{"id":131843,"date":"2020-08-17T09:49:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-17T08:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=131843"},"modified":"2020-09-07T14:11:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T13:11:32","slug":"how-to-sell-in-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/how-to-sell-in-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"How to sell in a pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a guest post from Darryl Sparey<\/a>, Managing Director at Hard Numbers. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell \/ I am a hustler baby, I’ll sell water to a well.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

These are the words of philosopher, poet, business mogul, tech entrepreneur, philanthropist and billionaire Shawn Corey Carter, also known by a host of other nicknames, including Jay-Z.<\/p>\n

And that ‘can-do’ spirit, the mindset that whatever adverse conditions you face you will find a way to succeed, the focus on results over externalities, are things that definitely speak to anyone founding an agency or a business in a global pandemic, and the ensuing recession that has followed it. The market conditions aren\u2019t quite ‘hell’, but they\u2019re not far from it.<\/p>\n

And yet new agencies abound in 2020, despite the challenging headwinds that face us. Coldr<\/a><\/strong>, Shook<\/strong><\/a>, Play<\/a><\/strong>, Boldspace<\/a><\/strong>, Mixology Communications<\/a><\/strong>, Priestley<\/a><\/strong>, Authentic Comms<\/strong><\/a>, Made by Giants<\/a><\/strong>, and a host of others have all started in the last few months. And another agency that\u2019s been added to this crowded starting line-up is my own, Hard Numbers<\/a><\/strong>. The thing that will define success or failure for all of these agencies, including my own, will be our ability to create opportunities to pitch for and competitively win new business.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for me and the Hard Numbers team, I\u2019ve a wee bit of experience on the business development side of things, which has been incredibly useful in the last few weeks. So here\u2019s a few things I\u2019ve learned from the last twenty years, which I\u2019ve been putting into practice in the last two months or so\u2026<\/p>\n

1) Have a demonstrable, provable point of difference<\/span><\/strong>
\nThere are thousands of agencies out there, and as many freelancers. It\u2019s a buyers\u2019 market. So your proposition needs to be genuinely differentiated. You need to have a unique selling point which is of benefit to your prospective client, and defensible externally. And ‘we\u2019ve got great people’ or ‘we\u2019ve won awards’ does not cut the mustard, because everyone else is saying that.<\/p>\n

2) Have an idea of your ICP\/define your Ideal Customer Prospect<\/span><\/strong>
\nThis should be based on your current or previous client expertise, and the desired sectors you want to grow in. You should know the size and stage of business that you do your best work for, and the verticals they are in (clue: it is NOT ‘B2B businesses’) and the typical role that you sell into within these organisations. Then go and find these prospects online. This is your prospect database.<\/p>\n

3) Shy bairns get nowt<\/span><\/strong>
\nMy fianc\u00e9 is from the North East, and she bought me a keyring with this saying on. It goes everywhere with me, literally. And it means, if you don\u2019t ask, you don\u2019t get. Business is not won by waiting for people to ask you.<\/p>\n

4) Always be getting commitment<\/span><\/strong>
\nLike shell suits, smoking in PG movies and Calvin Harris tunes, ‘always be closing’ was acceptable in the 80s. But things are different now. At every stage of the sales process, you should be looking to secure your prospects\u2019 commitment to the next stage. If not, you\u2019ll run the very distinct risk of being ghosted, and there\u2019s no Peter Venkman or Egon Spengler to help you out in that scenario.<\/p>\n

5) Make time for new business<\/span><\/strong>
\nToo many agency owners run to the comfort of existing client work, or think that ‘liking’ stuff their prospects put on LinkedIn is sales. You need to carve out dedicated time in a disciplined fashion on a weekly basis to make approaches, set-up calls and meetings, and get in front of your target prospects.<\/p>\n

6) Use a CRM<\/span><\/strong>
\nYou cannot manage a pipeline effectively on a shared Google doc or spreadsheet. Invest in a CRM system to help you manage your contacts, visualise and forecast your pipeline, and execute marketing campaigns. HubSpot is a CRM which is free to use, and there are many others like Pipedrive, Sugar CRM, Copper, Insightly and, the big one, Salesforce. If you\u2019re serious about it, plug this data into QuarterOne, and give yourself unrivalled ability to forecast pipeline. If you\u2019re at a larger agency and you\u2019re REALLY serious about it, use Kluster\u2019s AI product to diagnose problems in your sales acquisition strategy.<\/p>\n

If you do all of the above, you\u2019ve got more than a puncher\u2019s chance of having success, in any climate. And whether you find yourself in the coldest winter, with nothing to sell but ice, or somewhere rather hotter (which, frankly could be anywhere in the UK based on mid-August) with just fire to shift, you\u2019ll be OK.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A ‘can-do’ spirit, the mind-set that despite adverse conditions you will find a way to succeed, speaks to anyone founding a business in a global pandemic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":131851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7272,7238],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131843"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131850,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131843\/revisions\/131850"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}