“According to news feeds and LinkedIn discussions, the sky is falling,” said Chicken Little at the end of yet another dismal sales pipeline review. His business development executive responded, “When is the last time we really sat down and talked to our customers? I mean are they even buying what we’re selling?” Mr. Little was stumped.

Like Chicken, my daily industry news alerts are filled with gloom and doom – pessimistic forecasts about the economy, the budget, and the devastating impact on federal agencies and government contractors.

Having spent over 35 years in our market, I have been through several major slowdowns, shutdowns and turnarounds. And while this one is multi-dimensional and particularly insidious, it is a good time to remember that the lotus flower blooms in the muddy swamp.

With this constructive attitude, successful companies will take advantage of the current situation to retool their services and strategic focus to align with the most likely funded programs and agencies. The result will be a higher win rate and increased revenue. No one said this would be easy. But, if it were, I’d still be doing it!

When times get tough like this, business developers (and executives) often respond by desperately trying to push their services onto government buyers. This is major turn-off. More than ever, now is a time to work smarter not just harder. This means really listening to your customers, looking for new strategic partnerships and researching your target market. Centurion’s analysts excel at helping you match your core competencies with the most attractive agencies and specific federal opportunities.

Epilogue. Unfortunately, Chicken Little was let go.

 

Mike Lisagor is the Celerity Works founder and the Centurion Research Solutions business development subject matter expert