Every business needs to approach this economic crisis with empathy and urgency. Our primary concern should be the health and safety of our team members, their families, and the people we serve.
We know everyone's circumstances are different, and if you have suggestions for how we can better support you, please let us know by emailing hello@eternalworks.com. Our partners will read every message you send.
We promise to hear every idea and listen to every concern as we continually look for ways to help us all carefully navigate this situation with empathy.
Below we have shared a few strategies that have been successful for businesses in our community over the past few weeks.
Your first priority should be showing your customers that they are a priority. Your second should be looking for ways to help them navigate this same crisis.
You'll win favor and loyalty by showing them that you're putting their needs first. Focus on how to deliver your services virtually.
Show empathy for any customers that can't continue to pay for your services. They will remember how gracious or insensitive you are during this time.
How you communicate and handle your customers now will determine if they stick with you now or return later.
Look for creative ways to keep staff working. We've been pushing clients to implement remote work for years. Before, it was to make employment more attractive, but now it's a necessity.
We recommend that you are very transparent with your team if layoffs are on the table. You should consider bringing them in to brainstorm ideas that may help them stay at work longer.
Including them in trying to find a solution will go a long way in showing that you do care for your employees.
In times of economic crisis, businesses focus down on one thing, money. You should focus on selling solutions that either help companies make money or solutions that save them money. To add to that, it needs to make or save them money fast. Most companies don't have three months to wait for you to spin up your solution.
A few ways to think about this is to sell them solutions that help them increase sales, creates sales, or multiplies sales.
Tools like Zoom are helping companies create sales by utilizing video meetings to talk with prospects and clients.
HubSpot's free CRM, marketing, and service tools are allowing companies to increase and multiply sales by helping align the marketing, sales, and service team.
HubSpot CRM provides marketing sales and service access to the same contact data, which allows for an easier handoff between marketing and sales and upselling and cross-selling between service and sales teams.
Zoom allows you to stay connected while HubSpot helps companies close deals faster. Both companies heavily contribute to assisting companies in selling during this time.
SaaSand Tech companies should make it a priority to highlight how their solution helps their clients make or save money.
Video marketing was already a big deal last year. It's even more critical to your business now. Tech and Saas companies should be producing videos almost daily.
We all know that people buy from people they trust. People trust people they like. It takes building a relationship with people to get them to like you. You need to connect. The fastest and easiest way to connect is through video.
A considerable part of your SaaS marketing strategy should be using video. Not just to demo your software, but to show your company culture.
Consider creating the following videos to help connect with your audience:
The bottom line is this will save you time and money while positioning you to continue to scale your business. You want everything to be predictable and repeatable in your company.
Remove or systemize as many custom services as possible. I'll give you an example of something that we've done in our business.
Over the 20 years that we've been in business, we've built hundreds of websites. For every site we make, we sketch out a sitemap. We started saving sitemaps that commonly came across our desk.
Eventually, we started noticing that every website had a few of the same pages, no matter their industry. Instead of starting from scratch, we developed a sitemap template that we could easily add pages to or remove them if needed.
Using this method saves us hours on every project, allowing us to pass some savings along to clients and increase our profitability as well.
What tasks are you doing over and over that could be made into a template? Could you automate that template or task using any software?
It's worth taking some time to consider.
Look over every expense that your business has. In some cases, many people will need to get rid of every cost that is not critical to running their business daily.
For others, they may only need to eliminate expenses for tools and services that they have not used in the past quarter or year.
We make it a practice to audit our software every year. We cancel every service that we didn't use in the past year, then move into the last six months, and finally the previous quarter.
During this crisis, businesses should evaluate software, tools, and services every month to ensure they are not wasting dollars.
It's not the time to be wasteful and carefree.
Take every dollar that you save from cutting and reducing expenses and invest them back into your marketing budget.
Now is not the time to hold on to your dollars and hope for the best. It's time to take action and do all that you can to ensure your business survives.
It's not like me to lean on fear when writing, but the truth is that these times are uncertain. What is certain is that marketing is the amplifier and multiplier of ever business.
Don't throw your dollars, but carefully choose where to spend them. My advice is to invest in what can increase sales the fastest for your business. I know that's hard to hear coming from a marketing person, but right now, growing sales is the second most crucial thing right behind taking care of your customers.
If you decide to hold onto your money, we both know that it has a limited amount of time before it runs out. Don't forget these two quotes:
Take control. Reallocate those funds to grow your sales now.
There are plenty of opportunities. You simply need to look at things a little differently than before.
Start by considering which industries are doing well. The companies in these industries are still selling; this means that they are likely still open and buying from vendors and partners. Can you partner with them?
Then consider the companies that closed. What gaps have they left that you can serve?
For example, a local auto repair shop owner needs to stay open to ensure that his employees can take care of their families. He notices that several other local shops are closing.
He realizes that there is an opportunity here. He grabs his phone and does a Facebook live to explain what he's doing to stay open during this time safely.
He lists out and walks them through the following process using Facebook live:
Finally, the shop owner adds these details to his website and Google Business.
He then runs a small local campaign in a 25-mile radius to let his community know that he's still open to help while their usual mechanic is not available. He offers a discount to show his empathy towards the current crisis.
Another example is the local Doctors office. She typically works with her employees in their office, where they also meet patients. With the state and federal limitations on gathering, she has to reduce the number of people in the office.
She decides to close the office altogether and have her entire team work remotely. Meeting with employees and clients is very easy to do with services like Zoom with HIPPA compliance.
She was able to keep the majority of her appointments and expand her practices throughout the state. She could consider expanding more if she had licenses in other states.
Let's get this out of the way. IT IS OKAY TO SELL DURING THE COVID PANDEMIC.
The reality is people depend on you to sell now more than ever. Your family. Your employees and their families. Your customers and their families are all depending on you to sell. They all need your help.
Now is not the time to slow down. It's time to pick it up a bit. No one is saying jack your prices up. Be fair, be helpful.
So, now that you know you have permission to sell stop wasting time on activities that don't help you make a profit. Focus on profit-producing activities.
Trim down on activities that just keep you busy. Focus on two things; selling and product delivery. In case you didn't know, both of those require excellent customer service, follow up and follow through. Work longer hours to get everything done if you must, but increase the time that you spend on sales.
I can't say it enough, now is the time to increase sales activity. Fewer people are buying, but more people urgently need your help.
Give them a hand, a virtual one that is.
Don't wait, don't ponder. Move now! Business success requires swift decision making on an ordinary day. These are not ordinary days.
Consistently implementing these strategies will not only put you in a position to sustain your business but continue business growth as well.