3 Practical Steps for Our Businesses to Weather the Covid-19 Storm

Published Categorised as Agile Business Tagged

We were due to send out the next taster of our latest white paper today, but we want instead to acknowledge the current unprecedented situation. Our clients are beginning to feel the impact of the Covid-19 storm and so are we.

We work with a range of businesses from startup to scale-up to large enterprise and we’re seeing three issues across that base:Sudden and unexpected gaps in the marketing team are impacting productivity.

1. Sudden and unexpected gaps in the marketing team are impacting productivity.

2. Sales pipeline is slowing down, in some cases dramatically.

3. Need to pivot your offer and/or working practices go virtual.

If any of that sounds familiar, read on for some practical steps you can take to weather the storm. Or let us read it to you – we also recorded this mail-shot on Zoom (that’s how virtual we are). And if we can help, we’d love to, do get in touch.

Gaps in the Marketing Team Are Impacting Productivity

Team health and safety is paramount but absences – as teams transition to home working or are unable to work – mean tasks are being put on hold.

What Can You Do?

Time to recut your marketing plans using the Do/Defer/Delete/Delegate model. Prioritise the must-do tasks, defer what’s least time-sensitive, delete what won’t move the needle and delegate everything that you can.

How Could We Help?

Our fast turn-around content planning, content creation and campaign activation services can all be delivered remotely.

Sales Pipeline is Slowing Down

It feels like uncertainty has been the only certainty in the last few years. In the face of significant challenges caution is understandable. If your pipeline is slowing down perhaps it’s time to get systematic about existing and past client relationship development.

What Can You Do?

Analyse your customer database, prioritising and tiering by opportunity to put a focused ‘what’s the next step to move this relationship on’ action plan together.

How Could We Help?

Customer-Development-In-A-Day is a practical action-focused collaborative working session. Working alongside you on a virtual basis we’ll review and tier your customers. By the end of the day you’ll have a tailored action plan to guide how you move each of those relationships to the next step in their buying journey with you.

Need to Pivot Your Offer And/Or Working Practices Go Virtual

Many businesses haven’t been designed to go virtual; to accommodate remote working or to deliver their products and services online. Necessity can be the mother of invention though.

What Can You Do?

Get your leadership team or business managers in a room to review your ways of working. There are some great tools to empower virtual working: we use Google docs, Slack, Zoom, Hubspot and Xero to run our business. But more important is how you use them. Can you implement elements of agile software development methodology? Morning and evening stand-ups to manage workflows, review task lists, check and reset priorities.

Revisit your business proposition and strip it back to its essence. What are you uniquely good at and why do you do it? Which particular problems do you solve for which particular clients? Taking a fresh look at your business fundamentals can throw up exciting new opportunities. A great tool you can use for that is Strategyzer.

How Could We Help?

Our Business-Strategy-In-A-Day is a collaborative working session which can be delivered remotely. We’ll tailor it to you but can cover overall business strategy & goals, client services & sales, operations, finance & people, and marketing. By the end of the session you’ll have clear goals and an easy to progress plan to help pivot or hone your business and/or working practices.

If you want to jump on a Zoom call and talk about how you can keep your business going in this climate, just let us know.

By Jane Franklin

…is co-founder of Difference Engine. Jane has deep experience in communications, inbound and outbound marketing for a range of organisations from Microsoft and OS to the Greater London Authority and NFU Mutual and many others in between. Should anyone ever want to bribe Jane, focusing on a mixture of rock, comedy, cheese and cider will probably do the trick.