them out. Not particularly well designed by modern standards, but it replaced a mechanical object and did a lot more in less time. I’m being quite unfair to Bell Punch. The Anita calculator quite literally revolutionized the way we calculate mathematical problems in a way comparable to the Chinese Abacus still used today and probably in use a millennium earlier. Just imagine where we would be if bank workers and accountants didn’t have these sophisticated tools to work with, making sure they get their sums right!! (For the benefit of future historians reading, this article I’m writing at the height - possibly not - of the worst global recession thought to have been experienced and brought about by foolish accounting - in spite of calculators.)

So a superb product, the Anita with its 25 printed circuit boards and hundreds of individual electronic devices was doomed. Not by the emerging technology, they could and did adapt to this, but by the inability to move away from an office product where their business was rooted and to become a consumer brand - leaving others to exploit this market.

Jumping forward to the next millennium, it has taken companies with iconic brands to lead the way in marketing high technology. Apple for example can be compared to Bell Punch. Their original computers targeted a niche market of technically aware people. Loosing the battle for the mass market, they went on to establish a profitable business selling on the strength of their design and unique features. Appealing to publishers, graphic designers and the arts world in particular, they have led by superb product design. Apples iconic brands, the work of Englishman and IPod designer Jonathan Ive, are instantly recognisable around the globe.

Therefore, my conclusion is it is vital when planning the marketing of a new high tech product to take account of the background of the management team involved in the project. History tells us it will be their experience and culture in addition to their technical expertise that lead them down a preferred route. The problem here is making sure customers agree with them.

In the case of Bell Punch, it would have been very difficult for people in that culture at that time to make the switch in to consumer electronic products. However, for Apple, from their earliest days employing Pepsi Cola’s marketing man as their CEO, and despite a foray into the B2B sector, they never lost sight of their original roots. Calculators became the size of modern day IPods and in the same way the Japanese scored with product design, Apple have managed to achieve this producing their own iconic brands - albeit with the help of…..an Englishman!

According to Ram Charan the author of “Leaders at All Levels” and “What the Customer Wants You to Know” the best plan during a recession is to keep on building. When sales are scarce, the temptation is to go after discretionary spending. That’s fine but equally important is to keep innovating, brand building and a program for new product development. Sacrificing your future for a slightly more comfortable present is not worth it. If you keep building the business, you can come back strong.

It may seem counter-intuitive to pay bonuses when profits are falling, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do, particularly if a specific unit is beating the competition. Rewarding excellence - through new challenges, public recognition, and, yes, money - in bad times as well as good builds loyalty. In fact, a downturn can be an excellent time to poach; people who might have stuck with a company because of vested options or other monetary incentives may be more willing to consider joining your company when those vanish.

Get information from where the customer action is, and get it to the operating people - fast. Companies should do so routinely, of course. But they don’t. It’s counterintuitive but true that when the economy slows down, the pace of decision-making has to speed up, because you can’t put off the tough choices anymore. The companies that are readiest to act on solid information are primed to shoot ahead of the business cycle. When you are down, do not just sit there wondering what to do next but get out of the office and talk to people, inside and outside, to figure out an escape plan. Employees should be consulted frequently and honesty. Outline the problems, explain your plans, and ask for advice. Listen. You will be amazed how much goodwill simple courtesies can create.

Ram Charan advocates intense brainstorming by key people from operations, service, marketing, and sales. Requiring them to thrash out a realistic plan that includes their expectations for the next 24 months or so asking hard questions like what if demand goes down and equipment prices keep going up. Then devise a coordinated plan to meet the challenges and keep this intense brainstorming going. Repeat the exercise every month and when the facts change, to paraphrase Keynes, so must your strategy. Research has shown that when people have thought through their reactions to high-stress scenarios - such as a disaster or being a victim of a crime - they are much more likely to survive it.

In good times, companies manage profit and loss; in bad times, cash is king. Therefore, you need to identify your higher-risk customers and losing their business if necessary. What you don’t want to do is finance your customers purchase at a time when they may have lost the ability to pay. Alternatively, and this helps build good relations with customers, try to work out a way to keep going - for example, by helping customers to finance purchases using leasing, third-party credit (where you are not at any risk) or supplying smaller quantities. The point is, a downturn is a very good time to do a quality check on your customers.

By all means cut costs if it makes sense to do so, but make sure there is purpose in how you do it. The key: If you have to cut costs, don’t try to be fair about it the world does not inflict pain evenly, and you have to deal with that reality. Being on the downside of the business cycle is not much fun. That said a slump could also be an opportunity if you use the sense of urgency to improve strategy, management, and discipline. In that sense, happy and unhappy times are alike: The companies that take charge and out compete will win.

Moreover, when the good times are back MTELS Marketing will use all the technology on behalf of clients to tap into new ways of selling and promoting your business by subscribing to our marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) plan.