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Game for a trick question?
Give yourself a straight A if you can spot something new in this sampling of headlines:
Retailers report 40 to 70 percent decline in business. Grocery business down by a third
Surge in demand for beds, mattresses and bedsprings
Industries hobbled by lack of workers
Train services suffer
Nothing? Found it sleep-inducing? You were right. There’s nothing new at all in these headlines. They are all from newspapers of over 100 years ago.
Same story from a different world – 100 years ago
A blog on business.com cites these early 20th century headlines and gleans some fascinating lessons from a report on "Economic Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Implications for a Modern-day Pandemic” authored by Thomas A. Garrett, of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
The world was a very different place in 1918. There was a world war on and countries were far less prepared to handle pandemics. Yet, like it is today, infection and mortality rates across locations was a hotly debated point then also. Preventive measures also weren’t very different. Locations that were able to shut down places of large gatherings like schools, movie halls and places of worship before the outbreak spread extensively, fared much better in arresting infection’s surge and in saving lives.
Other interesting similarities
There were other interesting similarities too. “Businesses that specialized in healthcare or health-related products saw significant increases in revenue” says the blog. That’s no surprise. Aren’t businesses making facemasks and hand sanitizers witnessing a boom now? Similarly, service oriented and entertainment focused businesses, like restaurants and theatres, suffered the biggest losses during and immediately post the pandemic. “Densely populated urban areas were hit the hardest by influenza, in terms of mortality rates and widespread business shutdowns” notes the blog. With Covid19 also, cities with large populations have seen the sharpest spikes in infection spread and mortality.
Lessons of hope from the 1918 pandemic
Yet the 1918 pandemic left many lessons of hope
Current examples abound to validate these 3 strategies:
Get better at what you’re doing
Pivot what you do
Pivot how you do whatever you’re doing
There is hope in the story of 1918. If humanity could conquer one pandemic and leap forward, a better equipped world can certainly do it all over again after 100 years. You can read the business.com blog on “What economics lessons can we learn from the 1918 pandemic, and what are successful businesses doing to survive the 2020 pandemic?” here
World is not new to crises …
But Covid19 is a different beast say Prof Rohit Deshpande, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim of Harvard Business School. Why is that so? Writing for HBS Working Knowledge, they argue that unlike “recent economic crises and recessions such as the Great Recession of 2008 and the Mideast oil crisis, whose causes were financially driven, the fundamental driver of the pandemic is health and safety concerns and hence Customer driven”
The De-accession phenomenon
This has had a dramatic effect on buyer behaviour, whether B2C or B2B. Government-imposed lockdowns, self-isolation, fear, closure of work places, offices and stores have temporarily shut off Customer access to products and services. Prof Deshpande and his colleagues call this “de-accession”, a phenomenon where potential supply and demand are intact but Customer isn’t able to buy. This drives Customers to operate on tighter budgets and become less willing and able to spend on purchases
How do you find Customers? And engage with them?
There are constraints you can’t change as they are external to business. All you can do is to adapt. So, in this ‘new abnormal’, how do you find Customers? How will you engage with them?
Understand Customer’s new Covid induced problems
The first step in cracking de-accession challenge is to research and understand Customers’ new problems caused by fear, isolation, physical distancing, and financial constraints, and then structure your offerings to meet these new unmet wants and needs.
To adapt to Customer’s changed needs, take a hard look at where your firm is right now
Deshpande and his colleagues point out that the speed with which businesses have to adapt to the new “directional reality” of changed Customer needs would depend on where your firm is right now. This would differ from industry to industry.
For example, industries experiencing decreasing Customer demand, like “offline entertainment, hospitality, real estate, industrial commodities, and suppliers to these industries” need to adapt rapidly to improve their chances of staying afloat.
Industries with increasing Customer demand such as “grocery stores, online entertainment, teleconference providers, and their suppliers” can adjust to the new directional reality at a slower pace. But they would also have to come to terms with the altered Customer needs to be able to grow in the long term.
How to craft a minimally viable strategy to find Customers and engage with them
Regardless of whether demand is growing or decreasing all businesses should ask themselves – “What should be my minimally viable strategy to get through these unprecedented times?”
The HBS faculty answers this question with a modified version of the famous Ansoff 2X2 matrix as below:
A Strategic Action Plan for your Firm
Drawing on this matrix, Deshpande and team suggest the following strategic actions to find your Customers and engage with them:
First off, you should determine to which quadrant of the modified Ansoff matrix your business belongs to and choose from there, the action-options viable for that quadrant. Sales is all about looking for Customers in the right places. So this 4 quadrant matrix could jump start that search:
For instance, many small businesses like restaurants and home goods retailers try to match increased demand by allowing customers to order through email, website ecommerce, mobile apps, or simple phone calls. This takes care of the unmet need for physical safety and avoidance of exposure to infection
Prof Deshpande and colleagues suggest 5 Customer-centric principles that can be used to make your chosen search and retention strategy work:
The Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article on Your Customers Have Changed. Here’s How to Engage Them Again by Prof Rohit Deshpande, Ofer Mintz, and Imran S. Currim can be read here
Introducing the book Buy.ology for a Coronavirus World, brand builder and buyer behaviour expert Martin Lindstrom says – “As the world opens up again, your business will face a dramatically new reality. It’s going to require you to ask: Which elements in your business model need to fundamentally change? If you answer, “Nothing at all, we’ll get right back to business and nothing will have changed,” then I suggest that you didn’t get COVID-19’s message
To drive home his point, he shares the story of Andre Lacroix, the CEO of Intertek, who asked his team: “How are our customers going to change post-COVID-19, and how can we help them?” Just three weeks later they introduced ProTek, a brand-new company that trains staff in cleanliness, certifies buildings, airline cabins, and hotel rooms, and verifies it with a special seal for guests, passengers, and the world to see.
Marketing Guru Philip Kotler has this to say about Lindstrom’s book: “Just read Martin Lindstrom's new short book Buy.ology for a Coronavirus world. He shows how customer behavior is likely to change in the post-Covid world. Full of fascinating details and experiences. Will make you think about your own behavior now and after Covid” Endorsements don’t get better than this
If you are a balloon, would you hug a cactus? You can, if you are anti-fragile. And that’s what your business and sales need to be too
Farnam Street blog, (fs.blog), quotes author Nassim Taleb to define anti-fragile this way:
“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty.
Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile.
Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.
This property is behind everything that has changed with time: evolution, culture, ideas, revolutions, political systems, technological innovation, cultural and economic success, corporate survival, good recipes … the rise of cities, cultures, legal systems, equatorial forests, bacterial resistance … even our own existence as a species on this planet”
You can adopt these 10 Rules to make your busines and sales anti-fragile (adapted from fs.blog):
Read more about An Anti-fragile way of life here
Insights
Here are some Mercuri India’s classic Knowledge Blocks, that address opportunities and challenges which Sales Professionals deal with at work.
Read moreMercuri Mail
Our Sales Journal - Mercuri Mail - is a thoughtful compilation of meaningful articles drawn from our archives, and sales timeless management literature.
Read moreIn Essence
In Essence documents are annotations of insightful publications in academic journals of repute, fostering sales excellence.
Read moreBuild Your Library
How about building your own sales library? Here are some must reads that will make your collection meaningful!
Beyond Sales
Here is some poetry that helps you unwind all the stress , and recharge to overcome more challenges. Time to relax!