Situation: A company’s customer base is experiencing market softness and uncertainty. Customers are tightening budgets and delaying purchase decisions. How do you boost sales in an uncertain environment?

Advice from the CEOs:

• Offer incentives to prompt customers to buy now instead of waiting. Two potential options:
  • A limited time discount – Sign by <date> and save X%.
  • Pre-announce a price increase. Follow this with a promotion – buy now, before the price increase.
• If you are selling a service, package your service options in smaller chunks while pricing them so as not to erode your margins.
• Consider 30 day trials for $X, or discounted pricing for large or committed long term purchase contracts.
• Examine your sales process. Are your sales people speaking to the right people? Try to move the sales process up a level if this gets you to the decision maker.
• If some of your sales people are significantly outperforming others, give them incentives to share their sales techniques with other members of the sales team.
• If the issue is sales productivity, leverage someone else’s sales team through a partnership. The partner incurs the sales cost while you focus on implementation.
  • Look for opportunities where a partner can sell your product on top of theirs to boost value of the overall offering and increase their own top line.

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