For the second quarter in a row, McKinsey’s economic snapshot survey shows senior execs saying that things haven’t got worse, but they don’t expect an improvement any time soon. This chimes with what you hear out and about; business isn’t brilliant, but it isn’t bad either - a lot of people are waiting it out, to “see what happens”. McKinsey’s report calls it “a gloomy economic stasis”.

But short of gagging Robert Peston to increase the country’s optimism levels, how to beat the economic stasis, and keep the leads coming in and converting?

It’s interesting to note that whilst the McKinsey report points to continued cost reduction, it also highlights a heavy focus on operational efficiency and improving productivity. Plus, when executives were asked whether they were seeking external funding, most said they were not, but that the bulk of those who were, were using it for investment, geographic expansion and innovation. Additonally, half of all companies surveyed expected to shed staff in 2009.

So the drivers are there for spend on IT, outsourcing and services. But how to get those leads and convert them? Here are some points to consider:

-How about offering access to great content and ready-made, industry specific business cases? (doing more with less, how to maintain customer service levels after cutting staff, building remote workforces…) Go further than traditional marketing content and sales support tools – get in touch with project teams and ask for their solution-based content to give real war stories and meat to campaigning materials.

-Perhaps provocation marketing would bear fruit with some targets. (see the earlier article “Lead gen in a downturn: is provocation the answer?”) This involves going beyond solution selling and provoking the customer to buy through a series of highly-researched and targeted joint sales and marketing campaigns.

-Gather like-minded people together from different target industries to learn from each other. Develop the content of the workshop from new, fascinating and fast research and get a facilitator who’s been through the mill to ensure that a genuine and honest exchange of issues and ideas happens. Feed this content back to delegates with a detailed description of how you can help, with tools and documents downloadable/available to help them sell it within their own businesses.

-It follows from the above that supporting sales teams through account-based and narrow-cast marketing activity will bear fruit. By researching specific account needs in detail and building a plan of attack with sales (from lead to win) you stand a much better chance of shaping leads before they get to RFI stage. You can download our free ABM planner here.

The McKinsey survey results are available here, but please note it is premium content.