sell better in uncertain times

Australia’s Covid-safe future is weeks away now. Have you prepared the roadmap for your organisation, and particularly for your sales and customer facing teams?

We still come across business leaders assuming this national roadmap will lead back to whatever normal their business experienced before 2020. Their salespeople will hit the road again, customers will visit their sales offices and shops as before, meetings, trainings, workshops will finally return to the board room, a conference hotel, or a classroom. But will they…?

Trends across the globe[1] rather point towards a hybrid future, where face to face engagement and virtual connectivity will find a useful and sustainable balance. The current restrictions are not the reason for this, but simply an accelerator to a development that was already happening before 2020.

This means that businesses will have to establish functioning “remote points of sale”, professional communication technology, plus the subsequent training and support for their staff (we’ll get to that last bit in a moment), to support a smooth and effective operational flow beyond the improvised set up of home offices, or a temporary “return to office roster”.

Some of our clients have already reshuffled and upskilled their customer service teams to cater for a higher influx of online sales enquiries, upgrading their IT to move past the free Zoom licenses and ensure reliable internal and external electronic communication channels. Salespeople embrace that they can easily bring remote product or tech experts into sales conversations, and they accept challenges, for example to facilitate remote display homes and real estate showings.

And these changes all come with success stories. Businesses report to have freed up resources, saved everyone valuable time, helped organise and improve customer and prospect management, and actually grow their markets by removing geographic barriers and technological limitations. These changes not just removed bottle necks during Covid restrictions but opened up new and effective ways to engage customers and broaden the range of channels to interact with them and progress deals. And on top of that, geographically dispersed teams report to be actually working closer together, now that everyone is just a Teams call away.

On the downside, these changes come with a price. Not so much the costs of technology, as some of that is directly offset by saved travel costs and time for example, but the adaptation of teams to these changes.

One of the myths still popular is that a good salesperson can handle remote selling just as well as being face to face with their customers. But maintaining the customer’s attention in a video call or remote product presentation is much harder than presenting face to face and in the same room with a product you can touch and feel. Studies from 2020 already suggested that around a third of even the top sales performers are not prepared for and struggle with selling remotely. This is not just the lack of certain (new) skills, like the use of body language in a small video frame, or handling the communication technology effectively, but can also be a matter of lack of motivation (“I miss being on the road”), lack of coaching (leaders struggle with remote communication skills as well) or simply a lack of willingness to change and adapt.

A good roadmap into a successful future for your sales teams thus must include both the tangible aspects of the necessary changes (computers, cameras, etc.), as well as the human factor (training, coaching, support).

If you need support in any of these areas, contact us.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something face to face or remotely.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2021/05/30/remote-work-evolves-into-hybrid-work-and-productivity-rises-the-data-shows/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-26/will-remote-work-become-the-norm-hybrid-offices-are-transforming-economies

Related topics

Selling better, faster.
Will ‘Selling Remotely’ become the norm for field sales teams post COVID-19?
Selling better, faster using real-time sales education.

A year ago

Why technique, discipline & hard work matter now & in the long run

Five years ago

Marketing technology for better sales result.