COVID-19: How we are Supporting our Tech clients in This Period of Change
For those that don’t know, Boost helps tech companies improve their chances of winning business by doing two things very well:
1. We provide specialist Marketing services to support Leadership teams and Marketing teams;
2. We provide performance-enhancing Sales education & Enablement solutions
In response to the changing needs of our tech customers (and the needs of their customers), we have found ourselves being asked to do new things, or things we didn’t expect to do at the rate we are doing them. Maybe we can help you in a similar way too.
Firstly, (Rapid) Marketing.
Whilst much of our work is of a strategic nature (we help organisations fine tune their value propositions so they are able to accelerate their annuity-based profitable revenue growth), we also are asked to act as an extension of our customer’s marketing teams and help them with high value services, such as the creation of thought leadership assets, high impact demand generation campaigns, and the creation of connected journeys (so Next Logical Product planning).
However, in the last week, we have been asked to help in other ways:
1. Rapid communications – To help our customers stay front of mind and in doing so, help them boost their sales, they have been asking us to turn around rapid and news worthy content as a means of helping our customers keep their customer’s up to date with how they can help with all manner of things, including:
a. Working from home solutions;
b. Rapid deployment of devices/laptops and printers;
c. Specialist security solutions for home workers;
d. Desks and office equipment for home workers;
e. Cyber awareness training for homeworkers;
f. Well-being awareness etc.
2. Rapid webinars – As above, and as a way of helping our customers rise above the noise and generate additional sales, we have been asked to take on the “heavy lifting” associated with putting together last minute, relevant, content-rich webinars.
3. Rapid eGuides – As above, we have been helping our customers market “point” products, but have also been asked to produce rapid content that is more solution orientated, such as “Top 10 things you need to know when implementing a Remote Working strategy”, etc.
4. Rapid surveys – These have often been used to feed into the eGuides mentioned above but are also being used to take the “temperature” of our customer’s wider customers. Asking their customers to answer questions such as, “How have your IT priorities changed in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic?” is helping our customers shape their immediate sales and marketing strategy
5. Rapid social media – Maintaining a good social media presence is a full-time job, so while Marketing teams are busy supporting their “business as usual” activities, we’ve been asked to help with their social media engagement and activity management
If therefore you are looking to respond quickly to the rapidly changing landscape, we have the resources and subject-matter-experts to help you. Get in touch.
Secondly, (Remote/Virtual) sales education & enablement
While we can and do run transferrable sales skills courses, 80% of our work is helping our tech customers equip their sales teams with the skills, knowledge and behaviours they need to sell their products and solutions – this ensures maximum ROI and minimal time-to-value as the solutions are 100% relevant to them.
Most of the programmes we are asked to run are classroom based, however they don’t need to be. It’s just been that way. What we always aim to do is run short 2-3 hour training modules – this helps ensure salespeople are not away from their phones for long, and also keeps energy and enthusiasm levels high.
As we operate a module-based approach, it’s very easy to run these in a virtual environment. Some content needs to be redesigned to be delivered virtually – in the L&D world, we call these “Flipped classrooms” – but that’s a reasonably easy thing to do.
So, key things we’re being asked about NOW are:
Running training remotely using specialist virtual training platforms (so not via Teams, Zoom etc). The platform we use has virtual “break out rooms” and the capability for the remote facilitator to drop into rooms and have closed conversations with the delegates in them – it’s great fun, and it works!
Running short (out of the box courses) that help sales people run remote/virtual customer meetings. Many more meetings will be remote so it’s important the salespeople are still able to build rapport remotely and manage the meeting appropriately.
Running short (out of the box courses) that help Managers to manage their teams remotely. This is going to be increasingly important as remote working becomes the norm.
In summary, Sales Education and Marketing still needs to happen, even during this changing time. The moment we stop investing in the development of our people or our communications we become obsolete, so as things change, we must, as an industry, change too. As my “old” leaders drummed into me years ago, “In the tech industry, change is the only change” … so let’s continue to change.
My team and I are ready and waiting to start a conversation with you. Get in touch – darren.spence@boost-performance.co.uk, or visit www.boost-technology.co.uk.
Darren Spence
Managing Director
Boost Technology Group
