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5 strategies to boost sales during coronavirus pandemic
It has been a long and testing time for B2B salespeople since the CoronaVirus outbreak. And so far all indicators suggest that this new normal is going to persist in the foreseeable future.
The shift from an office-based environment to an entirely work-from-home setting due to the pandemic hasn’t been devoid of challenges. A decrease in ROI and sales leads numbers has been widely observed. In case you’re one of the many businesses struggling to adapt to this new scenario, here are some strategies to fix the situation and boost your sales numbers.
Key points to improve sales numbers during the challenging times
There are many things one could do for improving sales numbers during this crisis, but let’s start with some basic strategies.
1. Change in Approach and Attitude
The first thing you need to change in tackling this global crisis is to rethink the entire sales strategy. Meeting potential customers over drinks or sending them tokens for improving sales are not viable options anymore. You need to get creative with pitches, as the entire world has moved online overnight. Some new ideas that could be applied are:
- New social media platforms could replace traditional chalkboard or slideshow pitches.
- Infographics and short messages can be opted for instead of documented reports.
- YouTube videos explaining products, blogs by eminent reviewers of the industry, and influencer culture can be feasible options in this highly digitized world.
2. Ensuring Safety & Security
Your employees are still the most important link in your chain, and their safety must be your number one priority. The HR department must come in handy here. Taking care of their healthcare and training them in new apps, software, and tools to help them seamlessly transition into this new post-COVID world is imperative.
Allowing your sales team to operate under flexible timings and keeping enough communication channels open for any issue that might arise is also your responsibility as an employer.
3. Instilling Optimism and Monitoring Productivity
Another aspect of keeping your team well oiled is to provide them with much-needed optimism in these dire circumstances of the pandemic. Constant communication with your employees is a must to boost their spirits.
Keep them in the loop with the company’s updates. Ask them about their health and well-being frequently. You also need to devise a strategy to check on their daily progress and monitor their productivity. To effectively track your employees you can use these strategies-
- There are many apps available in the market, like Hubstaff and ActivTrak to expertly measure and monitor productivity
- Setting daily goals, huddles and reports can be important to check efficiency.
- You should also understand that managing families with minimum mobility due to COVID must be hard for your employees. So allowing them ample breaks and a flexible work schedule to produce required results is admirable.
- Moving to a completely agile framework where work is done in iterative bursts and as per convenience, might seem drastic at first but will definitely bring tangible results.
According to this article by Planview, companies employing Agile mechanics and frameworks have managed to boost their sales numbers by 30 percent.
4. Change in Sales Messaging
There needs to be a rehashing of the messaging employed by your sales personnel. As the world is changing very quickly, you cannot afford to stick to your brand’s earlier tonality. The strategy is to use a voice that is clear, empathetic, and topical, befitting to the global crisis.
A customer needs to feel endeared and their struggles understood by the brand. Only then could one be persuaded to make a purchase with an economy struggling due to CoronaVirus. Also, being extra empathetic and personal towards your regular customers is a necessary step to make them feel like a part of the family. This loyalty would pay high dividends in the long run.
5. Seeking New Business Opportunities
This is also the time to bolster your business by seeking new ventures. It’s unlikely that all of your previous endeavours or partnerships were completely impervious to the pandemic.
To make up for this inevitable loss, one needs to connect through to other marketers and survey which sectors will be most benefited by this crisis. Finding new partners will also provide your sales team with the much-required confidence boost which may have gone missing with depleted ROI numbers.
As the entire world slowly heals from this CoronaVirus setback, you need to embrace the current times and prepare for the times that are to come, in order to boost your sales.
Although we agree it’s tough to revamp the century-old strategies employed in sales and marketing, it is absolutely necessary that you start with baby steps today rather than waiting for things to get much worse in the future due to this crisis and we at HQL can help you implement these changes.
Our team at HQL Solutions design a unique strategy for every business by analyzing current market trends and business advantages to bring the best-refined leads for your company.
