Buying may have decreased across the board in the past few weeks, but not all business has come to a halt. In every crisis there is a shift in habits, spending, and demand.. This article will help you refocus your sales efforts and come up with a sales strategy that works in these challenging times.

Where to focus your sales efforts in a Coronavirus world.

Here’s how to identify new sales opportunities that you may not have explored.

One such area, for instance, is content. The SEO experts at Backlink say that demand for content has increased by as much as 5x. Voice calling over WhatsApp and FB Messenger has doubled in volume. So perhaps it’s a good time to reach out to potential customers via cold introduction and start talking to them without trying to sell to them.

See if you can offer them useful information that will help them in this time. Teach them something that they don’t know. Providing real value without asking for anything in return has always been, and still is, a good long-term sales strategy.

Another phenomenon is that companies have started pulling their online ads. Facebook CPMs are down 75% and Adwords are down 50%. So maybe ask yourself if it’s a good time to throw ads into the mix to build relationships for future sales. If you can afford it, it’s a perfect opportunity to get new eyeballs on your brand, product, and services at a deep discount. It’s also a cheap way to increase the reach of content you might be creating right now.

Demands have changed. What new demands do businesses have?

Another area to look at is: could your product be used to solve a different problem? Is your primary value proposition still the thing that people want, or is your secondary or tertiary value prop in higher demand now?

For instance, Amazon is hiring 100,000 warehouse workers to meet delivery demand, and many delivery businesses are experiencing a similar surge in demand. Many non-delivery businesses are switching to a delivery model — even in industries that typically don’t deliver, like over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

What do these delivery businesses need that they didn’t need before? Is there a way that you can help them?

Microsoft has said that usage of remote collaboration software has climbed by nearly 40 percent in the past week. That means that many companies are going remote for the first time, leading to new management and technological challenges. Employees are being forced to work from home. How can your product or service help with that?

What legacy companies and industries didn’t adopt SaaS tools or the cloud before this?

Law firms, insurance brokerages, accounting firms, government agencies, and many of the traditional lines of work we think of as “white collar” might be new to collaborating and communicating virtually. If your product/service focuses on simplicity and easy onboarding, now is your chance to win new customers dipping their toes into the SaaS world for the first time.

Ask the right questions to uncover new opportunities.

If your existing sales strategy isn’t working as well as it used to as a result of COVID-19, it may also be time to rethink your targeting. Does it make sense to stop targeting businesses that are greatly affected and focus instead on businesses that are doing well? Or vice-versa? In order to discover who those companies are, start asking questions like these:

• Are there potential customers that rely heavily on remote teams or delivery?
• Which companies are hiring right now on Linkedin and job posting sites?
• How have market demands shifted?

Think about what’s different now and what the world is likely to look like in the future as a result of these changes. What do businesses in the new world need right now, and what will they need in the future?

Google Trends is an amazing tool to leverage right now. It gives us a window into up-to-date search trends people are looking for over time. Do you have a hunch of where demand might be shifting? Use Google Trends to verify your hypothesis as well as uncover related trends. Drill down on search terms even further and explore them by industry and region.

See if you can position yourself in a way that makes sense for those needs, and stay safe, folks.

Resources you can access right NOW:

Who’s freezing hiring from COVID-19: https://candor.co/hiring-freezes/

Ecommerce sales trends during COVID-19: https://trends.shipbob.com/#lp-pom-block-1404

Impact of COVID-19 on share prices in the UK: https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14773