We have long been tracking a recession that we believe will be much deeper and more extended than the Government has often liked to admit. Latest figures from the US indicate that its recession actually started in December 2007!

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has now informed us that the Government simply does not know what the future holds. He has told the Guardian that the severity of the crisis may have been underestimated. We should be grateful for his honesty.

What we do know is that it is a crisis of confidence as well as of credit. Those worst hit are businesses that have lived high on consumer lending – housing, automotive, retail and so on.

But a worrying aspect is that professional service firms of all types and sizes as well as companies providing business services know that they are going to be hit in 2009 but don’t yet precisely know when or how hard. They are cutting costs but they also need to win sales - and yet the economy is shrinking.

We thought long and hard for some time about how we might deal with this challenge. Obviously, we have cut costs ourselves but sales are still core to survival in a market where we all have to admit that there is going to be serious price competition.

Much business is going to have to be taken more directly off competitors by offering better products and services at better prices. This pressure is likely to go on for eighteen months to three years. We covered this in some detail last week.

Our solution is a new product that we are applying to ourselves but are also offering to our clients and to businesses and firms under pressure – Pendry White SalesCapture. Pendry White SalesCapture has been constructed to deal head-on with the main problem of business growth in a recession.

When everyone in the market is cutting costs and pouring what is left into direct sales, often at the expense of marketing, how can a firm or business differentiate itself with the right offer for the right target?

The sales target wants to hear someone in authority, who understands his business, give him a very good reason to switch his business. And this is where the Pendry White SalesCapture model comes in.

Our intelligence says that many firms and B2B businesses are taking a proportion of savings from cost-cutting and putting it into telephone sales and direct mail. But think about it? If you are in a recession, you actually have only one question – will your offer do the same for less or more for the same?

If a lot of firms and businesses come on with a pitch from a call-centre or a me-too brochure, that call will never get past the first sentence and that brochure will be binned without being opened.

Pendry White SalesCapture is a methodology for businesses and firms selling higher added value professional and business services that is based on research, precise targeting and taking the client through to the point of sale fully briefed.

What happens at the point of sale is, of course, down to the client but, by the time he or she is in that room, they will know that the potential client is interested and what his needs are.

For professional service firms with partners who are uncomfortable with the sales process or for businesses trying to sell an added value service that will save money or will build business efficiency, the targeting of effort and good intelligence about the sales target are critical.

Higher value added products and services are also likely to stay on the client’s books for a long time unless someone else comes up with a much better offer.

So the Pendry White SalesCapture product is the future. It invests time in knowledge-based market research for contracts in excess of £5,000 and it sustains engagement in the market, training partners and directors in what will clinch the deal and get them into that room where the decision is made.

It can work alongside existing sales efforts or it can focus on a new market that looks interesting but that would be a distraction to the core sales team. It can even, under certain conditions, be performance-related.

How precisely we do this is a commercial matter, so if you want to know more you will have to contact Roger White, Managing Director of Pendry White, at enquiries@pendrywhite.com or on 07751 051846 or drop a note to this Blog from where it can be forwarded.

www.pendrywhite.com

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