Salespeople, it’s your call… Brexit Winner or Brexit Loser?

I worked through the Millennium Bug crisis in the late 1990s. There was wide spread panic and hysteria because the world was going to end in 2000, due to a quirk in computer calendars.

I was in advertising sales at the time, and I remember my colleagues in sales talking about the Bug to customers, wallowing in the impending doom. Meanwhile, I actively worked hard on my sales communication methods to steer customers away from the negative, and focus on the positive – which was how my advertising packages and solutions could triple their success.

So, while everyone else seemed to be talking about the Bug, I was working harder than ever before. It worked – I made target. And more to the point, talking about the Bug didn’t work for colleagues who chose to be distracted by doom, rather than attracted to opportunity.

Footnote:  the Bug was the biggest non-event in corporate history…

Fast forward to today. You have the choice, right now, to be a Brexit Winner, or a Brexit Loser. The grace period is over – you had the weekend to wonder what really happened. Now, it’s back to business, and the quicker you get onto it the better for you, your company and your customers.

Here are the top 3 ways to be a Brexit Winner, and Brexit Loser.  Losers first.

BREXIT SALES LOSER

1)  You spend your downtime looking at negative and jokey memes and opinion pieces on social media spelling out doom and gloom. This makes you wonder about your future, and the recession that just HAS to be coming, and the job freezes and the currency, and everything else.

You share this negative stuff freely, without even thinking about the consequences. Yes, there is bumbling footage of Boris Johnson, as there is of you at a party last year, but it doesn’t make you an oaf, does it?

2)  You bring Brexit up first with customers, further fuelling the negativity. And when customers bring it up first, you agree saying words like ‘shame’, ‘can’t believe it’ and ‘uncertainty’. You agree with everyone, either internal or external, nodding along, without thinking about the damage your negativity is doing

3)  You don’t check the facts properly (The facts appear below, in the Brexit Winner section).

BREXIT SALES WINNER

1)  You realise that nothing has changed.

Nothing, at all, from the conditions that existed the day before the referendum result. Your plan is the same as it was last week. If you thought your plan was going to work last week, then you should also think that it’s going to work this week. Don’t be thrown off track. You realise that there is always short-term market panic to news announcements, and that people feed off this, to make them heard and to make money.

You know that this will settle down, as it always does, when the feeding frenzy finishes and the next news item bumps it off the front page (in about a week or two).

2)  You know the facts:

A)  No shot has been played, no arrow has been fired, or will be, for up to two years. Nothing has changed.

B)  This is a soft, landscaped landing, unlike the crash in 2007 when there was a sudden, uncontrollable force exerted on the economy. Economic conditions are much, much better than back then, and policy leaders have time and space to plan a guided response. We are absolutely not falling from a cliff face.

C)  We are responsible for ourselves, our employees, and our economy. By measuring a response in the fullness of time we can prevent hysteria. Some companies will panic, some won’t but already we have a few banks saying they are going to lay off some people, potentially giving them an easy out for redundancies they were planning to make anyway.

It’s not reported nearly as much that exporters like Unilever and Rolls-Royce are much better off, and scores of other companies will be given a chance to reevaluate, reboot and show the world what they are made of.

3)  You read the opinions that matter.

Three people are critical to our future right now: Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and George Osborne. Read what they are saying and interpret it for your clients. Check out Boris Johnson’s 6 minute address from Friday, that carefully laid out his thoughts, and it reiterated that the UK is very much a big part of Europe and that this will be a gradual process without haste.

WHAT COMES NEXT

At Natural Training we are going full steam ahead with our plan, because we know it’s right. While others panic and put their plans on hold, which becomes a self-fulfilling negative prophecy, we are going to work with companies who seize every day and want their sales teams to become much more successful. Selling fixes everything, and if we all sell our butts off then we will be so successful we won’t have time for doomsaying.

I fully expect comments to this article such as “Yes Matt, but…”, followed by how bad things really are. The moment I get a sniff of negativity, I will not read those comments. I spent 90 minutes writing this article because I felt a duty to show people there is a way to be a Brexit Winner, and that’s all the time I’m going to invest. Now, I’m cracking on with my plan, that is EXACTLY the same as it was last Thursday, but with even more resolve.

So, the challenge to you is clear:  Be a Brexit Winner.

Steer your customers to the conversations and topics that matter. Don’t get caught up in stuff you can’t change – be the change agent for things you can. And sell, sell, sell, like there is no tomorrow.

That’s what winners do.

If you’re interested in finding out how Natural Training can help you to overcome your commercial challenges post-Brexit, then contact one of our sales team today.