The state of sales and businesses all across the globe is highly uncertain today.
Now even though we are talking about it, and we are doing whatever we can do best to adjust to this current Coronavirus Pandemic, what we are not doing is refraining from discussing the aftermath of this crisis and talking about what this will means for sales and business growth.
We are all hoping that everything will snap back as soon as possible when this social-distancing and bans are lifted at people at large can go back to their offices and resume face-to-face work. Nevertheless, it will not happen as quickly we are anticipating now.
Businesses that leverage CRM software see sales increase by 29%, sales productivity increase by 34%, and sales forecast accuracy increase by 42%. Click To TweetHence as one of the most popular vendors of Salesforce Alternative CRM for small and medium businesses we think that repositioning your offerings and sales outreaches in reaction to this present situation is critical for sustaining business growth.
However, to do this your sales teams need to reposition their sales strategies with future conditions in sight.
This is because we guess none of us will want to put their sales teams to perform this exercise once again during the post-Corona times just because you were unable to calculate what “not quite back to business as usual” actually means.
Therefore, as one of most recognized and award-winning vendors of CRM for SMB and startups, we would like to cover four steps here that might help you to reframe how you sold your offerings yesterday and even keep the near future in mind when businesses will hopefully start operating “normally” once again.
Step# 1
Identify Niche Markets and Use Cases
It has been observed that not only businesses are right now scrambling to move their marketing and sales budgets from offline channels to virtual events, webinars, and more advertisings digitally- they are even contending to reposition their values and messages for apparently new purchasers or niche markets.
Here are three distinct trends within any organizations that sellers are falling into:
• Firstly, businesses that are still prospering right now because they have already found their niche markets and use cases for their present needs.
• Secondly, the companies who are struggling to find their niche market and use cases since they are finding them in a market that is extremely affected by COVID-19 Pandemic and their offerings are not flexible enough to fit into this current market.
• Thirdly, businesses that fall somewhere in-between these two extreme scenarios.
Now as per observations, it has been found that most companies across the globe fall in this third category, whereby they are struggling to find their niche markets and targeted use cases, even though the potential to fit in those niche markets with the right repositioning of their offerings and strategic messaging shifts.
Step# 2
Place Your Buyers Into Two Separate Buckets
Right after you have been able to identify the most immediate niche market that requires your solution, do not stop since to effectively modernize the outbound strategies you need to play short and long games sequentially.
This implies warming up and prepping up your leads and customers with a specific future need that you have identified.
Hence your consumers now should be spilled into two buckets:
• Firstly your present buyers whom you have identified in Step# 1
• Secondly, your future buyers of tomorrow who will either require your solution during the world’s time of rebuilding in the post-crisis landscape or purchasers who you will need to provide your solutions again when businesses stabilize.
Now, buyers those that are in your first bucket, who will find your solutions very relevant to their needs right now, should get very specific messages which are still focused on call-to-action, but the buyers in your second bucket where your solution is nice-to-have but does not fulfill an immediate need, should get value-driven, and different messages that are meant to nurture them and keep your business top of their mind.
Since only by doing this, when conditions shift to more a favorable business scenario, you will be able to make your consumers find your offerings already in front of them, while at the same time you can also establish yourself as a trusted resource.
Step# 3
Customize Your Messaging and Empathize More With The Buyer
One of the most critical challenges right now in front of the sales teams is how they can be more empathetic and still get the things in front of their buyers without sounding overtly pitchy during these turbulent times.
For this, the primary thing that Marketing and Sales need to do is to get out of their autopilot mode. Therefore if your brand still has campaigns scheduled in their business growth tools like an easy to use CRM software, its best to cancel them and recalibrate everything to the requirements and current pain-point of the bucket-one buyers explained in the Step #2 of this blog.
This is because as businesses, we cannot just be tome-deft right now to the situations that our leads, prospects, and customers nowadays. Rather everything that you send now to your leads and prospects has to be relevant to them in a more genuine manner.
So just do not start sending email messages that begin with the cliché “We know times are strenuous and crazy right now…” and call them empathetic messaging for the consumers in your marketplace.
Since the only way that you will be able to show any value to the consumers is with a one-on-one approach and scrapping automated one-size-fits-all outreaching strategies.
Now we are no longer in practice to really think about what our purchasers are going through at the moment and adapting messages-although this really at the heart of all sales.
Hence getting back to the fundamentals, if your business does not know how a brand makes money, or what your prospective leads do in their jobs, how is it possible to help them under these present circumstances? How can you narrow down and tailor your messages to precisely what they require versus sending blanket statements about your offerings?
Perse, even though you can provide your prospects information since you do not require to know about anyone to give them information about your offerings. But nevertheless, you just cannot make your offerings applicable to your prospective buyers and their businesses, especially during these trying times of change when you have to reposition the value of your offerings.
Step# 4
Modernize Your Outbound Strategy
Any modern outbound marketing and selling strategy relies on a combination of traditional (calls and emails), video, and LinkedIn with highly segmented groups and hyper-targeted sequences.
Traditional (phone and emails)
Most sales teams in the present times are extremely comfortable with traditional channels, but where most strategies fall short is not segmenting outreach sequences by buyers, markets, and solutions.
Hence, now is the time to get your marketing and selling strategies more narrow and provide that one-on-one experience, which can be easily done when your business is assisted by an easy to use CRM software.
Now, LinkedIn and video touchpoints between emails and phone calls provide additional help in optimizing your strategies even further.
LinkedIn is one of the most useful social platforms for sales teams since it helps in promoting your business solutions in an organic way, by building exceptional and exclusive relationships with the buyers and thereby help in generating new businesses.
Therefore integrating LinkedIn into your outbound strategies will permit your business to connect with your bucket one buyers and also nurture in bucket two.
We say this since focusing more on B2B social selling during this global unrest is a no brainer as everyone is nowadays investing more time on social media and online than ever before, which is especially true for LinkedIn for business professionals.
Video
In the present times when face-to-face is off-limits due to social distancing norms prevailing all across the globe to thwart the spread of COVID-19, the video has an even more significant impact on building up a purely digital relationship in sales outreach.
It can help to put a face to the rep and allow real-time explanations of complicated concepts, which was also true even before people were asked to stay at home.
However, as now buyers are yearning for the personal connection to happen more so nowadays when they hear the voice of a person and sees them, it definitely helps more in creating better conversions.
Conclusion
Therefore, to recap briefly, to survive this global COVID-19 Pandemic businesses must reposition their offerings and their sales outreaches to clearly show their values, whereby the biggest lift will be going back to the drawing boards and genuinely digging into what the purchasers want and finding their present pain-points are how your solutions can relieve them, whereby Google is a good place to start figuring that out for sustaining your sales and business growth.
Who knows doing this exercise might even help you to find new markets you had never thought to sell into ever before.