The Secret to Close More Business Deals During the Pandemic

The COVID pandemonium did more damage to the business fraternity and the economy at large than one could have ever thought of. The dawn of the new normal looks promising; however, it's also clear that things aren't going to be the same as before anytime soon. Some aspects of the business have already been changed for good.

The receptivity of the buyers to make purchase decisions has considerably dwindled and the marketers need to keep themselves updated on the latest trends within their niche to close more business deals during the pandemic.

According to a report by McKinsey and Co., almost 50% of buyers are holding off upon the purchase because of the pandemic.

Decreasing quotas, severing forecasts, and cutting on their marketing budgets are just a few things the marketers are doing to combat the crisis by closing more business deals during the pandemic.

However, regardless of the situation in a B2B environment, you need to be working rigorously to keep the pipeline running. If the pipeline runs out all the competitive advantage will be lost, and the marketers will have to work again from scratch to build a healthy pipeline.

Businesses would require to learn ways to acquire more leads to keep the quality of the pipeline intact. To tighten the pipeline businesses need to constantly reinvent new ways to acquire more leads, brainstorm, innovate, and adjust to the changing situation. Adopting the following steps will help your businesses in closing more deals:

a. Rethink Ways to Engage With Your Prospects

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the conventional ways of prospecting and hence to close more deals businesses require to figure out new ways to prospect and engage with the prospects.

The businesses need to design holistic, phenomenal, and seamless experiences for their prospects across omnichannel. Engage with your prospects using social channels, handwritten letters, and by offering exclusive gift cards to the customers to win them over. To break the ice new methods need to be employed to win over the customers and constant experimentation and A/B testing need to be done to understand how to improve the prospecting opportunities.

With tried and tested methodologies marketers can put sales at the center of their strategy. The tight economic conditions require sales to connect all of their products to the market and adopt a competitive pricing strategy before their sales practices can be successful.

The sales team needs to be given the right tools to outperform the critical tasks including identifying the ideal customer profile, showing why clients should choose their products or services over those of the competitors, and addressing different customer queries at several stages of the funnel to expedite the sales closures. The marketers should rethink the ways to prospecting, pricing, and customer experience management to increase their revenue margins or market share.

b.  Discover New Customer Needs and Figure Out Ways to Address Them

As the economy has tightened, there has been a constant shift in the shopping habits of the customers and their online browsing and researching behaviors. 

Employ analytics and other essential tools to track customer sentiments. Help your customers solve their problems and even consider allowing flexibility in the payment options. Always explore the opportunities to help your customers more in ways never heard of before. Glean insights about the changing requirements of the customers and act accordingly to address the customer grievances.

Marketers need to adapt to the COVID-related realities and collaborating with the customers is amongst the best ways to drive the bottom line revenue by addressing customer needs.

c. Embrace Empathy to Improve the Overall Sales Experience

The marketers should always try to provide an answer to the customers' questions and address them with empathy. With empathy, the marketers can decode the sentiments of their customers and can work to optimize the customer experience indexes.

Tailoring experiences to individualistic levels allows marketers to improve the customers' perception of their brands, which eventually leads to more sales closures and improved customer acquisition and retention.

d. Testing New Tactics to Improve the Sales Experience

Marketers have to always keep on testing their tactics and tightening their approaches to enhance the customers' experience throughout the sales cycle and beyond. A holistic approach to architecting phenomenal customers' experiences also involves optimizing the post-sales experiences for the customers.

To keep the business running smoothly, we should employ the above methods. Selling is at the heart of running any business smoothly, and therefore, even during the pandemic, the marketers will have to make extra efforts to close the maximum number of deals. Don't compromise on your sales endeavors waiting for the better times. Remember the pandemic will eventually pass, and your time to act is now.