It was October 19th 1987 at 09:00 and I was ready to start a leadership program for a bank. After 10 minutes into the training a message was delivered to the room requesting all the managers to return to the head office at once. I asked the most senior manager in the room what had happened. His answer was: we are losing millions at the moment and we need to cancel the training. In the days and weeks to come, most of our clients cancelled or postponed their contracts with us, due to the crisis.
This day became to be know as Black Monday in history. The stock markets around the world collapsed on this.
For us it looked like a recipe for disaster: financial reserves were drying up and bills still needed to be paid.
We survived the crises by not giving up, but trying different approaches to the market and most important adapting our mindset! Slowly revenues began to grow again and we were able to get back to normal life.
After this we had some other major crises such as September 11th 2001, with the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. This lead to the crash of stock markets worldwide. It also had an impact on air travel due to the public’s fear to fly by plane. This in turn had a tremendous impact on aviation, travel, leisure and financial industry with a heavy loss of jobs all over the world.
The next event that impacted the world dramatically was the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank on September 15th 2008. A year before the business magazine Fortune International declared Lehman Brothers the “most admired securities firm”. This historical crisis again caused banking collapse and loss of jobs around the globe.
My team and I survived all three crises and many other small incidents by not giving up, but by trying different approaches and strategies to the market. Most important was to adapt our mindset. We always learn from these type of happenings.
At this moment the world is going through a different type of crisis: a pandemic which is impacting economies in a dramatic way. With regards to the economy I’d like to share some of what we have learned from the past on how to survive.
The effects of a crisis on business
In times of crisis you can expect the following as a business leader:
Businesses can dramatically slow down or even grind to a standstill because of the shock.
Decisions are postponed. Business leaders are more in the survival mode and have other concerns on their mind: co-workers, salaries, paying bills and the future, etc.
Optimism makes place for pessimism. Crises have an impact on people’s mind. The longer they last, the more they corrode optimism
Positive attitudes very often evaporate in days or weeks. It’s not easy to keep up a positive attitude when the horizon looks grim rather than sunny.
Shareholders panic can kill initiative. It’s important to have a good balance between your interest towards shareholders and co-workers.
What to do to survive?
Leadership is the most important ability when dealing with a calamity or crisis. Use your leadership capacities at their best to inspire and motivate your co-workers and show them the way to overcome fears and see that every cloud has a silver lining.
Always maintain a positive attitude! A positive attitude helps to see and identify opportunities that can help us find solutions. It also helps us adapt to change.
Communicate! This sounds so normal, still most organizations are not so good at communicating in difficult times. Your communication should be directed internally to your co-workers and externally to your customers. Remember that you need the full commitment of your co-workers to survive and to mitigate the damage. Your sales people need to be at battle strength and to make mindset changes, adapt to market changes and conditions, dealing with resistance, bringing in revenue and much more. Your customers need information and support. Setup a communication plan with daily activities and execute it.
Keeping your co-workers engaged when working from home is mandatory. Many of them are not accustomed to the present situation and of home working and they need support and training. They need to adapt quickly, or the competition will!
Online selling in the market place. Sales people are accustomed to have face to face sales calls. Due to the Corona virus many sales people are not allowed to visit customers and prospects. This creates an obstacle for those who don’t have the experience in selling Value online. The great news is, you can sell very successfully online as long as you bear in mind what the conditions are and you develop the skills to do so.
Prepare and work under difficult market conditions. You are not supposed to lose hope when in a crisis. We need to keep market presence, hunt and build. Business will continue and we need to find existing and hidden opportunities and increase market share. In a shrinking market this is done by taking competitors market share.
Focus now on the short and medium term, but keep an eye on the long term. Forecasting/pipeline management is important for the business and the sales team needs to focus on this. It helps them to stay engaged and have an eye for the period after the crisis.
Avoid Sales people depression. An active sales person will be productive during a crisis and will be ready to hit the ground running when the crisis is over.
Keep your sales team and service departments at battle strength mindset and active.
My last remark:
History has taught us that crises have brought the world many innovations and discoveries. The current crisis could help us to adapt to working remotely which will lead to reducing commuting and business travel, which will result in a cleaner environment, increased productivity and a better work-life balance.
If you want to know more about how to get the best out of remote working/selling Value please contact us here. You can also contact our partners in the UK or Germany here.