If thinking back to the hip, shiny and whimsical trends we were all so invested in a few weeks ago seems like a century ago, you’re not alone.
Yesterday’s craft gin distilleries are producing alcohol-based hand sanitisers today. Yesterday’s luxury fashion brands in Milan are rolling out personal protective gear and face masks for health workers today.
This is our new normal. There’s no room for flashiness or frivolity in today’s world, particularly not in B2B selling. The ‘sales pitch’ is dead.
So how do you adapt?
There are two key considerations around how COVID-19 is impacting how we do business:
1. Are your products relevant in this new world order?
2. Have you adapted the tone and content of your sales interactions with clients to ensure your message carries?
1. Re-establish your relevance to clients in Covid-19
Many companies have woken up to a new world where their products or services are simply no longer relevant.
While this has always been the case in the evolution of businesses and markets, COVID-19 has exponentially accelerated the inevitable in one very specific direction: non-essentials don’t matter.
Survival is every business’s top priority. What you do next will determine if your business is still operational in 2021.
1. Review your offerings
2. Be brutal – what is relevant? What should be shelved or scrapped entirely?
3. Develop your ‘why’ – why do you exist and why do customers need you?
4. Build messaging that clearly communicates your relevance in a COVID-19 world
5. Contact us if you need help with reframing your go-to-market strategy
2. Understand how stress impacts your clients’ ability to process information
It is fair to say the majority of people today are experiencing acute stress – this state will be prolonged for months to come.
Under ongoing and acute stress, our ability to process information rationally is radically impeded – research shows that:
- When we are emotional, particularly in stressful situations, we stop thinking clearly
- Our ability to process information is reduced by up to a staggering 80%
- Our ability to understand information shrinks to 4 grades below our actual education level
- We begin reacting to perceived threats, rather than actual reality
It is critical to understand this in B2B selling today.
3. Shift your tone and messaging if you want to succeed in sales
How you approach your customer interactions and the information you share and request must be radically streamlined:
- Be focused and deliberate in your objectives
- Be relevant to their immediate needs
- Be clear in your value communication
- Be authentic and empathetic – the days of the ‘sales pitch’ are long gone – now is the time for business conversations
- Be brief.
How ThinkSales can help
THINKSALES ONLINE SERVICES & SUPPORT
Solutions to help sales leaders with their go-to-market strategies and solutions for sales managers to manage remote teams and equip sales reps with the skills and tools to bring in revenue in the midst of COVID-19 crisis.
Click here for full details:
- Virtual consulting on customer engagement process design and sales strategy
- Virtual building of call scripting, needs analysis and conversation guides built to engage customers in an online environment
- Online Psychometric Assessments to assess Sales Reps and pinpoint highest priority development areas for selling in this environment
- Virtual sales training for sales reps and managers.
