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We are often called into companies and what they say to us is the following:-
- We are operating in increasingly challenging market, suffering from declining pipe and increased pressure on margin.
- Previous strategies that relied heavily on our install-base for sales pipeline are no longer delivering the opportunity numbers to meet our revenue targets.
- The days of relying on Global / Regional Marketing to deliver success alone are behind us.
- Our sales funnel has been declining and is now empty.
- Traditional ‘analogue’ selling is evidentially no longer able to create the opportunity pipe needed to meet our sales targets.
- We need new logos and organic growth to create success round the sale funnel.
- We are increasingly engaging too late in the sales cycle and not able to exert adequate control or influence on the outcome, resulting in poor conversion rates.
- Doing nothing will not deliver commercial success.
- We are staring into a pipeline abyss in September, October and November
Prospecting in a Covid19 World
This was a problem before Covid_19 but the problem has been exasperated, many companies are looking at the pipeline in September, October and November and all they see is a desert.
It may seem like “stating the obvious” but you need to create more pipeline and more opportunities for this business. Telling the salespeople to make more cold calls and send more emails just does not cut it anymore.
Lead Generation During Covid19
A question we often say to people is “so how do you communicate with your life partner?” The answer will be on WhatsApp, or text, or facebook …. it will be social it won’t be by email or by phone.
Then we ask people how they buy stuff and they will say “well I go to Google and search for what I want, I read article on social, I might ask my friends on Facebook for their advice. We might turn to online influencers.”
Can you see where this is going?
So why, when the world has changed and you have certain behaviours at home as do the whole wide world, do you come to work and expect people to look at adverts, you expect people to read your spam emails or answer your cold calls?
I get the answer that they did pre-covid, but we have agreed that the world has changed. None of this, for business, adds up.
(I’ve often asked people they they would send a newsletter to their life partner with all the amazing things you had been up to and of course you wouldn’t, so why do you trust customers differently?) Why do you treat customers like Covid19 didn’t exist?
Doing The Same You Did Pre-Covid Won’t Cut it
We all know the world has changed, we all know the world of business has changed and we all know this because our own behaviours have changed, accept we expect everything will carry on as it did pre-covid.
I’m really sorry to break it to you, this is going to cause your business more cash flow issues and more law offs. As we all know.
As James Cameron said “Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.
Finally a world on leadership…
Leadership: The final word is that all leaders need to lead and you show people the way, this will mean that you will need to embrace these new ways and in fact you will be part of the solution by making sure you empower people to wonder out of the desert into the lead promised land.