The two most critical qualities embedded in any sales leadership are adaptability and flexibility. The Covid-19 Pandemic has put to test these very qualities for the entire community of sales professionals, all over the world. The need of the hour is to innovatively use resources to rise above the challenges during these difficult times, rapidly and at a monumental scale.

As economies throughout the world and reopening gradually, the businesses are adopting as per the new normal and that is inclusive of resilience. In the new normal, the need of the hour is to adapt the operations to extend a helping hand to the remote sales team to enable them to under the customers’ needs and accordingly solve them.

Salesforce CRM is the right answer for resolving your problems by navigating the changing business scenario with the sales team. Covid 19 pandemic has thrown challenges on the path of businesses, worldwide which are monumental in size. Since maintaining customer relationships becomes difficult while working with the remote working model.

What are the Challenges for the Sales Team?

The challenges are:

• Deepen customer connections with digital communication as the only means to communicate.
• Reach out to the workforce without the physical presence.
• Adapt and respond effectively to the changes.
• Avoid wasting the customer’s time.
• Pivot2 the strategy to e-commerce solutions.
• How to respond in an unprecedented way during these trying times?

The Sales leaders are adopting some best practices to stay connected with customers, the new and the old ones.

What are the Best Practices Adopted?

Some of the best practices to motivate the sales team are:

• Focus on listening to the Team
• Listen Deeply to Customers.
• Avoid wasting the Customer’s time.
• Networking and Learning Collectively

Focus on listening to the Team

The team members will worry about their household rather than helping out the customer under the current circumstances. Building an empathetic culture is a priority for you, starting right up to you. A team call or a one-to-one interaction with a personal story may help considerably. This shows the team how much you care for them. One of the best practices is to create a Quip doc to collect and share the team’s thoughts.

As coronavirus becomes dire, creativity plays an important part such as conducting a virtual happy tour. This gives a strong community feeling and attracts the talents to offer a competitive advantage. Attending to the mental and emotional health issues is of utmost importance during this time. It is important to convey that the team is not alone.

Listen Deeply to Customers

The time is ripe for deep listening. It is all the more important to listen to the customer issues and at the same time show them how much you feel for them. Some of the best practices which can be adopted are to have a virtual coffee session, virtual brainstorming or offer unique ideation to solve the problems. The whole idea is to help the clients, when they need that most, sometimes free of charges. In a nutshell, empathetic hearing is what is needed.

Avoid wasting the Customer’s time.

During this pandemic, when there is a sustained period of lockdown, there is no way to treat a prospect with a dinner. You must pay due respect to the valuable time of the clients and not engage them for long hours so that they can get back to their work and other priorities. If at all the customer agrees to meet you, focus on how to help, taking notes and following up.

Networking and Learning Collectively

Salesforce offers Ohana culture to work together so that we can collectively emerge stronger. Salesforce converted its World Tour event in Sydney, in February into a virtual event. Reimagining the event ensures success only.

In the words of Derek Laney, Salesforce’s Head of Solutions and Product Marketing, Asia Pacific, his team is planning to arrange online events for years to come. The excitement for him was to replan the event with all the challenges. The idea is to offer transparency in this effort to switch over to the digital world.

Conclusion

As we all head towards a new normal, there is a unique opportunity to transform the sales operations. Your team must adapt well to this new normal with the right kind of tools and training. New processes and new channels of communications emerge during these trying times and take recourse to the Agile way of working to help you to pivot. Businesses adopt innovative solutions, and stay ahead of competitors with maximum ROI and increased 0.