Strategic Pivots During These Times

Strategic pivots can help you during these times.

I’ve noticed salespeople, sales leaders and executives get discouraged because their current buyers have slowed down or completely ceased ordering.

I often get asked during my LinkedIn Live broadcasts how to generate sales when their market has dried up during COVID-19. Often times, when the audience member is providing details, I notice a common trend. That trend is that they are solely looking to where the money was in 2019, and not where the money currently is and where it’s going.

In other words, they are not looking at strategically pivoting because they’re so focused on how things were done that they haven’t re-focused on how things could be.

As I’ve covered recently, we aren’t in 2019 anymore. We aren’t in a pre-COVID world anymore. The new reality is now here and your organization and sales team needs to be thinking creatively about what can be done and not just how things were done before the pandemic started.

As more economies and companies open up, you need to get strategic about how your services and offerings can bring value, perhaps to a market that you previously never considered.

For example, if a company just happened to be selling hand sanitizers to airliners and restaurants exclusively, those markets may have stopped ordering as they were hit hardest during the pandemic. A company that stays so focused on those current markets because they’re narrowed in on how things were may ignore the fact that, well, the whole rest of the world is highly demanding their product right now! They must only seek those new opportunities to not only remain profitable but potentially expand their sales to greater heights than ever before.

Sure, your particular solution may not be as obvious, and a company in the real world in that situation would certainly discover other options quickly, but the example above helps illustrate the type of thinking required to strategically pivot and illustrates that importance of thinking beyond just the way things used to be.