We have all been hit by the impact of Covid-19 our world has been turned upside down, I’m working from home and so are most of the business community.
So What Can You do About your Sales Forecast Short Term?
What’s the impact of Covid-19 on our current pipeline?
What’s your pipeline horizon assuming that Covid-19 will continue for another 6 months?
By now you should have a reasonable view on risk and managed that upwards to your senior management. They may not like it, but, they must understand the situation and will deal with the news as they need to. This is the time for honesty and no surprises.
On the assumption that a lot of your pipeline has gone “soft”, you need to think about what is it that you can do to try and keep it from completely disappearing?
First and foremost, you must sell “value”, people will only buy if there is a business case. You must also, be able to deliver based on the current paradigm that things must be delivered virtually.
I’m going to throw this one in as a wild card. What is it that you can do to help people. A friend of mine has had 3 months of forward business cancelled. People are scared. What can you do as a business to help?
What are you Going to do to Prospect and Sell going Forward?
What’s going to stop us all going to hell in a handbasket?
Where as in the old days, you would have been on the phone and go and meet people, you cannot do that anymore. Your prospects are working from home so you might not get through to them on the phone. You certainly are not going to have a face-to-face meeting. I was talking to somebody today who said that you just don’t get the depth of relationship by just having conference calls.
What Can You Do to Prospect and Sell in a Covid-19 World?
You need to reimagine how you are going to prospect and sell.
The mistake that many companies are doing is continuing with pre-Covid-19 marketing and campaigns. If it didn’t go in the bin before, it will go in the bin now because your customers won’t see it as relevant. A friend of mine is continuing to post pre-Covid-19 marketing campaign material and it looks ridiculous, out of step and not relevant to the current Covid-19 world.
Working from home frees you up to do those thing you have been putting off.
- Update your Linkedin profile so it’s buyer centric.
- Connect to as many of your existing prospects, customers and colleagues as you can and
- Why don’t you even create some content. A 300 word blog, just one idea.
It does not require talent it requires application.
If you need help, you know where we are.
Panic or prosper. We’ve got two choices when it comes to how to react to the current state of affairs. (If you are currently panicking, you can make the switch. Pretty sure I was a combination of meltdown/nervous breakdown before the calm took over.) The good news is, while customers aren’t coming in and to-go orders are down, you can still generate sales to provide cash flow right now. Here are some strategies you can implement immediately.
unknownx500
