How to Restart Your Sales During the COVID-19 Pandemic

During the pandemic, many small businesses have had to learn how to handle their sales. Many businesses had to restart their sales after little to no business during the first months of the pandemic. Once businesses started to reopen and move to an online space, they had to adjust to a limited customer base and implement e-commerce. Jeanette Mulvey, content director at CO—, spoke with a panel of experts on how businesses can restart their sales and remain competitive during the pandemic.

Using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Is a Great Way to Interact With Customers

With less in-person sales pitches due to the pandemic, the best way to interact with your customers and manage your relationship is through a CRM. Shannon Smoot, VP of small business sales for Salesforce, one of the most popular CRM systems, describes CRMs as a way for businesses to leverage technology to get a 360-degree view of their clients, giving them the ability to engage with both employees and customers.

Smoot describes CRM as a place to store your contacts as well as your sales process.

“It's going to allow for you to expand that to others and really be able to access it from anywhere at any time,” she said. “And as you continue to grow and you need to start marketing or servicing your customers, everything is right there.”

Even if you're a small business, it's still worth looking into using a CRM or mimicking their practices, such as keeping an organized list of your clients and customers on spreadsheets.

Leaders Should Be Hyper-Aware, Lead With Values and Provide Value to Customers

When trying to restart sales during the pandemic, it’s important to connect with your customers on a human level. Smoot shared three values she and her Salesforce team keep in mind:

Smooth refers to this current state of the economy as the “next normal,” staying hyper-aware of what's going on with their clients’ businesses and helping them adjust to the ongoing digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic.

Salesforce sees this as an opportunity to ensure their employees and customers feel heard and support the community by sharing and acting upon their values.

“If you focus on giving back and sharing your mission and your values, that does lead to opportunities to connect with your customers and create a tighter relationship,” she said.

Engage With Your Customers Through the Local Community to Generate Activity

One way to show your customers you're dedicated to them is by also dedicating yourself to your local community. As revenue was dropping, Vince Puente, president of sales and marketing for Southwest Office Systems, started incentivizing buyers by providing them gift cards from local restaurants.

“We're providing them anywhere from $50 to $500 in local restaurant gift cards with re-acquisition to thank them for doing business with us,” Puente said. “We want to bring dollars back into the community.”

Puente shared that this approach may cause a loss on transaction, but that's not their concern right now. Their current objective is to engage their team with their clients to generate activity for the long term.

Don’t Try to Sell to Your Customers, Check in With Them

During this difficult time, everyone is experiencing some degree of uncertainty. Customers don't want to feel like they're just a source of income but rather a valued part of your business.

Kristen Frohnhoefer, president of Sea Tow Services International Inc, wanted to know why customers weren't renewing with them, so she sent out a survey. Most of the responses didn’t concern quality of service but instead showed that people were waiting to see what would happen with the pandemic.

“We're probably going to get these customers back in the future,” she said. “Right now, [we’re going to] lay back a little bit, and we can keep track of that in our CRM … We don't want to bug them and [want to] be sensitive to their concerns and what's going on in their life right now.”