How to manage a sales company during the COVID-19 pandemic
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 10:41 am
The COVID-19 health crisis is reshaping the world. Businesses are moving online and teams are working from home.
When managing a remote team, you need to communicate transparently and effectively. Managers should present clearly defined guidelines to avoid miscommunication, misunderstandings, and missteps.
At the same time, make sure your team is safe and supported during this transition. Identify their needs, send them helpful tips and information, and check in frequently to see how they are doing.
Supportive leadership will set a positive tone and reassure your team and customers that you are proactively addressing this crisis.
Sales managers must reevaluate their goals and incorporate new tools and techniques into the workflow.
In this article, we will give you practical tips on how to efficiently manage your sales business and your remote representatives.
What this article contains:
How to set up tools to monitor the health of your business
How to find the best value in your existing tools
How to avoid having your deal flow affected too much
How to react to a drop in sales and changing consumer behavior
How you can optimize sales processes to be more agile
How to react if your company is actually benefiting from the COVID-19 crisis
How to set up tools to monitor the health of your business
Sales companies are responsible for managing multiple customer relationships at various stages of the process.
A CRM helps simplify and streamline this process in an office, but it becomes critical in a remote work environment. CRMs allow you to digitally monitor the health of your company and improve business relationships from the comfort of your home.
More importantly, a CRM provides transparency by allowing each team member to have access to each other's pipeline.
For example, a sales rep may become ill or find it difficult to increase productivity from home during this crisis. If so, it may be necessary for another rep to step in and handle some of their communications in their absence.
A CRM allows for a seamless transition as all of the absent rep's leads, customers, opportunities, deals and communications are stored in one centralized system.
The CRM dashboard is ground zero during this crisis. You can view and analyze team-wide statistics, deal pipelines, leads, forecasts, and more. Now more than ever, you need to focus your efforts on immediate needs, and a CRM solution simplifies that effort.
How to find the best value in your existing tools
Examine your cockpit to discern which existing tools will be most useful for this climate.
For example, a top priority right now might be to identify your most impacted customers to see how you can help them. Which tools can you optimize or verify that provide the most value?
Maybe your company sells email marketing software. If so, your clients overseas chinese in worldwide data may need advice on how to automate their email communications to optimize their own COVID-19-based business updates. Or, they may be trying to transition their retail business online and need help setting up an eCommerce integration.
Identify these opportunities, create content that provides practical tips, and set up outreach campaigns to deliver them. For example, you could create updated demos on how to use your software with COVID-19-related messaging. Additionally, you can advise your reps to prepare for a wave of virtual demos to help customers set up e-commerce integrations on their sites.
At Pipedrive, we’ve seen an increase in demo requests. As a result, we’ve shifted our priorities to allocate more resources to help our customers get the most out of our existing tools.
Whatever your method, focus your attention on your customers' needs and optimize your tools to provide high value.
When managing a remote team, you need to communicate transparently and effectively. Managers should present clearly defined guidelines to avoid miscommunication, misunderstandings, and missteps.
At the same time, make sure your team is safe and supported during this transition. Identify their needs, send them helpful tips and information, and check in frequently to see how they are doing.
Supportive leadership will set a positive tone and reassure your team and customers that you are proactively addressing this crisis.
Sales managers must reevaluate their goals and incorporate new tools and techniques into the workflow.
In this article, we will give you practical tips on how to efficiently manage your sales business and your remote representatives.
What this article contains:
How to set up tools to monitor the health of your business
How to find the best value in your existing tools
How to avoid having your deal flow affected too much
How to react to a drop in sales and changing consumer behavior
How you can optimize sales processes to be more agile
How to react if your company is actually benefiting from the COVID-19 crisis
How to set up tools to monitor the health of your business
Sales companies are responsible for managing multiple customer relationships at various stages of the process.
A CRM helps simplify and streamline this process in an office, but it becomes critical in a remote work environment. CRMs allow you to digitally monitor the health of your company and improve business relationships from the comfort of your home.
More importantly, a CRM provides transparency by allowing each team member to have access to each other's pipeline.
For example, a sales rep may become ill or find it difficult to increase productivity from home during this crisis. If so, it may be necessary for another rep to step in and handle some of their communications in their absence.
A CRM allows for a seamless transition as all of the absent rep's leads, customers, opportunities, deals and communications are stored in one centralized system.
The CRM dashboard is ground zero during this crisis. You can view and analyze team-wide statistics, deal pipelines, leads, forecasts, and more. Now more than ever, you need to focus your efforts on immediate needs, and a CRM solution simplifies that effort.
How to find the best value in your existing tools
Examine your cockpit to discern which existing tools will be most useful for this climate.
For example, a top priority right now might be to identify your most impacted customers to see how you can help them. Which tools can you optimize or verify that provide the most value?
Maybe your company sells email marketing software. If so, your clients overseas chinese in worldwide data may need advice on how to automate their email communications to optimize their own COVID-19-based business updates. Or, they may be trying to transition their retail business online and need help setting up an eCommerce integration.
Identify these opportunities, create content that provides practical tips, and set up outreach campaigns to deliver them. For example, you could create updated demos on how to use your software with COVID-19-related messaging. Additionally, you can advise your reps to prepare for a wave of virtual demos to help customers set up e-commerce integrations on their sites.
At Pipedrive, we’ve seen an increase in demo requests. As a result, we’ve shifted our priorities to allocate more resources to help our customers get the most out of our existing tools.
Whatever your method, focus your attention on your customers' needs and optimize your tools to provide high value.