It’s A Good Time to Communicate with Customers & Improve Your Team

As I was reading Monocle Magazine’s update on Italy’s CONVID-19 situation, this section popped out: “La Scatola Lilla, a bookshop in Milan, might be closed but the bookseller, Cristina di Canio, isn’t on holiday. Instead she is recommending a book a day and taking orders for free home deliveries.”

Yes, the next few months will be rough, but there are opportunities to be had. Customers may not feel comfortable coming into your showroom or office, so why not ask them if you can deliver samples for a meeting and sit in to help present your part of the job? This can be at their office or at their client’s preferred location. This is a good time to show how you can support your loyal clients.

If they are also slow, ask them if they have time to talk about your shared business. This is a great opportunity to gather information on your product mix, service and sales support. They might be interested in you training their team on key product categories. This can be done in person or via Skype, FaceTime, Zoom or any other digital video conferencing tool.

If your showroom slows down, this becomes a good time to improve your team. Reach out to manufacturers to see if they have time to do a video PK. These don’t have to be in person! There are a plethora of video classes on everything from sales to AI. You could take a few key personnel, put them in the conference room and play a video discussing sales techniques and follow up with a round table discussion.

This is a challenging time and you cannot wait for your customers to come back to you. This is a good time to reach out to those customers that do not buy from you. You just might get the attention and earn a new customer. In slow times it is those think creatively that will emerge with a stronger business.

P.S: Should you like any suggestions on videos do use with your staff please email me (Jeff).