This article was written during the early months of the 2020 lockdown. We invite you to take a retrospective look at how AvreaFoster acted—and guided our clients to act— during those challenging times.
Recent events may have thrown your sales and marketing strategy for a loop at one time or another. You’ve canceled your events. Your in-person sales meetings have transitioned to phone calls. You may have even postponed a product launch or paused a marketing campaign. Now what?
While it’s everyone’s job to look out for one another during a crisis, you still have a business to run. What can you do to move your sales and marketing forward in these uncertain times? We have a few recommendations.
Continue Nurturing Your Relationships
If you’re like most of our B2B clients, your sales strategy includes building one-on-one relationships across a long sales cycle. It’s important to continue nurturing those relationships — but your lunch meeting will need to shift to a phone call or video visit now.
CONTINUE TO TAP YOUR INTERNAL RESOURCES TO CREATE TIMELY, RELEVANT CONTENT THAT ADDRESSES YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PAIN POINTS.
Skip the sales pitch and focus on how your clients or prospects are feeling during this stressful time. Yes, you can ask about their business, but only after you check on their family, their co-workers and their own mental state. This is not the time for a hard sell.
Optimize Your Online Engagement
During uncertain periods, your website is your most important communication tool — a place for prospects to learn about your business and begin the sales journey. Use this time to update your website’s functionality and sharpen your marketing message. You can take it a step further and add new capabilities that elevate online engagement.
THINGS TO CONSIDER:
- Chat functionality for instant communication with prospects
- Videos that allow users to consume content while they work from home
- Interactive tools like calculators or demos that offer a way to test drive your solution
- Online forms that help visitors begin the sales process
Embrace New Virtual Sales Tools
Shift your sales and marketing efforts online using web-based initiatives like webinars, virtual town halls and prerecorded video tutorials. Once you settle on the type of virtual event you want to implement, use email, social channels and paid media to promote these events to current customers and potential prospects.
Share Your Expertise
Your customers need thought leadership now more than ever. Continue to tap your internal resources to create timely, relevant content (blog posts, guides and podcasts) that addresses your customers’ pain points. It’s also a good time to audit existing content and rewrite blog posts to address the curveballs of today’s changing economy. The world is clamoring for insight to help them solve their toughest business challenges. You and your team are just the ones to deliver it.
Prepare for the Future
When times of uncertainty strike, no one will know what the coming months will have in store. But there’s one thing for certain: business will pick up. So continue to work with your teams to build out your marketing materials. Polish that pitch deck. Strengthen your digital tools. Brainstorm ways to reach new clients. When the time is right, you’ll be ready to hit the go button and get back to business.
