With many states and businesses reopening, your sales team has an opportunity to add value in the lives of customers and prospects in unique these times. While clients continue to navigate through the pandemic, they might not be thinking about making big purchases. However, Seth Marrs, principal analyst at SiriusDecisions, says there are still ways to help your sales team succeed.

In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we discuss Marrs’ thoughts on how sales teams can exceed expectations for clients as the world starts to open up again.

Examine your sales tools. According to Marrs, now is an ideal time to clean up your sales force automation system and all the other tools used to maintain relationships and drive sales. Spend some time refreshing account details, merging contacts, and deleting or progressing old opportunities that you haven’t touched in a while. Consider this a spring cleaning of sorts and strive to get organized. This will help you see the shining opportunities in your funnel.

Review every opportunity. Marrs recommends taking a close look at your pipeline and developing a plan to over-deliver for every opportunity. Go through your sales pipeline with a fine-toothed comb, updating accounts and reviewing everything to develop a plan to provide support and incentives. Rather than forecasting, look at this as strategic planning. Marrs says you should especially target opportunities that you may not have focused on in the past but that could be valuable with a new approach.

Reconnect with your customers. In difficult times, people turn to those they trust. Look for ways to strengthen relationships with your customers. It’s always important to add value, but also gauge their interest level to understand where different opportunities fit into your success plan. Marrs notes that you should always update these details in the customer account plan.

Look for meaningful ways to interact. If the time isn’t right to sell to a customer, that’s okay. It’s still a great time to connect with new methods of communication, says Marrs. Reach out to customers and prospects in different ways and see what you learn about reaching key buyers. Some buyers might respond to an email followed by a LinkedIn connection and then a text. Others might not respond well to this. Marrs suggests trying different cadences and contact methods as this will be valuable when the focus turns back to sales.

Even though your sales team may be reporting to the office again, things look vastly different than they did a few months ago. This means sales professionals must take a new approach when reaching out to clients and prospects. By focusing on strengthening existing relationships, renewing old relationships and connecting in new ways, your sales team can lay a solid foundation as the world adapts to coronavirus.

Compiled by Audrey Sellers

Source: Seth Marrs is a principal analyst in the sales operations research service at SiriusDecisions. He has more than 20 years of experience leading sales operations, service operations and marketing organizations.