Why You Can’t Afford Not to Train Your Salespeople in Times of Uncertainty

Photo by Chris Kendall on Unsplash

 

When the economy becomes uncertain, some business leaders tend to retreat into a defensive crouch. Budgets are reviewed. Travel is slashed. Hiring pauses. And all too often, one of the first things to go after cutting marketing is sales training.

But in times of uncertainty, this is a costly mistake. Sales during times of uncertainty are even more difficult. Decision makers review expenses and ROIs even closely. With all the downsizing occurring, decision-makers are hesitant to make an investment that may put their jobs at risk, so they often delay or cancel decisions. We see projects that once had one or two decision-makers now have six to ten or more. Decision-makers are inviting more people into the purchase decision to feel more secure. Winning meetings and conversations with current customers is challenging, and prospecting for ideal new customers feels almost impossible for untrained sales representatives.

What do untrained salespeople do in times of uncertainty? Some scale back their sales motions, assuming buyers are not willing to speak with them. They call other members of your sales team and discuss how poorly sales are performing. As their desperation rises, some become more aggressive and increase their pitch-slapping activities with current and targeted ideal prospects.

Many get very busy in areas that are not part of their sales roles. They become involved in customer service, quality assurance, scheduling, and other departmental activities. Instead of trusting their marketing team, some untrained salespeople increase the frequency of their spray-and-pray emails, hoping one or two people will respond. But here’s the trouble: in a recent Gartner study…

76% of customers avoid doing business with existing suppliers that send me irrelevant messages.

58% avoid doing business with existing suppliers that send me too many messages.

What are your salespeople doing today?

Could their busy activities be hurting their sales? Your brand?

How effective is your current sales team?

What impact would it have on your revenue, profit margins, and net income if they were more effective?

Failing to train your sales team during a difficult and uncertain market, when the stakes are highest, is akin to sending a boxer into the ring without proper fitness and technique training, hoping they’ll land a win by instinct alone in one of the toughest matches they have ever had.

Hope is not a strategy. And in today’s market, neither is coasting on product knowledge and past relationships.

What Companies Typically Cut — And Why That’s Risky

According to data from McKinsey, Gartner, and Harvard Business Review, during periods of economic slowdown, companies often cut:

• Professional development and training budgets
• Marketing and advertising spend
• Customer experience or success programs
• Travel, events, and field-based engagement

These are all growth investments, not cost centers. Cutting them may preserve margin in the short term, but it also weakens a company’s ability to compete, differentiate, and sell when it matters most.

Not only do these cuts negatively impact sales today, but they also significantly reduce your first-quarter sales pipelines.

The Problem: Fewer Deals, Higher Stakes

In uncertain times, buyers slow down. They delay decisions. Budgets shrink. Procurement gets involved earlier. CFOs get pickier. And most of all, there are fewer deals in play.

So, when a potential customer raises their hand, it’s game time.

That sales conversation has to be excellent. Your salesperson must:

• Ask the right questions to diagnose the true need
• Demonstrate competence and build trust
• Prescribe a solution that aligns with the buyer’s goals and risk profile
• Collaborate with multiple stakeholders and navigate internal buying processes
• Ask for the business with confidence and clarity
• Be skilled in handling objections
• Negotiations skills

That level of execution isn’t about product specs or pricing. It’s about sales skills. It’s about how your team sells, not just what they sell.

Why Training Is a Must-Have, Not a Nice-to-Have

Here’s what the research tells us:

• Salesforce’s State of Sales Report found that high-performing sales teams are 2.3x more likely to prioritize ongoing training than underperforming ones.
• CSO Insights found that organizations with a formal sales coaching and training program achieve win rates 28% higher than those without.
• McKinsey reports that companies investing in frontline training during uncertainty grow revenue 13% faster post-downturn than those that don’t.
• OMG data research found that the top 16% of salespeople contributed 83% of revenue, and 57% of salespeople today are in the wrong roles
• OMG data also found that 37% shared their number one priority is talent strategy, but 61% of leaders shared that solving people’s problems is a main concern

So, if you’re cutting sales training to save a few dollars now, you may be sacrificing hundreds of thousands — or millions — in future revenue.

What Training Salespeople Need to Be Trained On Now?

1. Formal Sales Process: Understand how your decision makers buy today and develop your formal sales process. We often ask leaders if their teams have a formal sales process, and we hear emphatically Yes. But when we assess the salespeople, we find they are not following a formal sales process. They skip key steps like discovery, qualification, and closing, focusing solely on transactions and quoting too quickly. Typically, designing and implementing a formal sales process will give you a 15% increase in revenue.
2. Consultative Discovery: Equip salespeople with the skills to uncover real problems customers have today based on your voice of customer research, not just surface needs.
3. Business Case Selling: Teach them to quantify value and sell outcomes, not just features. Train them how to ask outcome questions and how to design and deliver a business case in the language of their decision makers.
4. Multi-Stakeholder Navigation: Train them to engage technical, financial, and executive buyers. They must strategically build a matrix of relationships, understand each persona’s language, and share their value proposition for each. If your team has not received negotiations training, I promise you they are leaving money on the buyer’s table that could have gone to your bottom line.
5. Objection Handling Under Pressure: Build skills to handle risk-aversion and stalled deals. Train salespeople to recognize common put-offs and learn how to handle objections, building professional relationships in the process.
6. Closing with Confidence
   Salespeople need to know how to ask for the business in a way that feels natural, authentic, and client-focused. Research shows, unfortunately, 67% of salespeople lack closing skills. Some people have limiting beliefs, such as the notion that sending a quote is a final step. Others believe asking for the business makes them seem like a pushy salesperson. The biggest reason I have found salespeople not asking for the order is that they have never received sales closing skills training. This explains those bloated sales pipelines with too few opportunities closing.
7. Pipeline Ownership
   Reps need to take personal responsibility for building, advancing, and converting their pipeline. As we work with sales teams, their CEOs often share that they need their salespeople to be more accountable. They need more deals in the pipeline to close now. However, suppose your salespeople have not received sales skills training in discovery, qualifying, and targeting your ideal customer. In that case, your current sales pipeline likely has millions of dollars of quotes that will never close.

The above are the skills I have seen in sales teams who have received product and application training, but not the sales skills they need. Here’s a scary number…our research shows over 50% of salespeople have never received formal sales skills training. What are they doing each day? They are winging it.

When I was trained to design and deliver sales training and coaching, the best method was to first diagnose the sales team’s skills, then prescribe targeted training and coaching over time to deliver the greatest impact to the organization. This approach also enhances training engagement and often reduces the cost of sales training, as we deliver training tailored to your team’s specific needs.

When Everyone’s Cutting Back — Be the One That Doubles Down

The best companies zig when others zag. They invest in sharpening their people while their competitors are downsizing and waiting out the storm.

When the market recovers (and it always does), your team will have better skills, better habits, and better customer relationships. They won’t be playing catch-up; they won’t be winning it each day — they’ll be setting the pace.

Final Thought: Skills Beat Circumstance

You cannot control the economy. You cannot control what customers freeze or delay. But you can control how ready, how skilled, and how effective your salespeople are when opportunity knocks.

In uncertain times, mediocre selling costs you more. You can’t afford not to train.

If your sales team engages in behaviors that buyers despise, it not only fails to increase sales but also harms your brand, potentially damaging sales and profits for years to come.

Because how you sell matters more than what you sell, especially when every conversation could be your only shot.

So don’t cut training. Double down. Your future revenue depends on it.

Let’s schedule a call to quickly assess your sales team’s effectiveness and identify any skills gaps that may be costing you business and net income.