Built On 2021 Yet?

'Few companies have systematically institutionalised what they learnt from their Covid-19 experience'
précis of Martin Reeves, chair of Boston Consulting Group’s BCG Henderson Institute

How does your sales operation stack up on this observation?

What was there to learn from?

Not just from video calls but Remote Sales in general?

And how about for its eventual 'systematic institutionalisation'?

Can you name at least one such 'learning' since adopted, adapted and iterated in your selling today?

The trap is clear. Many collectively dismissed how we wrote business during lockdowns as a blip. A once-off adaptation. The fact we never want to repeat the whole experience has become conflated with discarding what worked under those strained times as also being unwelcome additions to today's selling demands, now we're 'back to normal'.

Yet many actively escape such mindset. The proliferation of remote-first. Beyond ᴡꜰʜ to ᴡꜰᴀ. Increasing async. And in the case most precious to me, the use of video meeting.

These are the winners.

At present, in my relational first conversations seeking out those for whom I can consciously make a huge difference, one scenario I pose is along the lines of;

'if your selling and videoing is largely the same today as a couple of years back...'

My point being very much that there is a next step to how that all ran.

And in many cases, such bounds forward actually build on what you may have caught sight of back then. Although you maybe as yet unaware that you can put such pieces together in a different way now, to bring to bear the joys of completing a new puzzle.

Not embracing the fact that some of our once enforced remote, now selected blended hybridity, contains aspects which can propel both productivity and purchases from us is akin to how achingly many a middle-manager in big corps wail that only under their micromanaging, old-style fiefdom, physical presence - which is what all coming back in to the office, all the time, perpetuates - can true collaboration, mentoring and super-normal profits flow.

Such political, cost-centre bureaucrats peddle a disgraceful myth.

Many of whom, bewilderingly, are chief execs.

Let them not choke your selling potential. Nor hold back your commission.

Not everything we had to try during 2020-21 that helped us sell then is ripe to be duly jettisoned, regardless. The question is, do you know which elements to not only keep, but actively build on as 2024 draws near?

Your clients, career and bank balance will heartily thank you for it.