Double Down on S&M (uhhh…..sales and marketing!)

Back in April we published a blog with our top tips for selling and marketing in a pandemic. Seven months later, with COVID surging again around the world, we’re doubling down on our previous advice.

It’s tougher than ever to land new clients, whether you’re in a services business, a technology business, or you do a little of both. The truth is, when there’s massive disruption from external forces (in this case a virus that just keeps on kicking), it becomes more challenging to get buyers to adopt new ways of doing things, or working with untested (at least by themselves) technology and/or services.

Now is the time to STOP generic sales and marketing cadences and focus on personalization and empathy. Stop trying to close and pivot to helping.

If you’re still struggling to stabilize revenue, here are three pieces of advice to help bust through a Q4 slump:

1. We said this back in April but it bears repeating as generic sales emails with clearly no focus on proper prospecting are a dime a dozen. Now is the time to STOP generic sales and marketing cadences and focus on personalization and empathy. Stop trying to close and pivot to helping. The best way to ensure your email ends up in a prospects virtual trash can is by only thinking of them as a prospect.
2. Don’t lose sight of your best opportunity to grow your business – existing customers. Make sure your “customer love” strategy is built to last. By this we don’t mean lobbing out a quarterly customer satisfaction survey, we mean focusing on really KNOWING your clients and their business needs. Need help crafting a strategy? We’re here to help.
3. Double down on the “M” in S&M. As we said back in April, for many firms, the first employee cuts are in marketing. This is a mistake. Now is not the time to go dark on marketing or leave this function in inexperienced hands. If you need to make cuts, focus on external marketing expenditures and go deep on content and social media marketing. If these (virtually) cost-free marketing channels haven’t been part of your strategy, there’s no time like the present to get started.