What should we be selling?

Like probably every single industry (at least in the B2B supply chain), we have been sat down at MCFT (remotely) scratching our heads as to who we can work with during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The more we can keep our Teams safe and productive during this time the lower the impact on our business and lower the chance of any long term fallout on the employees.

It seems like we were not alone when we came to the conclusion that the Healthcare sector is the obvious place to sell into right now.

Or so we thought...

I recently read a post on Linkedin from a CIO at a Hospital in the UK who was imploring IT service providers to stop contacting him at this time to pitch their products - he had been inundated with new sales attempts, surely others had thought the same as we have about the Healthcare industry. He said that he understood the logic but that with everything that is going on there would be no way that they would be making any changes to their IT portfolio right now - understandable.

Around the same time I also got a message from a company formation company advising me that this unprecedented time could be a perfect time to review my current company structure (guess what - its not!)

I know what its like to be running an organisation that has seen basically all of its work disappear - this is what is happening across many sectors right now. I know its a disaster and I know we all need to scramble to find revenue quick - the fact is that very few companies are going to be making changes to critical infrastructure or suppliers (except cancelling them), no one is going to be signing new contracts.

Don't think about who can spend money, think about who is in need and what they are in need of, build relationships and offer smaller ticket items, ask for cash in advance if needed - treat this as part of an elongated sales pitch - the opportunities are out there, they just look a bit different.