Written by The advent of Covid-19 and lockdown has hit plenty of industries extremely hard – particularly those in travel and hospitality, of course.
But one area that’s also been affected, even in industries that aren’t directly slowed down, is sales. How? Well, in a lot of cases, salespeople could pop in to visit a prospect, or do some cold outreach in person, dropping off business cards or managing to score a meeting with a decision maker if they’re in the right place at the right time.
What’s happening?
Well, unsurprisingly, that’s just not happening now. Whether it will come back in future is not something any of us can be certain of.
At first, lockdowns obviously meant it wouldn’t be possible to pop by an office – no one would be there anyway. Then some offices started opening up, although they tended not to have as many staff around. And then the Government recommended people work from home where they can, again. Who knows what will come tomorrow.
What we do know is that even when offices were opening up, a lot of them (possibly all of them) weren’t accepting drop ins. No one wants an unexpected stranger turning up with no warning in the middle of a pandemic.
How covid has affected sales teams
So, if we can’t drop in to see people, how will sales professionals replace that activity? Email and phone calls, pretty much.
But what about the response rates? The hit rate from seeing people is often wildly different to the response rates to emails and cold outreach. So now your sales team are spending longer and longer on the phone to try and get a meeting – but they’ve got to get through gatekeepers, find the right person to speak to, and try to qualify whether or not this call is a good prospect or a waste of time. All while they’re still trying to keep on top of closing deals, while some businesses are, understandably, less likely to spend.
What can be done?
Outsourcing the outreach
Well, for us, the obvious answer is to look at the activities your sales people need to be doing – what adds value to your business and what’s the best, most commercial way to achieve that?
Do you want your highest paid people bashing the phones, or do you need an army of appointment-setters building up a calendar of opportunities for them to go and win?
Appointments are necessary, getting them is time-consuming. Outsourcing the time-consuming tasks enables your sales team to focus on spending their time on the most effective, revenue-generating activities.
Database building is another one of those tasks that takes a lot of time – finding the contact details for your prospects, validating those details so that your calls and emails don’t fall into a black hole, and navigating the gatekeepers to get the info you need – it all adds up. And frankly, it’s another area worth outsourcing. That way, you get the appointments without all of the back and forth,
Nurturing your leads
One of the biggest issues with email outreach is how few people respond. The next issue is that we know that persistence pays off, but remembering who to contact and when takes up a tonne of mental energy, or a lot of note taking and reminders.
Using a CRM or sales platform that allows you to send personalised sequences to your prospects lets you set it up, enrol a prospect, and leave it to run – no more reminders. In fact, with the right system, you can get automated reminders if you need to follow up with a call to supplement your emails.
It can take multiple touches to get someone to reply and set up an appointment, so having a nurturing process allows your teams to stay focused, without spending all their time on emails.