THE 2012 NEW DEAL

For all the history buffs that follow my blog, can you tell which American President got elected by promising a “NEW DEAL”?

(Hum the Jeopardy Theme to yourself while you think)

Times up, do you know? It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. The New Deal was his plan to have the government help the people while the United States dug herself from under the Great Depression.

In business today, many sales reps are feeling the affect of the 2012 NEW DEAL. The difference is this new deal isn’t a plan from the government, it is the reality of business today. Because of the economy, many businesses have cut back over the last 5 years, many have cut not only the fat out of their operations, but have cut muscle and bone in some cases just to survive.

The key word here is SURVIVE, the businesses had to make decisions that would either keep their doors open and keep some resemblance of the company or close their doors forever.

In this survival mode businesses found ways to get the jobs done with fewer resources, less labor, and in some cases without sacrificing quality. The companies that let quality slip did so knowingly and many of them have reinvented themselves as commodity companies rather than quality companies.

That is the background and that history lesson takes us to today. There are many signs that the economy is turning around and I personally feel that it is on the track of recovery. The companies that went into survival mode are now starting to see their efforts paying off in bigger profits and climbing sales. These companies are moving back to growth mode and are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak.

The problem is because these companies have figured out a way to do so much more with much less they don’t feel the need to rebuild to the levels that they were before the economy took the down turn.

What does this mean to sales reps? Well to start, many companies that were our bread and butter 5 years ago may be marginal accounts today. Because they have survived with the skeleton staff and using minimal resources for so long they may never get back to buying levels where they used to be. This means that sales reps need to start realizing that if they want to come out of this economic slowdown and get back to the income levels they once had they will need NEW DEALS.

There are a few things reps can do to speed up their economic recovery;

1) Start from a clean slate, get rid of all the old notions about which of your customers were your “BEST” customers. Look at every customer for what they are TODAY and rank them accordingly.

2) Get back to the basics, it may be like starting over, but you need to rebuild your customer base using business information that is fresh and new.

3) Diversify (If Possible), if you have a product line that crosses industries start looking in areas that you have not worked in before. This will take some learning and effort, but tapping into a new revenue source is worth the investment.

4) Ask for help, if you feel that you can’t do it on your own, ask for help! Every sales manager I have spoken to in the past year has told me stories about reps that have asked for help and have become not only better reps but more successful reps.

5) DON’T GIVE UP! The game is never over until you stop playing. There have been plenty of reps that I have trained that have told me they changed careers. I would venture a guess that 8 out of 10 of them come back to sales within 6 to 8 months.

We all have a NEW DEAL in 2012. We all also have a new opportunity in 2012. We can all have SUCCESS in 2012 if we all take the time and put in the work it takes to maximize ourselves in 2012.

Lorin