The coronavirus pandemic has left most businesses with no option but to adapt to remote working practices. You may have found the experience liberating, or it may have been a struggle. Either way, remote working has posed some unique challenges to the way businesses nurture leads and make sales, especially for businesses whose sales strategy is heavily dependent on face to face meetings.
When done in the right way, though, businesses can manage their sales pipeline effectively while social distancing, as well as maintain highly productive sales teams. This article addresses five strategies companies can employ to make effective sales while remote working.
Many customers make their purchase decisions even before they interact with a company’s salesperson. This means that the prospects already know the value they will get in a product or service before you engage them. Customers are anticipating the benefits that come with the value of a product or service, and in an economic downturn, the value of an item must be justifiable. Identify in what ways your products or services are valuable to your customers, and make this proposition explicit in your sales and marketing messages.
While video conferencing is a good way to keep interactions personal while working remotely, not everyone feels comfortable in this format, when compared to phone calls or meetings. It is, after all, a fairly new way of working. Take the pressure off your prospects and customers by creating a serious of pre-recorded webinars, presentations and video content that do a lot of the work of information-giving in advance, before you even send the Zoom invite. Such content can be tailored for prospects at different stages of their buyer journey.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced many companies to cut their budgets, especially the sales and marketing budget, to manage their financial constraints. This is a mistake, as investment in marketing is even more essential during uncertain times than when leads are abundant. Of course, in strained times, you cannot afford to waste your limited resources on sales collateral that will not be used by your sales teams to the fullest.
Consider growth strategies that maximise returns while minimising infrastructure investment and recruitment costs, while still giving you the flexibility to respond to changing market conditions. Working with a digital marketing agency like JDR is a good way of making your budget go further while keeping your revenue and sales figures high. Get in touch to find out more about our approach.
While remote working it is essential to have clearly outlined expectations for your sales and marketing teams for effective virtual selling. Your team and your prospects will likely be juggling their work commitments with childcare while the schools are closed, and may need extra flexibility in working conditions and appointment times.
This isn’t to say you should be less ambitious with your sales targets. However, it is expected that your salespeople might not be as effective or productive during standard office hours when working remotely as they would be pre-lockdown – although this should change when the schools are back. For this reason, you must define your expectations for each team and employee by marking them as tasks and milestones on a project management tool. You can also get actionable advice from a business growth specialist on how to set outcome-based expectations (as opposed to time-based) for business.
At JDR we recommend HubSpot, which is a full-spectrum marketing and sales automation platform that helps your business manage and integrate your business development activities, as well as keep track of all your lead conversions.
As a cloud-based platform, your team can access HubSpot from any Internet-enabled device, and collaborate with colleagues, suppliers, prospects and customers in real time, with a range of advanced automation and communication logging tools. Even if your current sales management system has served you well so far, investing in a platform such as HubSpot pays real dividends when conducting sales on line, helping you convert leads into valuable sales.
To find out more, please call 01332343281.