sales-organisation

How to Pandemic-Proof Your Sales Organisation For 2021

After the pandemic hit in 2020, many sales organisations began to face never-before-seen challenges with supply chain problems, strained customer reach, and a global recession that all but nearly eliminated in-person sales. Thankfully, things started to improve in 2021 with sales organisations having to change the way they think if they would restore revenue and income growth to pre-pandemic levels and beyond. The situation has provided many opportunities to create new strategies to overcome these difficult issues and keep you always be ready. Here are some ways to do this:

  1. Redefine Sales Strategy

Rethinking the role of the sales team is the first thing to do in restructuring your organisation’s approach due to the pandemic. Ask questions about your organisation and seek answers to move from there. Decide on where your organisation should focus its energy and effort on. Ensure that your reps are coached better on the sales process and advancing opportunities rather than spending time on reporting what is not really important. Doing this will set a clear line of sight between your objectives, your priority markets, your competitive advantages, and the right way your sales organisation should execute. 

  1. Redesign Your Sales Experience

Customer experience is a top priority for many companies, and that is why they invest thousands of dollars into it. If done right, it could be the reason customers stay with a company. The pandemic altered customer buying habits, which means changing your sales experience as well. Sales processes have historically been about sharing information about a company’s capabilities with prospects and clients. But now, sales experience is much more than just price, brand, and service. You need to add value in the form of insight and expertise. Although, this might mean redesigning the sales experience from one customer to the other, however, it is guaranteed to create more value and win more business.

  1. Embrace The Advantages Of Virtual Selling

One of the things the pandemic has done is cause most communication to shift to videoconferencing and now that most organisations have had plenty of experience with virtual sales calls, no doubt the advantages have been fully recognised and it has become easier for sales teams to bring stakeholders from wherever they are to meet shortly with prospects or to bring in experts on different subjects for more value-driven sales cycles. The virtual environment can help your sales team build the support needed for making key decisions, especially in the early stages of the sales process.

  1. Outsource Customer Support 

Round the clock customer support can transform your company’s profit while improving customer experience at the same time. And at no time is this more crucial to sustaining a sales business than in a pandemic. However, setting this up for your organisation will cost a significant amount of money, time, and effort, which makes outsourced customer support the way to go. Handling this crucial part of the business process to experts can help to build brand responsiveness, ease resolutions to customer problems and inquiries, and allow you to implement the tech that makes the customer’s journey smoother. 

Customer support can be outsourced onshore or offshore, but offshore outsourcing offers the advantage of reducing operation and labour costs while extending marketing reach as well. It also makes it easy for your organisation to handle calls and messages from different time zones so that when you and your staff are asleep, professionals from across the globe continue to speak to customers and provide the attention they demand and deserve. But be careful with how you do this as cheap does not translate to efficiency all the time. In fact, this might cost you more in the long run if you hire a call centre that doesn’t meet your business needs or have the right technology to fulfil those needs.

Related article: How To Run Your Business Differently in a Pandemic

Conclusion

The pandemic has caused sales organisations to find new ways to survive and thrive in an unfamiliar world. This requires a change of ways to ensure the organisation can adapt and be stronger now and further into a post-pandemic world. By implementing the right strategy and tactics, your organisation can stand out completely from the competition.