How to Handle Outreach During COVID-19
"When times are tough, sales above all else. When times are great, sales above all else." - Robert Herjavec
It's no secret that we are facing challenging times. Both the world and economy are seeing one of the greatest challenges of our lifetime.
This is leading to many customers reaching out and asking us about their campaigns.
Is it insensitive to run outreach right now?
Should I keep doing outreach?
Should I adjust my messaging or strategy?
With the current climate, these questions are hard to answer. In this article, we will dive through our thought process as an outbound company and what we are advising our clients to do.
Red Light: When it makes sense to stop all outreach
Industries that go against government containment recommendations.There are a handful of our customers where it has required a complete red light on their accounts. For one customer, we were about to launch a campaign inviting companies to sign up for corporate gym memberships.
Their gyms happened to also be in some of the areas in the USA most heavily affected by COVID-19.
In this case, it was a no-brainer for us to put an immediate pause on this campaign. Maybe we will resume it in a few months as the situation unfolds, but it is clear that doing outreach for a gym is not ideal in a time when people are supposed to stay at home.
So here is our first decision framework for our clients:
If your product or service would encourage activities that are in conflict with government containment recommendations, stop outreach now.This is the one place where there is an immediate red light.
Another example of this would be any outreach campaign that is inviting people to live events.
Green Light: When to continue outreach as is
Industries that will not be directly impacted The final bucket we look at is industries that are not directly impacted by COVID-19. While the entire economy will be impacted, many industries will not see direct effects. Examples of these industries are B2B tech, consulting, professional services, agencies, digital marketing, recruiting, etc.
While all businesses will feel the effects of COVID-19, the industries that are not directly impacted are much safer to continue outreach to.
You may consider adjusting your messaging to address the economic troubles, but aim to steer away from outreach about COVID-19 directly.
So our third framework:
If the industry you are targeting is not directly affected, then continue outreach as is or adjust messaging to address the disruption in the economy. Why you shouldn't stop prospecting to yellow light and green light industries
Back to the quote we started this article with.
"When times are tough, sales above all else. When times are great, sales above all else." - Robert Herjavec
It's tempting to cut sales and marketing budgets when times get tough. It creates an immediate savings of cash. Yet, the problem with sales and marketing is that you don't see the impacts of your efforts for 90-180 days.
So, if you stop prospecting now, you will feel the impact of that on your business in 3-6 months from now. We’ve seen this in our experience at Alpha Apex Group.
If you combine a lack of prospecting with a down economy, you are setting yourself up for an even larger potential downtick in your business.
Sales and leads are what drive companies and during these hard economic times, you need them now more than ever.
Remote prospecting channels like LinkedIn, email, and phone provide no risk to the spread of COVID-19 so these channels are more important than ever.
Times are tough... so sales above all else.
