Leading Through Uncertainty: Winning Sales Strategies When Buyers Adopt a 'Wait and See' Mindset

In today's uncertain economic climate, revenue leaders face unprecedented challenges as buyers delay decisions and sales cycles extend. Recent data from Pavilion's member Pulse Survey indicates growing concerns among go-to-market executives, with significant decreases in confidence about hitting growth targets and more organizations shifting from selective hiring to full hiring freezes.

At a recent Pavilion "Leading Through Uncertainty" webinar, Ian Koniak, former enterprise sales leader at Salesforce and current sales coach, shared practical guidance for navigating this challenging landscape. Drawing from his experience leading teams through multiple economic downturns, Koniak offered a proven framework for maintaining momentum when buyer urgency disappears.

Understanding the Current Environment

Before diving into strategy, it's essential to understand what's driving today's market conditions. The current economic uncertainty stems from several factors:

• Tariff concerns affecting supply chains across industries
• Shifting government policies and trade relationships
• Persistently high interest rates despite inflation pressures
• Rising costs across technology and manufacturing sectors

These factors have created a psychological shift among decision-makers, even in traditionally recession-resistant sectors. Koniak highlighted a recent study that found that 25% of CFOs at companies with over 1,000 employees have either frozen hiring or capital investments due to tariff concerns alone.

The Assessment-Led Sales Approach

Koniak's core insight is that uncertain times require a fundamental shift in sales positioning. Rather than selling solutions, revenue teams should sell assessments.

"When times are tough, when people are scared, there's a different way to sell and to market and to position your services that lands extremely well," Koniak explained.

The assessment-led approach involves:

1. Reframing the conversation: Instead of pitching product benefits, focus on providing a diagnostic engagement that uncovers inefficiencies, labor costs, and operational waste in areas your solution can address.
2. Targeting cost reduction: Position your assessment as a way to identify consolidation opportunities and automate manual processes—directly addressing CFOs' current top priorities of improving efficiency and cutting costs.
3. Accessing executive sponsorship: Take your message directly to the C-suite, as they hold the authority to prioritize initiatives during uncertainty while mid-level managers are often constrained by budget freezes.
4. Delivering concrete business value: Through your business value team (or by developing these capabilities), deliver an ROI analysis with metrics that financial buyers understand—payback periods, cost per outcome, and implementation roadmaps.

Why This Approach Works in Uncertain Times

The assessment-led approach is particularly effective during economic uncertainty for several reasons:

• It aligns with CFO priorities: Recent Deloitte research shows 52% of CFOs rate cost-cutting as their highest priority initiative.
• It leverages the "wait and see" mindset: When buyers are in evaluation mode but not ready to buy, assessments provide actionable value with minimal client investment.
• It positions your organization as a trusted advisor: By helping customers identify efficiency opportunities now, you build credibility that can translate to preference when spending returns.
• It creates a structured sales process: With executive sponsorship secured upfront, the assessment process actually compresses sales cycles by 50% compared to traditional approaches.

Implementation Considerations

For organizations looking to adopt this approach, Koniak emphasizes that success depends more on sales messaging than on building elaborate new capabilities. Key implementation factors include:

• Focus 90% of effort on training sellers to position assessments effectively
• Begin with strategic accounts rather than trying to scale across all opportunities
• Qualify opportunities based on executive sponsorship and client commitment
• Leverage existing pre-sales and technical resources rather than creating new teams

The Path Forward

As market volatility continues, revenue leaders who pivot to an assessment-led approach can transform uncertainty from an obstacle into an opportunity. By helping customers identify efficiency gains and cost-saving opportunities during this cautious period, forward-thinking organizations can maintain momentum while positioning themselves for accelerated growth when confidence returns.

The key lesson from Koniak's experience is clear: in times of uncertainty, don't just wait for buying conditions to improve—change how you sell to match buyers' current priorities and psychology.

This article draws from insights shared during Pavilion's "Leading Through Uncertainty" series, held every Friday at 11:00 AM ET. Previous guest speakers include Ian Koniak (ex-Salesforce), Kiva Kolstein (AlphaSense), and Ashley Grech (ex-Square).

This event is exclusive to Pavilion members. To attend, please register through the Member Hub.