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COVID 19: Selling in Times of Uncertainty

By Debra Baker
April 01, 2020

Two days before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus a pandemic, I conducted a business development session with a new client. As you might imagine, the impact of the crisis was top of mind. Clients had been calling nonstop asking whether they should put important projects on hold. My clients were concerned that panic was going to shutter the doors and bring business to a halt. They wanted to know what to do about it.

We evaluated two paths to follow. The first path focused on what they could do. Since conferences were being cancelled and face-to-face meetings were out, they could follow the lead of their competitors and try to do what they could through alternative channels such as social media, webinars and video chat. The underlying rationale for this approach was to play it safe, keep our heads down, and hope that will be enough to ride out the crisis. It wouldn't be ideal, but it was something.

The second path was to throw out the standard playbook and rethink what mattered most, not for their own business but for the business of their clients. In evaluating how they might meet clients where they are and invest in the relationships, they focused on identifying different types of buyers and what their priorities were right now — things like the health and safety of their workers, the impact on their supply chain, their ability to maintain sales, and the ripple effect of panic on shareholder value.

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