For most who work in B2B sales and marketing, we are, once again, entering a time of uncharted waters. However, these uncharted waters will be a lot more exciting because they will be filled with changes to how brands and companies act. In sales, that means businesses will be looking to use your product in different ways than they have previously, and in marketing, businesses are going to need to reach their current customers in different ways or need to reach a totally new customer.
While this doesn’t mean the economy will be back to where it was, it does mean there are going to be more opportunities than there have been, particularly in sales and marketing. The key to finding new and different opportunities in these uncharted waters is to be able to swim differently and better than we were prior to March.
How do we start swimming differently and better?
The first step is creating a new habit or changing a current habit. Change is not easy, and we all probably have an aspirational list of the things we would do if only we had time (see Anna Kendrick’s Tweet below). You know changing these habits will help you win moving forward, but the opportunity to make that change could be running out. The first step is to identify the change you want to make and then figure out how to make that habit change.
To identify the change, you want to ask yourself three questions:
- What new result am I looking to accomplish?
- What manageable change can I make that will bring me that desired result?
- How do I measure my success?
Here is an example of how your answers could look if you are in sales and know a lot of good referral sources who you don’t sell directly to:
- The result I want is to have my existing referral sources lead to new sales from customers that have never previously been customers.
- A manageable change I can make is to have one meeting per week with a different referral source. Be intentional about learning how you can help them, but also how they can help you.
- I will know this has been successful if add $1,300,000 in new business from these referrals. This step is very important and will allow you to measure whether the time has been well spent.
Making changes in our habits and routine is not easy. However, if you determine the desired result and identify manageable change to get there, you will position yourself to win in these uncharted waters and you will never have to feel like Anna Kendrick.
Tweet from Anna Kendrick on March 30th: “I guess I’ll never be able to lie to myself again about all the shit I would do if I just had the time.” https://twitter.com/AnnaKendrick47/status/1244722648401063938
