Turning Disaster into Some Opportunity
The unprecedented, C-19, shut-down economy is here. Minimize downside hits, while maximizing upside opportunities! How exactly? Here are some moves that distributors have shared with me:
Most are rethinking:
- How to maximize work-from-home activity.
- Turning field reps into outbound tele-sellers
- Maximizing social distance for on-site folks and driver deliveries.
- Upgrading sanitary cleaning protocols.
All good stuff, but where are the innovative edges?
Exceptional Measures:
- Have a brief, Crisis-Team meeting every morning to brainstorm new emerging – problems, opportunities, questions – and best responses.
- Constant two-way communication between all employees and the crisis team via a company app (especially for multi-locations).
- Experiment with each customers’ preferred e-tools? What’s the future for “regular facetime calls” on millennials?
- Survey the top “X” most-net-profitable customers for what special service accommodations or problems they may have. Disrupted businesses have new needs.
- Do #4 for the top “Z” most-net-profitable (potential) customers. Find and seize viable-for-you, new opportunities before entrenched competitors wake up.
- Guesstimate which customers are “swimming naked”: too much debt with collapsing business. (The Feds will bail out over-indebted big companies. But, they won’t help many small and medium indebted businesses in time, if at all.) To what customers, if any, do you want to offer extended receivables?
- Systematically identifying, giving and e-sharing – “Praising Statements”- amongst all employees.
Praising Statements?
Here’s how a long-time client/friend explained it:
“No matter what we do, our financials will take big hits which will add to our overall C-19 stresses. To keep morale and can-do spirit up, we want to recognize all of the individual (beyond-the-normal-call-of-duty) acts our employees are doing during this crisis. Everyone reads the shared praisings. We are seeing a lot of follow up air/text, high-fives. Everyone is on board and striving to make a difference.
My hope is: that as our channel first fades and then revives, our initiatives and can-do spirit will win net-profitable share from competitors who only do the standard herd-stuff. Why let a good crisis opportunity go to waste?”
For more on the entire “praising statement” system, check out my “playlist 5, clips 12-19” on YouTube. The initial clip #12 (all are about 4 minutes in length) is right here.
And, stay tuned for my e-commerce webinar series, launching soon!