If your relationships are your key differentiator, how will you thrive in the new normal ?
We have had a spike of interest recently from new clients in investment and wealth management companies. Even before this crisis they were under pressure to demonstrate value in an era of low-cost trackers and other competition.
They had already identified that the quality of their relationship and responsiveness to clients was key to their continuing competitive advantage.
Suddenly, in a few short weeks, the context of relationship building and maintenance has changed massively and for the foreseeable future. The strategy is still sound but the way it can be delivered has changed radically.
This is just one example of the many jobs and business models in legal, finance, accounting, consulting and other industries that need to adapt to survive in a post COVID world where face to face contact may be rare for an extended period.
If relationships are your key differentiator, and they often are in service businesses, and if we can’t rely on our traditional face to face meetings to manage those relationships, then we urgently need an alternative.
We have been talking to a lot of salespeople and sales enablement managers recently. They are all, of course, very interested in improving their ability to run engaging and participative online meetings with customers and in improving the way their people come across on video. These are the basics and if you want to stand out versus your competition you need to build this capability fast.
We’ve also identified two key mindset challenges in making this change.
- Many salespeople are reluctant to make the change. A lot of the stimulation in their roles comes from the buzz of face to face meetings and travel. I understand this completely, as a trainer, it’s a very different experience running a web seminar from home to flying to a nice location to deliver a workshop. A balance of the two would be good.
- Most people are looking at online meetings as a slightly worse way of having a face to face meeting. it’s important we get beyond this to look at the real additional opportunities that online meetings give us to engage with much larger audiences and in different ways. For example, you can collect information and get input from people who might not normally participate actively in face to face meetings
We can help change this mindset by getting people to understand the benefits that can come from this new way of working. It can save us time and give us opportunities to engage with our customers and colleagues in new ways.
We have found that it’s hard to change your mindset unless you have the skill set to work in a different way. As we say in training “if you are only trained to use a hammer, all your problems look like nails.”
If you need to change the mindset of your people, make sure they have the skills to thrive in the new way of working. Find out more about how to improve your remote management skills and your ability to run engaging virtual meetings.
Youcan take our short program “Making your best impression on video in online meetings” here.
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