What is a weak economy anyway?
Generally this translates into less market growth in which to sell. It means that unless you can find and are capable of doing business in those few growth sectors that are active in the economy, you must take business from others or find other ways to expand your reach.
Good Times
In good economic times when growth is strong, gaining new business that didn’t belong to anyone previously may seem easier to accomplish. However, it is not unusual for new opportunities to emerge as economic pressures push potential target accounts, which were previously considered out of range, into the cross hairs of your artillery. These accounts may have been doing business with someone before, but their entire decision making paradigm will be changing to accommodate a shift in their own budget priorities that simple didn’t exist previously.
Time to Change Tactics
This calls for a change in your tactics to connect with this “growth” in your market sector. Instead of relying on the same account demographic profile that you operated with in good economic times, you may need to expand your definition of “perfect customer” to include some new blood.
Your initial contact team, whether it be in-house or a professional lead generation service company, needs to re-examine the parameters of the typical target account.
Leveling the Field
Let’s take the example of a small paint manufacturer and distributor. For years they have shipped small quantities of specialized paints to just mid-sized industrial clients because the “big boys” with the branded names owned the major corporate accounts. These competitors could afford to absorb big marketing costs and offer huge discounts to grab market share from each other.
In a weak economy, two things happen. First, those major corporate user accounts succumb to economic pressure and begin looking for better solutions to fit their budgets – opening the door to more alternatives.
Secondly, the “big boy competitors” also begin to feel the economic pressure and aren’t so anxious to use “give-aways” to garner more business. The playing field levels out a bit. In hard times, the small paint company needs to re-visit the decision that led to avoiding the bigger accounts because that decision was based on a different set of conditions.
Using a Lead Generation Service Company that offers well trained professional telemarketers who understand how to navigate through corporate enterprise may be a good choice to help uncover those new market opportunities.
Take Off the Peripheral Blinders
Another way to overcome the lack of market growth is to grab a bigger portion of customer spending in areas tangent to your current market segment. Think outside the box with innovative ideas that expand your reach to include markets that you haven’t explored previously but that may be sitting right under your nose… if you simply turn your head. If you have always marketed locally, think regionally. If you have the region saturated, look at what it would take to go national. If the nationwide domestic market is the problem, what would it take to tap into some international opportunities?
Perhaps your product or service has more applications than you realized. For instance, a data services company that specializes in educational institutions could, with a little adaptation, have the staff and resources in place to expand into corporate training centers or other learning entities that weren’t on the radar screen previously.
If you don’t have the staff that is capable of exploring these opportunities, this is the perfect time to consider acquiring the services of a lead generation services company that does.
