Intro
It has become evident that we will not be returning to normalcy anytime soon. Until recently, the changes brought on by Covid-19 were thought to be a temporary adjustment — something we’d have to put up with for a few months before returning to commuting, offices, and face-to-face meetings. However, as businesses accept that the current state of affairs may be the new normal, they must change their focus away from band-aid solutions and toward a new approach to organizational strategy. Employees were forced to adjust their work habits almost immediately as a result of this. Despite their initial concerns that the strain might be too much, they discovered that this new way of working could be a long-term blueprint. Building this resilience will require adapting employees’ skills and positions to post-pandemic modes of working.
Some strategies that have worked for us at ONYX to selling more effectively throughout the duration of the pandemic and maybe even after have proved to be quite fruitful.
Experience Matters
This dynamic is about more than just remote working or the role of automation and artificial intelligence. It is about how leaders can reskill and upskill workers in order to deliver new business models in the post-pandemic era. The transition to remote work and virtual interactions resulted in unanticipated time and resource benefits, allowing us to boost proactive client outreach and build a whole new sales and customer experience. This was an easy way for us to utilize our resources more efficiently. It also made it much easier to involve company leaders with clients to fix problems and create higher-level relationships and executive sponsorship.
Adaptable Strategies
Sales connects all of your offerings to the market, and sales are where strategy is put into action. And making sure that the strategy was still in place for a post-pandemic world was very daunting, but making changes and getting feedback just kept us going. With businesses going under and fewer prospects circling back, there was less business to be won. However, this presented an opportunity to rethink what we sell and how we sell it to increase revenue, margin, or market share. So we decided to go back to the drawing board and pivot where needed, identify new target markets, detail the specific reasons clients will choose you over the competition, and get clear about issues that will likely drive customer decisions.
Optimize the Virtual Experience
Even before the current crisis, changing technologies and new ways of working were causing disruptions in jobs and the skills required to perform them. The pandemic just put in on steroids and made the entire workforce get trained to be more tech-savvy in this time of need. Workers in all industries learned how to adapt to rapidly changing conditions, and businesses learned how to match those workers to new roles and activities. Now is the time to be creative with reallocating your travel and expense dollars, making the best out of the virtual experience. For example, if you want to impress a client and show you care genuinely, you could arrange for lunch to be sent while you have your virtual meeting or just some PR or samples while discussing a prototype. The possibilities are endless so think outside the box.