The Role of Sales Readiness When Unforeseen Circumstances Affect Business

The COVID-19 health crisis has thrown us all into an unprecedented situation. While the health and safety of all employees is paramount, companies have also been reimagining customer engagement and how they can better prepare and equip their workers for unexpected changes to their jobs.

As soon as the Coronavirus situation took hold, the jobs of sales reps immediately changed. Quarterly goals, quotas and other performance numbers suddenly became uncertain and many reps were relegated to a remote work arrangement, making it more difficult to have face-to-face meetings and other interactions critical to the sales process.

As a result, the roles of sales enablement and readiness professionals took on new challenges. They were faced with preparing reps for this unchartered territory and keeping them on track as much as possible. With the help of technology and some creative thinking, many companies have been able to pivot quickly, embrace remote work and come up with new sales strategies for as long as they are needed.

For more than 20 years, we have been helping companies train and prepare remote teams. At Brainshark, we’ve seen the following tactics work well:

• Staying connected online: we have Slack and Skype for Business so teams can stay in touch and communicate in group chats; for calls, we encourage everyone to turn on their webcams via Zoom video conferencing

• Reliance on sales readiness technology: we use our own platform to ensure that sales training and coaching can continue uninterrupted, reps are message-ready with the latest information and important sales meetings or events are conducted virtually; we can also quickly spin out video-based content to communicate urgent updates

• Stand-up meetings: many of our teams have daily or weekly stand-up meetings so teams can connect, share what they’re working on and strategize about the latest challenges

• Leader and manager communications: we ensure that our leaders and managers are staying in touch with teams and the company as a whole; we often send out Brainshark presentations via video or PowerPoint with voiceover

Sales enablement and readiness have never been more important than in these unprecedented times. The companies that will make the most of these tough situations are the ones that will forget the status quo and embrace new methods to keep their employees safe and their sales engine humming.

Greg Flynn

CEO, Brainshark