How is your company performing right now? How is your team handling challenges? How are you doing?

Are you hitting a slump?

Do you know you are not alone?

Aisha Ahmad, the highly acclaimed Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto and global crisis expert, recently tweeted about something called the “six-month wall.” She gave a name to a phenomenon many individuals and businesses have been experiencing and a face to what we can expect moving forward. In case you missed the thread, here it is:

The 6 month mark in any sustained crisis is always difficult. We have all adjusted to this “new normal,” but might now feel like we're running out of steam. Yet, at best, we are only 1/3 the way through this marathon. How can we keep going?

Any parent with young kids knows Daniel Tiger is the ultimate authority on every lesson you need in life. The PBS successor to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood features a young tiger (unsurprisingly named Daniel) and his family. He confronts life’s difficult challenges with emotional maturity, self-awareness, and singing.

So
Much
Singing!

But, unlike most children’s TV, you won’t end up hating it. In fact, you’ll end up loving it because the songs are so catchy and soothing that you can draw on Daniel Tiger’s extensive catalog of compositions to guide your child through basically any daily struggle.

Turning Market Disruptions into Strategic Growth

The pandemic has led us to ask many questions.

“Are we really more productive working from home?”

“If this is the future of work, how do we keep making sales and growing revenue?”

And mostly, “How are some businesses thriving right now when so many are struggling and failing? How are they turning barriers and disruptions into revenue growth, and how can we too?”

The answer is antifragility.

The conversation happening at most organizations right now is centered around pivoting strategy to make up for lost revenue in 2020. When this is the topic, the focus is on simply getting back to neutral – filling in the hole that the pandemic caused when it upset the market this year and hoping that next year will provide an easier opportunity for growth.

But what if these sweeping disruptions could be a catalyst for growth right now instead? What if the conversation were about how much your business could grow instead of whether it would survive?

A study on remote work from Xant summarizes its findings in saying,

“Sales teams are facing unique challenges – not only are they working from home, but their customers are too. They are adjusting to remote work, fighting distraction, and also facing an out of sight, out of mind mentality with their leads and potential customers.”

In fact, their research reveals that sales teams are reporting their top challenge right now as the “inability to communicate or connect with customers.”

But salespeople are not alone.

Remember, anyone meeting someone new right now is doing so virtually.

Everyone is in the same boat trying to navigate making virtual connections with new people both professionally and personally. And while some have felt natural, like messaging potential collaborators over social media, others have not, like going on a first date via video call.

Our current normal has changed how we connect with new people. For introverts, this shift has been a welcome change, whereas extroverts have typically found it harder to adapt. However, removing the in-person aspect of making a new connection does not change the reasoning behind connecting in the first place.

Ultimately, the methods to meet new people may have changed, but why we connect is still the same. New introductions require a genuine desire to offer something of value, listening, nurturing the connection, and following-up, whether the relationship is sales-related or not. The people that aim to engage, understand, and build trust will succeed whether they are connecting with other people online or offline.

Strategic revenue development is a function of assessing your company’s strengths and weaknesses; filling in the necessary gaps; and optimizing the alignment between core strengths, internal structures, people, products & services, and marketing strategy; followed by ongoing measurement and plan adjustments.

One of the 37 Foundational Questions (FQ) in our Revenue Development Action Plan, is:

“Describe what your company is in the business of:
Delivering… making… servicing… providing…”

In essence, we want to know there is clarity and alignment regarding products and services. In the B2B market, a sales team needs the support to ensure messages are aligned and services are delivered as promised. Though it may appear obvious, too often there are dozens of versions. Marketing takes the description one direction, sales another… and neither serve the customer well.

Every business owner and senior executive dreams about having a great company. And as an engineer, innovator, and business CEO Elon Musk said,

Great companies are built on great products.” (The same could be said about excellent services for service providers.)

Yet, there is something else that is essential to success, something that has a significant impact on revenue. That element is a great product or service description. A great product or service description is essential because every business must be able to articulate clearly and appealingly what it makes, delivers, services, or provides. Without that, how would a buyer find, understand, get excited about, or purchase what is being sold?

Plenty of marketing professionals will tell you that their team is often misaligned, misunderstood, or competing against the sales team at their organization. Unsurprisingly, many sales professionals echo this same sentiment. In fact, a 2019 survey commissioned by LeanData and Sales Hacker uncovered that more than a third of those surveyed (37%) do not believe that sales and marketing are properly aligned.

Most sales and business development teams understand that B2B audiences are less influenced by emotion, preferring value-driven content with hard data instead. According to a recent study, 73% of B2B buyers surveyed indicate that they have less time to devote to reading and research than they used to, which makes creating compelling content even more important. However, even with less time available, 60% of B2B buyers still want access to industry insights from thought leaders, opening the door to provide access to this critical audience.

With fewer opportunities available to reach decision-makers, you must demonstrate that you can exhibit thought leadership by increasing quality, demonstrating value, using the right voice, and making content easily accessible.

As stay home orders were instituted across the country businesses were forced to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions. Employees began working remotely and sales functions went virtual to meet business and consumer audiences where they were.

While some industries surged with revenue growth overnight, other industries abruptly saw these business operation changes create barriers to meeting revenue projections. Businesses that previously relied on face-to-face and in-person interactions to sell were left scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how they could leverage their strengths to conduct sales in a new way.