Another Swimming Metaphor

“Only when the tide goes out, do you discover who has been swimming naked.” This classic bromide by Warren Buffett has come to mind several times in the last few weeks. As the economy hits dead low tide (coming back according to Bernanke, stuck there according to Buffett) we are seeing some sales departments finally, finally just run out of momentum.

These are folks who were making a living by answering the phone. They are in relatively small companies that serve really big customers, so the phone didn’t have to ring all that often. They made hefty six-figure salaries largely for writing up an order and tossing it to someone else to fill. The had residual income from accounts where they answered the phone for the first order, and years later were still collecting commissions on the repeat business.

Then the phone stopped ringing. At first it was no problem. They had lots of leads from busier times that they had never followed up with. A few of those were still interested. A couple of them bought. Then the backlog on incoming leads was exhausted. And these salesman have just now, 18 months into a recession that they thought they had beaten, found out that they’ve been swimming naked. They don’t know how to sell.

They don’t know how to prospect. They don’t know where to go to find new leads. They don’t know how to how to develop a contact network. They don’t know how to qualify. They only know how to close on a customer who approached them in the first place.

A lot of sales departments faced this problem a year ago. In many, it is the junior salespeople, the ones who were scratching to find new business, the ones who were condescended to by the alpha dogs, the guys who had the big accounts, who are coming through to keep the company afloat. They are the new heroes, because they really know how to hunt.

In the businesses where the momentum is just dying now, I’m not sure what a recovery looks like. Is there business model so strong that they just have to start answering the phone again as soon as things start getting better? Or have the little hunters, the furry mammals of sales evolution, stolen all the eggs before they become customers big enough to attract attention?

The newspapers are proclaiming the end of the recession. Look around now, because it is a great time to see (and remember) the folks for whom that last bit of water had to go away to show what they were wearing.

The recession didn’t impact everyone in the same way, and the recovery will be just as uneven. This rising tide won’t lift all boats. An that’s the end of my water analogies for a while.