Sales Motivation

3 Tips For Managers and Reps To Keep Momentum In Place During COVID19

Xant Team

April 28, 2020

In this webinar, Justin Michael, RVP Sales at YOUAPPI and XANT CEO David Boyce provide tips for managers and reps to keep momentum during the coronavirus pandemic but focusing on three key principles. keep momentum COVID

RELATED: How To Lead From Home

In this article:

Ideas for Remote Sales Managers and Reps

Meet the Speakers keep momentum COVID

Justin Michael scales tech companies and is a lifetime revenue leader. You may know Justin from his LinkedIn videos, or from sending 1 million emails to different startup businesses! “YouAppi is a leading performance-based mobile app marketing and retargeting platform for premium app publishers and brands. From user acquisition to retention via app retargeting and re-engagement, the company delivers a comprehensive range of mobile marketing solutions to grow your business at every stage of the funnel.” keep momentum coronavirus

The Current Situation keep momentum COVID

As we work from home, we are trying to figure out the new reality.

Part of that has been to work out how to make a professional life that is being conflated with our home life. How should you deal with this new reality in terms of sales?

The shift has been major; salespeople are sheltered in place, working hard to carry on as usual, but now people are wondering why they hadn’t ramped up their remote working practices before this crisis.

Some parts of the economy are still growing, and it’s an excellent opportunity to be more responsible and drive new revenue.

Call connects are high in some industries, but contacts are much more distracted. What is essential is to be more careful about what you do at that moment. A good tactic is not to try and close meetings but to dialogue sequences, and spark interaction.

Focus on Three Principles - Humanize, Personalize, Empathize

Interestingly, and paradoxically, because we’re all forced into this separation mode, we actually have to be more human because we can’t meet face to face right now.

And so, think about humanizing your messaging, like you would if you met someone face to face. What would you do in the real world and translate that to the virtual world?

Look at your prospect’s profile, and consider mentioning links or pick out something pertinent to them to be ahead of the game.

Be empathetic by tailoring how you connect with others. For example, the travel industry is severely impacted, so pull back and retarget different businesses.

To start off interactions, ask people how they are or how they’ve been impacted.

We have shifted from very clinical connections to more personalized ones. Although it takes longer, it’s more personalized and sincere. The intent of the communication is important, and you need to be genuine with how you humanize, personalize, and empathize to build connections.

A proper technique could be to share your own story, how events are impacting you, and then dovetailing that into questions about the prospect.

How to Build the Digital Relationship

Your first-degree network is way bigger than you think, but it can be challenging to see. Use a sales navigator and search worldwide to mine your first-degree connections. Talk a little bit about our communities and be natural. Just think about running into a person at the grocery store or a networking event. Think about what you would do and then do this over a channel—for example, email, phone, text, WhatsApp, Messenger. You could go as far as calling your clients and ask them how they are and ask if you can do anything to make things easier, like a health check. Make sure this is nothing to do with closing business (unless the client leads that conversation). Use open questions or illumination questions to get your clients to open up and talk. Don’t be too personal or overstep either. Keep your question sensible and have finesse – don’t over ask, just open the conversation, and let clients share their thoughts if they want to. Use video platforms to get your face seen as much as possible in a more human way. Understand Your Client’s Needs – Make deposits, not withdrawals right now. I.e., build the relationship and knowledge base to make withdrawals later. keep momentum COVID Utilize Your Network – Utilize your robust LinkedIn network and using the three principles. Try LinkedIn voicemail drops to all your first degree connections that are relevant. You can record LinkedIn videos, or you could use third-party platforms to do this. Get New Content – Ask your marketing teams for content to engage clients, even if you write it. For example, this could be blogs or YouTube content, news, diagrams, visual illustrations, graphs regarding COVID-19 effects. Start organic dialogues where the zoom naturally occurs at the back of these. There’s an urgency to drive business right now because things are very volatile. But if you can be disciplined enough to give something away, to go for the dialogue, not the meeting, then your clients will become curious and interested.

Key Points keep momentum COVID

- Conversations are still happening, but it is more relevant now to have empathy, to be personalized, and to be human.
- Rethink your sequences, target better, and be more empathetic in the way that you create those messages.
- If you’re doing something manually, which is well personalized, you can automate it, and it can be just as effective if you do it right.
- Look for prospects on different platforms, Omni channels, and reach out in novel ways.
- Lean a little bit more into personal phone calls, a little bit more into one on one interactions and make sure that you’re human first.
- Make your deposits not withdrawals during this time when everyone is worrying.
- So, we do not have to step back from having conversations with customers. We just must have personalization. Humanization and empathy as we do it.
- Sales leaders don’t necessarily need to change KPIs or performance reviews, just rethink them. Wins can include having warm dialogues with the right customers and Q3 planning.

Further Information and Support

In these challenging times, Justin Michael is giving away a free digital copy of his book “TQ-Technology Quotient: How to Achieve Superhuman Sales Engagement Skills.” Just inbox him via LinkedIn.

XANT is offering Playbook software for free during the pandemic crisis to help people while they figure out how to work better remotely; head to XANT Cares.

You can also head to our website to find out further advice on how to work from home better.

How do you humanize, personalize, and empathize? What successes have you had? Please share your ideas below.

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