The common saying “Hindsight is 20/20” has never wrung truer or brought more conversation to the table than in the past couple years. Everyone has something to say about how Covid-19 has changed our world. Businesses especially have watched the stakes get higher as society scrambled to relearn what normalcy was. Eating in turned to takeout, movie theater goers gave Disney + exponential growth, our understanding of the people worked got turned on its head.
So what does that understanding look like now? How has the way businesses look at their customers, marketing plans, customer segments, sales outreach etc. changed with the information the covid crisis brought to light? A blog from Harvard Business Review had some insights about how marketing and sales has evolved throughout and after the pandemic.
First, after the major reliance on Amazon and other online shopping sites, consumers became very used to an effortless buying experience. Coming back to in person shopping and dealing with in person selling, there is more room for any type of conflict. Selling has turned from being able to work with a client to deliver a positive experience by taking time to work together, to the client expecting their needs to be fulfilled almost instantaneously.
Secondly, where before the pandemic businesses- customer relationships were a large part of the success of a firm’s success, now it is integral. After the months of isolation and online buying, there is both a desire for more interaction in business, and a risk of personal business relationships being less cohesive and effective. Therefore, placing emphasis on relationship building and supporting the kind of skills that nurture those relationships is imperative to the recovery of healthy and productive business relationships.
Finally, the mass online shopping move has provided endless data on customer habits. Businesses have new opportunities for figuring out the needs of their buyers and the ways those needs should and should not be fulfilled. While brick and mortar stores are still struggling to get back on their feet, there is plenty of evidence to support the desire for in person shopping to become dominant again.
While both in person and online business will continue to shift popularity, there is plenty of information out there to help sway the balance. A lot of that power will come through using this new data to improve the customer experience, especially through sales and customer outreach.
BoweryJE22