How to Approach Selling During a Pandemic

Should I be selling right now? Should our SDR be doing outreach? Is it too soon? Is it insensitive, tone-deaf? These are questions that all marketing and sales teams are facing right now, across many industries. Yes. If you can sell, you should be selling. If your business is surviving right now, people should be supporting it. BUT, there is one small caveat to selling during this COVID-19 crisis. The tone has changed. The economic landscape has changed. Who you target should be very narrow and specific. 

This is what we have done differently:

1. Our team has been actively reaching out to our existing client base to see how they are doing. Not from a sales perspective, but genuinely asking, “how are you doing, personally?” No one wants to be just be sold to and your existing clients would appreciate knowing that you are in this with them. Our team has been sending care packages out to our clients. We are all experiencing these turbulent times, and it’s important to always treat your clients as humanly as possible - now more than ever.  
2. Ask yourself, “what can I currently provide that will be valuable?” How are you going to pivot your positioning? Does your platform have tools to benefit remote teams? Are you solving a pain point right now? At SwagUp, we have adjusted our approach by developing products to boost team morale, direct mail campaigns, and virtual conferences. Our product is the same but we have found ways to solve problems and actually be valuable to our clients. 
3. Adding value to your current product. Our team has shifted focus to see how we can further help our clients during this time, by adding client spotlights that will be launching soon! We’re all in the same boat, looking for creative solutions to find traffic and exposure. With conferences being canceled across the country and world, the barrier for brand exposure is much harder. Our team is going to spotlight our clients’ stories to our network, in an effort to drive collaboration and positivity. We are not selling swag in these spotlights, simply adding value to our clients. Any support we can provide to our clients will strengthen our relationship in the long run. Not everything your organization does has to require selling during this unprecedented time.

As you can see, we are still selling, still hustling, still aggressive - just different. The companies that will survive this with us will quickly pivot to adapt to the needs of their clients. We have shifted to the needs of our clients by sending care packages, new client spotlights, and, most importantly, remembering to be human. I have some examples below on how we are helping our clients do the same.

To see more examples of how we are helping our clients during this time check out our gallery.

We are in this together, if you are interested in finding ways to partner with SwagUp, contact us today.