We may be in the midst of what is now believed to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression - bad news on many fronts. But within lies a perfect opportunity for the strategic, forward-thinking executive whose company will not only survive the downturn, but emerge positioned to take full advantage of the recovery.

Last October I spoke to the CEO of a large European equipment supplier who told me that he was going to keep his company focused on two objectives during this downturn because he believes that they are critical for the company's long term success. The first is to continue to invest in R&D so the "right" products will be available downstream, when things turn around. The second is to transform his sales group "from tactical to strategic" since tactical selling is now an outdated and ineffective means to sustain growth and capture market share.

He stressed that both of these investments are absolutely critical for his company's long term survival and growth. I remember thinking that this particular CEO is a visionary, remarkable among peers who are cutting costs across the board. Cutting back on expenses appears to make sense on the surface but it may in fact extract a much more severe price later. When the economy does begin to recover, companies whose sales groups are no longer effective will find they are behind the recovery curve.

The sales paradigm has changed over the last five years, and continues to change in these difficult financial times. The sales techniques which resulted in yesterday's successes will not work tomorrow. Customers will no longer buy a product or service based solely on its features and benefits, or its cost relative to the competition, or even because they have a good trusting relationship with the sales team and the company. What companies buy is the value they perceive they will get from a product or service as it relates to improving their business. Presenting this value proposition properly to the right people is the key to strategic sales.

Now is exactly the right time to make the transition from tactical to strategic sales. Here's why: whenever a person has both tactical and strategic responsibilities, the tactical ones naturally have priority and the strategic ones can't get full attention - and consequently never happen. When a sales VP is told to make this transition happen without impacting revenue growth during a busy time, it just can't be done. The tactical issues soon overwhelm even the most visionary and strategic among us.

Of course there is also this quandary: training costs money, and an investment in training during slow times is not likely to lead to short term incremental sales. It takes time to adapt new techniques and become effective using them. Add this to the typical sales cycle, which can be many months to even years for capital equipment, and the ROI seems to look even less attractive. As a result, companies often elect to defer training expense until their businesses recover - and this is the potentially fatal mistake.

There you have it. During good times, sales is too busy to allocate time for training, and during bad times, management is unwilling to incur the expense for it.

It's no wonder that many sales people are never able to change their approach to selling from tactical to strategic. It is exactly this problem which will turn successful companies that have succeeded in the past into companies that fail in the future.

The CEO I mentioned before wanted to transition his sales organization from tactical to strategic during the downturn, when their business was down more than 60%, because he saw it as an opportunity to make this critical move more or less painlessly. He told me that they would have to reduce the size of the sales force, and that made it even more important to make sure that the people they kept were going to approach their customers strategically in the future. He also told me that he believed that if they did this, then they would be more efficient and could manage with fewer sales people - a permanent cost reduction with no negative impact on revenues.

The end of this story is not yet written.

As business continued to drop even lower, he was forced to cut costs across the company, including sales heads and training budgets, and his VP Sales had "no time to even discuss strategic selling or training" as they were so consumed with survival activities.

I believe that when business does recover for them, they will realize that they missed an opportunity and will have to decide if they can do it during an upturn. We're staying in touch.

On the surface it seems that there is no good time to make a change like this. There are always reasons, real and perceived, why it cannot be done "now." Yet right now is the right time, while a sales team is experiencing some downtime, to train them to adopt strategic sales skills and to practice them until they become second nature.

It takes vision, commitment and determination at the highest levels of a company to use "now" to prepare for a strategic advantage as economic recovery takes hold. Some market segments are beginning to show signs of improvement already. Which survivor companies will emerge with their sales groups ready to "go strategic"? We'll soon find out.

Michael Wolf is the founder and President of Strategic Sales Skills (www.strategicsalesskills.com), a sales coaching and consulting group based in Boston, Massachusetts. He has spent 30 years in technology sales, marketing and executive level sales management, including the last 20 years as VP Worldwide Sales for three different technology companies. His areas of expertise include coaching sales teams to think, plan, and act more strategically with their customers, and to attain more positive ROI on professional sales training programs delivered by companies including Miller Heiman, TAS Group, and Holden Corp. Michael is also President of Youtopie USA, a behavioral training and coaching company www.youtopie.com . He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Mickey Farrance (www.mickeyfarrance.com) is a senior technical communications specialist, with 30 years' experience in the dual tracks of engineering and communications in the biotechnology, telecommunications, and aerospace sectors. She trains all levels of technical management, from executive to entry level, to improve effective communication, and teaches communications in the MBA programs at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business and the European Institute of Purchasing Management. Mickey is an affiliated partner of Youtopie and can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .