3 Post COVID Trends That Sales Representatives Need to be Aware of
By now, most of us feel that 2022 is the year that we are returning to the old world we once knew. Some of us may still be wearing masks and working from home, but international travel is finally opening. I booked two amazing trips, one to Europe and one to Australia. So, I’m making up for vacation deprivation.
Finally, we see a ray of sunlight due to the progress. Although we don’t know precisely when the pandemic will end, eventually, it will end.
So, what’s next? What are the trends that we, as marketers, need to be aware of to prepare for the post-Covid marketing era proactively and the changeover period?
Here are the three trends that sales representatives need to be aware of post-COVID!
1. Virtual communication is here to stay, but everyone is craving in-person connections. You may have seen this joke floating on the Internet during the early days of the pandemic.
It’s sad and true at the same time. COVID single-handedly drove the mass deployment of virtual communications across all industries and households. For instance: doctors’ visits and going to school were the essential in-person interactions before Covid.
Well, now our kids are educated virtually, and we see our doctors on our computer screens. I was never so happy to have my College daughter get to go away to college by just walking up the stairs and retreating to her room.
Do you remember the struggle and drama we all went through learning using Zoom (TEAMS)? How about scrambling to move lamps around to give ourselves more lighting until we broke down and purchased table lamps to brighten our faces. We invested time, money, and energy to go virtual. We are not going to let that go. No way. Too much has been invested!
I think it’s important to have in-person communications with your colleagues, customers, vendors, or even your managers.
Digital customer touchpoints continue to surge, and you need to modify your customer journey and beef up your sales calls online and on your websites.
Sale teams (or all of us) need to continue to sharpen virtual selling skills, such as using a camera to record a greeting or a follow-up.
Prospecting accounts need to be touched often to convert them to referring accounts. Follow the inside sales cadence of One day a week in person, one day a text message, one day a phone call, and one day a video message. Then, mix it up for the best results.
By talking to many marketers and sales professionals, I can tell that many of us are pretty DONE with virtual communications. Instead, we want to see, feel, and touch our colleagues (even those we are not particularly fond of) and attend conferences in person.
Melanie and I just completed sales training for one of our clients in Texas, and their reps were on fire! They were so eager to interact and role-play getting past the gatekeepers. They are hungry for practice, and home care sales can come to train your team in person. Email [email protected] to get your team on our calendar.
2. Content is still king
During the pandemic, the biggest issue was how fast everything was changing. For B2B marketers, we don’t like when things are changing fast and all the time. Any minor change in strategy has a significant impact on marketing.
A change of strategy may require different channels to communicate. For example, We can’t get in to see the Discharge planners; get them to come out to see us!
Only sales representatives who are in the trenches know exactly what I am talking about…and I feel your pain.
With all the changes, the best way to communicate with your customers is through content. Some of our clients have now adopted an email list. They are posing and sharing marketing messages for the first time! But, again, it’s all content. We had such incredible success using our Road Map to Referrals Product to grow agencies because it provided each company with fantastic content to drive in referrals. To sum it up, content is still king! Email [email protected] to learn more about how you can get your content now!
3. The digital customer experience is your product.
Once upon a time, the surge of digital usage was mainly a holiday thing (such as Black Friday or Cyber-Monday). Today, the digital customer experience is an everyday thing and has become super-critical. It needs to be easy for your prospects and customers to find the information you want to share.
Yet, many of us don’t even have a coverage map on our website. There isn’t a place to submit the hours you want to hire a caregiver? It would help if you also made it easy to buy services. Imagine if you have a website that the patient could just set up their services? Buy a bulk amount of hours? Changes their caregiver hours and add on additional days of the week?
In a way, you should treat the digital experience like your product, not as a cost center.
We can take a page from major e-commerce sites (Amazon, Wayfair, Walmart).
In summary…
Ok, nothing about 2020-2021 went according to plan; we were all thrust into unfamiliar territory. But, at the personal and professional level, we’ve learned a lot (I did).
Here are my biggest takeaways:
Almost everything that needed to be done in person can somehow be done virtually
With mandatory stay-at-home, we find alternatives to building human connections
We adopted, adjusted, and made it work
As painful as it has been, we’ve proved that we are resilient and agile. That’s how we need to think and act in marketing as well. Be resilient and agile. Be ready for whatever gets thrown at us. We can do this!
If you have any questions about post-Covid marketing trends, if you are ready to hire salespeople, or you need exceptional content marketing, sales/marketing alignment, account-based marketing (or you just want to talk about your marketing challenges) just book time with Mike!
Keep Helping, Keep Serving,
Cheryl Pelekis, RN “The Solutionist”
