A few years ago, at the Imaging Industries Executive Connection Summit, I recall another speaker saying that 41% of millennials preferred digital communication over live communication. As a B2B sales coach and owner of a digital marketing agency, that stat rung my bell.
When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, that 41% preference for digital communication zoomed to virtually 100% in just days. This time it wasn’t millennials—it was the pandemic driving the way we sell.
In this article, I’ll share eight shifts business owners and sales and marketing leaders can make to survive and thrive in today’s pandemic.
My suggestions have been shaped by my experience as vice president of sales at a $30 million MSP, over 1,000 paid speaking events and the opportunity to strategize with North America’s most recognized imaging dealers and managed service providers since the pandemic hit.
Here are eight ways to make your sales team pandemic proof and grow your top and bottom line:
1. Recruit a New Sales Profile
Start looking for different skills than in the past. Today’s B2B seller needs to be proficient in email and social media to establish new contacts and generate sales leads. Even the phone is becoming a tougher method for accessing key decision makers who are now working remotely. To find the sales talent you need in a virtual setting, start asking questions such as, “How big is your social network of business contacts?” and “How many videos have you posted in the last 30 days?” I believe the digital DNA of tomorrow’s sales superstar will include a slightly different skillset than in the past, and your job postings and interviews need to ensure you’re hiring that talent you need to win today.
2. Move Sales Spend to Marketing
Margin pressure was challenging the high cost of sales long before the pandemic. Today, we see more and more resellers rethinking their customer acquisition costs and shifting their spend from traditional “feet-on-the-street” to a digital-marketing budget. A strong digital-marketing program can immediately give your brand a bigger voice in your market to create awareness and boost consideration rates. A well-executed digital-communication strategy will touch more potential buyers than a human ever could before, during and after the pandemic.
3. Update Your Activity Mix
Have your sales activity targets shifted yet? Do they include critical engagement activities like using LinkedIn? A sales team must be proficient on LinkedIn to sell in a pandemic and beyond. Yet, so few B2B sales activity targets include newer social engagement activities. As an example, I suggest that, every week, reps should post or share content three to five times and add no fewer than 30 new contacts. With 120 new contacts per month and quality content for your reps to share on LinkedIn, it’s only a matter of time before the fish start biting again.
4. Get Active on LinkedIn
Over 2,000 B2B sales reps have completed my 30-day LinkedIn Bootcamp since the pandemic started. I describe LinkedIn as a huge chamber of commerce meeting with everybody you’d ever want to meet, but you have to look and act the right way to be effective. It starts with having a professional profile and posting good content. There’s an art to making digital connections, creating digital relationships and then being able convert those digital communications to offline conversations and sales opportunities. If you’re a sales leader, take a look at each of your reps’ profiles and their activity over the last 30 days. You’ll know pretty quickly if your sales team is leveraging the No.1 sales tool you need to use in a pandemic. And it’s free.
5. Get Social
Your company’s social media channels have become the voice of your business—to current customers, future customers, employees and potential applicants for your sales team. Take a look at each of those channels and see how up to date your social front is. Are you still saying “season’s greetings?” Don’t laugh, you know it happens! I’ve learned through trial and error that social media is both an art and a science. You need to be educational—not promotional—in a pandemic. To measure your social content, look at the engagement measured in likes, comments, and shares over the last 30 days. You’ll notice that people respond more often to posts about how you’re helping the community or recognizing your people than those that brag about how great your offerings are. I tell our clients the less you sell on social media, the more you will sell on social media.
6. Strengthen Your Website
Think of your site like a magnet. The stronger it is, the more people will be drawn to it. At a minimum, you need to make sure your website has been properly optimized for search engine optimization (SEO). And once you get people to your site, does it have the basic pandemic necessities for what marketers call “conversion,” which is a fancy word for your website’s ability to convert your online visitors into sales leads? Popular conversion strategies include a chat bot, offering content and webinar viewings in exchange for the visitor’s contact information. Have a look at your website and see how many different ways visitors can engage with you beyond the Contact Us page.
7. Unleash the Power of Video
If a picture says a thousand words, how many does a video say? A million? Like it or not, the pandemic turned all of us into video sellers. We’ve all been forced to replace in-person meetings with screen sharing video technology. But who is training your reps how to appear on camera? The wrong attire or a less-than-professional background speaks louder than anything you could possibly say. When the pandemic hit, the imaging industry’s largest OEM hired us to coach their national salesforce on how to shoot “selfie sales videos,” including technical tips and simple talk track templates of what to say on camera. The training gave the reps the confidence they needed to create zero-budget, meaningful short videos that act as lures on social media for what they sell. Take a look at your rep’s digital DNA and see if they’re using video or not.
8. Call Higher
Targeting the business leader(s) of an organization is the only way to prospect in a pandemic. We’re finding that mid-level managers are afraid to make the decisions–budgets are tight and unless it’s a senior-level initiative, you’re likely spinning your wheels.
Find out what your reps are doing by asking them to copy you on some of their prospecting emails to see how high they’re setting their sights.
If you’ve been around long enough, you know adversity creates opportunity. You also know that there are three types of people: those who watch what’s happening, those who make things happen, and those who ask what happened.
Which one are you?
