3 questions to reflect. Things I personally think about each day at the moment. I try to find answers and others with a common mindset.

Can we progress like in the past?

Most likely not. Circumstances have changed. Our own circumstances as well as the circumstances of our customers.

Think about the travel industry for example. People are hungry for holidays. They expect much more from their next journey than before. Some are willing to pay more while others needs to look on the price.

Also B2B business has changed. Customer experience is coming down from the hype cycle and starts entering real business. consulting is needed as well as systems to support this.

Last, but not least the way we are working has changed. Less business travels, more remote sessions and more home office. This requires new IT support and new ways of motivating people…. employees as well as customers which we can’t meet. Personal contacts are important, sometimes it is just the coffee in the kitchen, sometimes the meeting at a fair or just consulting a customer in a travel agency instead of on the phone or online.

Can we solve the presence with solutions of the past?

In many cases business was down in 2020. As mentioned, circumstances and situations have changed. Now we see, that new job postings are coming up searching for sales people. For sure, they are needed, but what should they sell? Should they sell like in the past products and services of the past?

Isn’t there a transformation needed in business first to adopt on the changed needs? For sure, the needs are not 100% new, but in many cases they have changed. When I talk about needs, then I talk about company, customer and market needs.

What wee need is to look on the changes of our customer and adopt our products, services and offerings. This isn’t something sales can do. To be successful sales needs first of all someone who understand the situation and transforms products, services and offerings.

Can we restart business now?

100% yes! We must restart now! To be successful, we need to adopt. Restart isn’t easy at all because situations have changed as well as customers have changed. If we want to make it easy by not changing things, we will fail. This because if we do business as usual while our competitors adopt, they will win. We should think how we want to restart business. It isn’t difficult or complicate… Let’s keep it simple and let’s be courageously.

Restarting now offers huge possibilities. — Let’s talk

Sum up

An experience I’m making at the moment, but also something that will be experienced by our customer for sure. If we push sales with old products & services, customer will realize that there is less value, less interest in them and less understanding of them. As a result empathy and trust is loosing… and this in a time where we have great chances to make a difference and reach a great #customer loyalty.