Resetting your Go-To-Market Strategy during this Pandemic
There isn’t a business in the world, big or small that hasn’t been impacted by the COVID pandemic.
For some the impacts will have been catastrophic, for others they actually have been positive, but for all of us there has been a change and there will continue to be changes both good and bad that we must confront.
The reality is that regardless of where your business finds itself right at this moment, good or bad, you can’t just sit idle, you need to respond to the voice of your customers and to the messages the market is sending you.
The measures businesses on both sides of the impact equation have taken to protect staff, ensuring they are safely working from home, standing up processes that allow this to happen whilst continuing to serve customers, and most importantly ensuring that their mental wellbeing is front of mind has been critical in giving businesses the chance to reset.
Unfortunately, this reset in its own right won’t be enough to ensure that businesses survive or continue to thrive beyond this pandemic. In order to achieve this your businesses will need to redefine it’s go-to-market strategy to (a) match the market conditions and opportunities right now and (b) to predict what market conditions might look like on the other side.
Here are some thoughts on where you might start and some of the activities that might help you pivot accordingly:
Stay close to your customers
In times of crisis we naturally retreat and seek to protect our own, our staff, our revenues which is natural. Our customers are being impacted as much as we ae and we must continue to engage them to understand what their situation is, not with a view to selling them but with a view to being genuinely customer centric and showing that value is real. Having this frame of reference will help you to continue to engage with your customers through this pandemic with the trust you’ve built over time, empathy and most importantly on their terms. Engaging customers now will only enhance your customer experience, focus on this as a personal activity, not as a commercial one.
Be clear on the value you deliver to your customers
Now is not the time to sell aggressively, it’s the right time however to reaffirm the reason and purpose for why your company/product exists. Have your sales and marketing team remind you of this narrative, why your company and/or product exists? Remember you exist because there is a problem or a pain point that you are serving in the market that your customers can’t do without. In this current environment your goal is to be so closely connected to your customers that you understand their pain as it stands in this pandemic and more importantly how you and your team can help them solve them. Now more than ever, your customers are looking to be more than just buyers, they want to partner with people who are partners. There is no better time than now to re-assess your sales and GTM process and establish new targets and goals that are helping address the gaps to your customers problems.
Engage your local community
This pandemic has made life hard for every community, they are all suffering from the lack of connection with family, friends and the even the businesses they love. This is the time to support those businesses who are supporting their communities to get through this, do this because you care about these communities not because you are seeking better sales results or higher profits. This is an opportunity for us to be leaders in our actions, to show goodwill, compassion, lend support to our customers without expecting anything in return. Yours customers will become even greater beacons for your brand and or your product and they will become the community champions for you.
It’s clear that there is no definitive timeframe for how long this pandemic will go on, however it is imperative that you can’t just sit in hope.
Adapting your go-to-market strategy to the reality of this pandemic situation is an action that with deliver returns both now and also for the other side.
We are living with the reality in Australia that each state is responding to this pandemic slightly differently and as a consequence we need to ensure that our response is reflective of these variables and the fact that our customers realities and emotions will all be different.
There’s no better time than right now for your business to check in on your go-to-market approach, reaffirm or perhaps even reshape it so as to help you maintain the advantage you have or reignite the values as to why you exist.
Here’s to a post pandemic reality for your business that shines brighter than the reality of yesterday and today.
Looking to build your own Go To Market strategy?
Let us help. To learn more about how to build a go-to-market strategy for your customers, contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au
