How to prepare for getting back on the road.

Getting your team back on the road in 2021 is going to take creative thinking.

More than 97% of the U.S. population experienced a stay-at-home or shelter-in-place order during the pandemic. While we may now be close to returning to normal pre-pandemic working practices, there are still some lessons to be learned about keeping your sales teams safe. 

With manufacturing and distribution returning to normal output levels, enforcing social distancing between workers may prove difficult to achieve in some work-space conditions. From plant managers to sales executives the challenges are daunting. Keeping work crews and professional teams healthy and safe will become an ongoing issue in the months and possibly years ahead.

“Ford is testing out a buzzing wristband to help its employees maintain appropriate social distancing.”

Source: Motor1

Executive leaders are challenged with unanswerable questions like:

• How do we restart conversations that we had several months ago?
• What new tools should we adopt?
• How do we move the business forward?
• Should we release new products or services this year?

Companies that are over-reliant on travel or lunch-meeting-type interactions are going to struggle. The solution is to keep using those remote meeting tools you discovered while working from home. 

Reaching remote customers.

Since working from home, many people have discovered remote collaboration tools such as Google Hangouts, DingTalk, WeChat Work, or Zoom, and how to successfully use them to conduct business and team meetings.

If you are thinking about getting back on the road, listen to our podcast episode with Ian Heller of
Distribution Strategy Group talking about the future of sales.

Videoconferencing was already becoming a replacement for face-to-face engagement. The new boom is expanding beyond business usage and now reaching into areas of healthcare, cybersecurity, logistics, telecommunications, and others.

“Eliminate presence pain points and consider presence-free options.”

Source: Forbes

Digital channels are becoming instrumental in helping sales teams nurture new relationships. Teams working with messaging tools are starting to feel more comfortable as they rely on them daily to communicate with their team and interact with customers.

This is the time to start leveraging your in-house designers and creative resources to build powerful stories that engage and deliver informative messages. Start making use of social media since people are spending most of their time online and are probably a lot easier to engage and connect with.

Staying visible and valuable to your customers.

As sales teams try to restart conversations, start first by asking your customers if they prefer a phone call and what their messenger software of choice is. If your customers prefer other messengers be ready to implement them to ensure 24/7 accessibility.

The key is to remain flexible and be willing to use your customer’s preferred communication route and understand how it works compared to your platform of choice.

You will also need to invest some time and resources into restating the value of your product or service to your customers. Don’t let the benefits of your products and services fall victim to the short-sighted budget slashing that market depressions encourage.

Lured out of lockdown – getting your team back on the road.

Whilst remaining vigilant increased hygiene and social distancing, the pull to restart the economy will require significant additional planning. Turning to technology as an answer to the current challenges is a no-brainer.

Firms need to get to grips with embedding new systems into the everyday workplace to speed up a return to profit, ensure the safety of their staff and future-proof their business.

The key to ramping up business as a whole is gaining a clear view of how your industry looks right now. What has changed during the lockdown? What should be your first actions as you return to work? How can we get ahead of our competitors now to build a strong pipeline of business for the rest of the year?

To answer these questions your business needs data. Data that you can understand, action, and track to see where your business can make quick wins and gain market share. Sales enablement platforms, such as sales-i, deliver insights fast through dashboards, reports, and automated alerts to get your team focused on the right tasks for right now.

Unlock the opportunity that the economic restart offers with data-driven decisions from sales-i. Book an online demo today.