Written by 2020 has been a hell of a year. And that’s an understatement. While many are looking forward to the end of this year with eagerness, let’s take a step back and see what we can learn from the unprecedented (sorry) year we’ve had.
Flexibility
With the impact of the pandemic affecting the entire globe, and different rules, restrictions, and regulations popping up across and within borders, flexibility has been key in 2020.
Customer behaviours have changed, and businesses have needed to adapt to serve people in new ways. Employee behaviours have also changed, with remote working being thrust into place. Enforced digitisation has been a real feature of this year, and businesses need to continue to be agile and responsive to this. It’s highly unlikely that things will go back to how they were, so what are you doing to keep up?
As we move in 2021, things aren’t back to normal (or the “new normal” everyone keeps talking about), but even when that does happen, we’ve seen a fundamental shift. We’ve seen how things can be done, so now we’ll all expect that digital trend to make life easier.
Access
From a sales perspective, your access to customers has been disrupted this year. Whether that’s because they’re on furlough, or because they’re simply not reading the dozens of hourly prospecting emails, or because you can’t just pop into an office to speak to someone, the fact is that it can be much harder to get hold of people.
That’s one of the reasons people are utilising telemarketing services – because it’s closer to the personal touch than email, and you can’t get someone on a zoom call for a face to face meeting without some kind of connection first. Plus, the right agency can definitely help you navigate the gatekeepers now that more people are working from home.
However you approach 2021, you need to make sure you have a variety of tools in play for your sales activities – you can’t rely on one approach anymore, it’s too risky when things might change overnight and shut down your avenue to reaching your audience.
Technology
As we’ve already mentioned, 2020 was the year of rapid digitisation, with plenty of businesses on the back foot due to not investing in technology. This year has accelerated the use of cloud-based technology so that working from home isn’t a disadvantage.
How many businesses worked from whiteboards in the office, and now find that they can’t access their pipeline? What about CRMs that were held on spreadsheets?
We need to strategise for a future that has remote working and hybrid office and remote working as standard rather than outliers. Technology is the crux of helping move forward and keeping everyone collaborating and working effectively.
“Pivoting”
One of the many words that got used, and over-used, during 2020 is “pivot”. With a huge number of industries and businesses shut down or crippled by the pandemic, thoughts turned to what else could be done, what other options could be explored, or what additional services could be added to keep things going.
On top of that, businesses that technically remained open were affected by their clients being locked down or shut down, so pivoting into new industries became an essential strategy.
These are strategies we anticipate seeing continue, with businesses diversifying rather than specialising, to prevent such a scramble in future. Whether that’s increasing their services or the clients they serve, many businesses will be looking at how to spread risk. And there will be plenty of businesses with a whole new outlook, based on those pivots.
Values
We’ve talked a lot about businesses in this post, but at the heart of the chaos we’ve all experienced is people. And people have been through plenty this year.
One of the results of this is that people have not only adjusted their behaviours, they’ve also adjusted or refined their values, too. That might look like supporting local businesses over conglomerates, it might look like reassessing how they spend their time or where they live and work. It might look like pulling away from businesses that don’t reflect how they want to live in a post-covid world.
For businesses, values shouldn’t be a thing that’s written in a document, or maybe put on a poster, and left there. Values are something that are more important than ever, and will affect how customers and future employees view the company. Do you have values? And do you actually embody those values? Your 2021 strategy should take this into account and start to embed what your values look like and how they’re expressed.
Support
This year has thrown up plenty of opportunities to collaborate and support one another, as individuals and businesses.
We’re here to help – if you need support to pivot, reach out to a new market, engage prospects, or connect with people, give us a whistle.