Post Pandemic Opportunities vs Challenges
Throughout the year of lockdown, many have read the situation as there is less business to be won. While in fact, the pandemic offers a wide pool of opportunities to rethink not only what you are selling, but how you are selling it as means to increase revenue, profit margin, or market share.
According to an article1 in Harvard Business Review; there are four key opportunities throughout the pandemic and post-pandemic era as means of sustainable selling and revenues:
- Put sales at the center of your strategy: you need to identify what changes have occurred to your business during the pandemic; what adaptations have you made to meet different priorities? In such tight times, the focus always goes to sales to win business. Give your sales force all the tools it needs to succeed:
a) full profile on your targeted client
b) what do you offer that sets you apart from the market?
c) defining issues that contribute to customers’ decisions
- Leverage sales to discover and meet new customers’ needs: it is no secret that the pandemic has caused major lifestyle changes given the lockdown situation and having to abide by the social distancing rules. According to the HBR article, although the pandemic has caused the economy to tighten up, RV sales have skyrocketed in the United States throughout the pandemic. So not only VRs are to sell, but how to interiorly design them and make them feel cozier. In this sense, it is important to ask yourself as an organization or a service provider, what of is it of the new needs of the customers you can distinctly address and use as a business win/opportunity?
It is highly important to continually learn about the changing needs of your customers and the dynamics of the market; this constant search highlights what the customer needs and is not getting so you as a service provider get in and fill in the gap.
- Improve sales experience: with compliance with the instructions of social distancing, hence, cutting down on physical meetings, almost all businesses turned to video/call conferencing. This tool is quite great in itself that you can arrange for including an SME (Subject Matter Expert) to rather weigh in and give many in-depth insights to your customers on the one hand. On the other hand, members of higher management can be connected with customers to either build stronger relations or rather address concerns and problems of which builds higher levels of relations between the organization and the customers. It helps as well if you rethink a sales experience design that gives your customers insights into the challenges and opportunities created by the pandemic. It can be through a Q&A Webinar or even a simple pamphlet.
- Leverage the physical environment while social distancing: due to the governmental restrictions worldwide, and the lockdown in almost all the globe, most companies turned to technology in terms of communications, meetings, sales, and even the slightest of aspects of daily operations. However, it would have a great deal of an effect if you send a physical sample of your booklet, or a printout of your article during the virtual meeting – saving your customer the trouble of having to print out the article themselves. As well, it is good to look at other opportunities, although last year did not involve the hotel industry, travel, or even live events. However, there were and still are many opportunities to envisage.
As much as it is relieving to look at business wins and opportunities, it is also quite important to take a look at some of the challenges and think if your business can survive 2021. According to Kate Noether’s article (5 Unforeseen Post-Pandemic Challenges: Is Your Business Ready to Survive 2021?); the business world has responded to the onset of Covid-19 with rapidness and agility, with one objective before their eyes are to maintain and manage operations during the crisis. However, the following points were some of the main highlights of the challenges that faced the businesses while stirring against the high tides:
1. Accelerated Change: it is highly expected that in 2021 most businesses will have to deal with massive changes. During the pandemic, many business owners witnessed an accelerated change, which seems to be paving the way for faster transformations in the future.
These changes may happen internally but most of them will be affected by the global scene. Businesses will need to upgrade their strategies to cope with consumer demand.
We witnessed the massive development in communication and digitization. More and more businesses are exploring online possibilities rather expand. Especially as businesses had already experimented with digital strategies during the pandemic, now they will have the option to sustain the same model and may even stir away from their old business models before the pandemic.
2. Increased Government Intervention: governments had to interfere by subsidizing struggling businesses and as well by imposing health procedures to help regulate work during the pandemic. For the sake of example, many countries have reported an increasing number of applicants of governmental support for covid-19 relief, which may indicate that the economic blow of the pandemic is stronger than expected. Hence, it is also expected that government involvement will increase over time.
3. Difficulty Raising Capital: now it has become a very difficult task to find investors to support your business. Investors will be very cautious to spend their money while the scene is still full of ambiguity. So, a smaller business will have to rely solely on governmental support to survive. Raising capital, in general, will be a decisive factor in whether the business can maintain operation or would cease to exist.
4. Resurgence of Nationalism: with the outburst of the virus Covid-19, countries had to shut down their borders, hence, international trade was suddenly disrupted. This impact was too powerful that governments and private organizations struggled to access basic material. Also, shortages in medications and hygiene products were noticeable. This may be a negative side effect of globalization as we know it. Today governments and private businesses are giving more attention to make sure that these basic materials can be produced domestically to cover the local demand. Of course, when the pandemic is over, those local products may very well compete with old global trading. If these local products are proven reliable, they can offer a better and less expensive alternative than imported materials.
5. Increase Taxation: there is no such thing as a free lunch! The money that the governments had injected to revive struggling businesses will soon return to the safes as taxations. Business owners will have to be prepared to pay higher taxes over the following few years.
6. Increase in Cyber Attacks: with the migration to more digitized business models, companies have reported a staggering increase in cyber-attacks. It will be inevitable to resort to higher-quality security systems. Finding solutions to fight the increasing threat of cyber-attacks will be of the highest importance. Businesses will have to invest in these solutions and also to train their employees accordingly. Failing to prioritize the company’s cyber-security may lead to irreparable breaches that may damage the business permanently. This would be a major concern for small and medium businesses which usually opt to use free business solutions. However, free solutions for cyber-security will not be reliable.
With several vaccines are being introduced, several countries are starting to ease off emergency restrictions, while others are severely hit and still experiencing other waves of the virus. Business owners are advised to be cautious and alert to any changes and act accordingly with agility and resilience.
1Scott Edinger (2020). 4 Ways to Reconfigure Your Sales Strategy During the Pandemic. Accessed 28 March 2021,https://hbr.org/2020/10/4-ways-to-reconfigure-your-sales-strategy-during-the-pandemic
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