Now that we’re in the middle of another lockdown and working from home we’re the prospect of working in sales and trying to hit targets can be a bit daunting for some of you. At Hirecracker we can sympathise with having those aims and targets to hit and the added pressures of a lockdown piled on top of that.
With that in mind we’ve written this blog to share our advice and techniques for making the best of your role while you and you potential customers are working from home.
Building and Maintaining Morale For You And Your Team
Working from home can leave a lot of employees feeling out of the loop and lonely. This can lead to low morale for workers which can have an affect on productivity, attendance and customer service ratings.
A study by Gallup in 2012 found that there are many rewards reaped from high staff morale such as:
- 10% better customer ratings
- 22% higher profitability
- 21% higher productivity
- 25-65% lower turnover
- 37% less absenteeism
When you factor in the affects working alone in lockdown can have on employee morale it is real important to take this to heart and make sure you take steps to keep yourself and your staff happy through lockdown.
Manage Your Home Office and Potential Distractions
A concept that applies to working at your office can also apply to working at your home – making sure your working environment at home has everything you need to operate and feel comfortable doing your role is important and can help improve your morale and productivity.
For starters making sure your home office is free of clutter and distractions will help increase your mood, morale and working motivation ensuring a better working environment for you. Making sure you have all the equipment you need for the working day will also ensure you’re not stopping whenever you need something to complete the task at hand – even looking for a piece of equipment you would usually have with you in the office can count as a distraction.
Planning out a working schedule for your days at home is another technique to help streamline your productivity, keep you on track and help you frame your time in your home office as time in your workplace office.
See How Your Sales networks are Operating In Lockdown
If you are working from home you can bet there’s a good chance your existing and potential client base will be as well. This gives you a unique opportunity to create new business and sales channels and also adapt your existing ones. The advantage of this is once it’s been done these channels will be useable in the future, lockdown or no lockdown.
Find out what channel your potential and existing clients are using and tailor your strategy to that, put yourself in their shoes when reaching out, remember we are all in lockdown together.
Lockdown has allowed lot’s of online sellers to try new techniques and policies in the way they operate so it is best to inspect these online channels and see what they’re doing to adapt and factor in how you can take advantage of that in your search for that sales target.
Develop a Strategy For Selling in a Lockdown Environment
Once you are confident you’ve got a handle on how sales channels and customers are operating during lockdown it’s time to develop your strategy for making that sales push.
Preparing for potential customers to be in a different mood or mindset than usual will be key, expected or unexpected a lockdown will affect the way people are operating and communicating and remembering this as part of yours strategy can help you home in on that all important first contact.
If your product or service is in the digital realm this is the ideal time to push that aspect of your business, regardless of whether you’re business is only focusing on digital for lockdown or for the foreseeable future it’s always good to have a strategy for selling digital services.
Reviewing your post-sales process is important, there is nothing worse than making that sale only to discover onboarding a new client is going to be more difficult than making that initial sales pitch. Make sure that you’re ready to get your product or service ready and rolling by the time your clients have agreed to come onboard. Additionally, if you’re interested, you can also read James Dooley: A Case Study in Innovation to learn more about the steps needed to launch an online business.
