A difficult market hits all competitors equally.
What differs is the response.
When the market softens, the quality of a sales organisation shows. Not in explanations – in results.
“The market is difficult.” That’s true – but it hits the competition just as hard. And yet, in every downturn, certain companies grow while others use market conditions to explain stagnating numbers. The difference rarely lies in the product. It lies in how consistently and systematically an organisation sells.
This isn’t speculation – it’s well documented. Observing companies across an entire crisis reveals a recurring pattern: one group – referred to in research as “the resilients” – not only navigates the downturn better, but pulls significantly ahead in the years that follow and rarely gives that lead back. McKinsey demonstrated this across the financial crisis in more than a thousand companies; the Boston Consulting Group finds the same effect across decades. The exact figures vary by study – the direction is always the same: the prepared outpace their competition, and the gap holds.
What’s striking is that this advantage carries beyond the acute crisis. Resilience is less a reactive measure than a lasting capability – the ability to remain capable of action and create value even in uncertain times. Those who stay active during a downturn aren’t building a short-term fix, but a strength that continues to deliver in the next upturn.
The message is uncomfortable but liberating: a downturn doesn’t distribute damage evenly. It redistributes market share – from those who wait to those who are prepared.
This leads to a different attitude towards crisis. When competitors freeze budgets and shift to defensive mode, a window opens in which market share can be gained at comparatively low cost – share that would be expensive to buy back in an upturn. The goal is therefore not damage limitation, but the targeted capture of share from the right customers, with clear systematic action rather than sporadic individual efforts.
This is precisely where our Hunting Engine comes in – an operational growth system that turns the intention “we should be hunting more actively” into a manageable process. Three building blocks work together:
01
The target market is fully mapped, making overlooked potential and white spots visible.
02
Focus goes to the strategically most valuable products and customers – not what happens to come in.
03
Clear actions, accountabilities, and timelines, tracked weekly through to a measurable effect on revenue and EBIT.
This transforms the question “How bad will the crisis get?” into the far more productive question: “Whose market share are we taking now?”
Growth is not coincidence.
Growth is a system.
Get in touch via the form or book a call directly with Stefan Pogatsch, Head of Consultancy.
