Despite the Covid-19 pandemic effects that have resulted in world lockdowns and global travel restrictions, and despite the fact that most marketing, sales and hiring goals and budgets are on a freeze (with some slowly moving towards a reopening strategy as we write this), everyone who belongs to sales still wants to find ways to succeed in their role.
Remote selling has quickly become the new norm for sales, more so in tech, B2B and SaaS sales. This has also seeped into other models, with online sales and e-commerce technologies and platforms redefining how many sales are actually done face to face anymore.
Read More: Business Flexibility During A Global Crisis
Brick and mortar stores still exist, offering the choice of both, an online and offline experience to customers. However, with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the surrounding restrictions the disease has evoked on industries and functions, improving your customer’s virtual brand experience while strengthening your remote selling capabilities will now become the number one priority.
Sales is challenging in itself. Selling successfully during a pandemic when prospects are weary of where their budgets should be put is harder. But with the right tactics and the right amount of creativity, it can be achieved despite everything.
Here are a few quick tips to help you boost your remote selling strategy:
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Look within (your existing customers!)
While most salespeople usually focus their efforts of new customer acquisition, during a global pandemic (and during the slow but steady reopening process), banking on existing customers is one way to not only strengthen your existing sales and business relationships but to also improve your pitch while offering new products or features the company has just launched or introduced. By capitalizing on a conversation with someone you are already familiar with and improving your technique, you are using this time to assess how future customers and prospects will react to you!
While now is the time to be empathetic when initiating a conversation, even with known business partners and customers, a quick cold call (after setting up a time that works for your client) or a quick 10 minute virtual meeting can get the ball rolling.
Read More: 3 Reasons Why Now Isn’t The Time To Stop Talking To Customers
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Reset your target audience base
We all know just how badly the food and beverage, hospitality, travel and entertainment sectors have been affected by the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. So trying to pitch anything to companies from these sectors might not be worth the effort or time.
When business picks up pace and these industries recover, they may be on the lookout for technologies and tools that can help them boost their profits after months of suffering a slowdown, that’s the cue for technology salespeople (like you!) to craft the right message for these prospects and to go after them.
In the meantime, redefining your target account list and focusing on sectors that have a high need and demand despite the current world situation, sectors like healthcare, insurance, online services, etc would be a good way to pursue a more effective remote selling process during this downtime.
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Change how you communicate
Irrespective of whether you are reaching out to existing customers to keep the business relationship warm or to upsell a service or whether you are reaching out to a new prospect who you’ve never spoken to before, during this downtime when everyone is going through challenges of different kinds, redefining how you communicate and which platforms you use to reach out to future customers without seeming too intrusive will be key to developing better sales and business relationships.
While your previous sales cadence may have included the typical email + cold call + followup cadence + one LinkedIn message, this time around, you may have to revisit what cadence you use and which platform you reach out on, depending on where your prospect is based and what channel they seem to be comfortable with, while they themselves are working from home.
Given that video messages has seen a significant rise among sales teams, crafting a personalized and creative message using a video platform might be a good way to initiate a sales conversation at a time such as the present, when you put a face to a new conversation, there are higher chances of someone reacting to the message after all.
Read More: 3 Ways Sales Will Change, In A Good Way, Because Of The Covid-19 Effect!
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Get the best tools and technologies for better remote coordination and support
In today’s time, to work effectively and to spend time on more strategic tasks, everyone needs the right set of tools to automate a few if their most mundane functions. When you need to develop your remote selling process during a global downtime, focusing on using collaboration tools that can keep you and the rest of your sales team on the same page while coordinating urgent matters within minutes despite location is a priority. Cloud-based messaging apps that allow the entire sales team to send bulk messages to customers and prospects and the right email scheduling tools will also come in handy.
While remote selling becomes an ongoing activity (or the new norm) for any sales team, the use of the right CRM will be crucial to help provide up to date information on every deal, prospect and customer buying stage.
The right CRM and other sales tech will help remote sales teams understand the current pipeline of the business while helping to re-allocate certain tasks and sales activities based on a prospect’s deal size and stage in the buying journey.
