Considering recent crises and events in the US, it is critical for businesses to adjust and reimagine themselves, not only to survive but to prepare for the post-COVID world. Kathy Bowman Atkins is the CEO and the founder of the Latitude Group, an expert who helps companies on this road, and she discusses the whole process in the new Expert Insight Interview hosted by John Golden.
This Expert Insight Interview explores:
- Why your business needs a plan
- Six-months planning cycles
- Adjusting the marketing strategies
Planning Is More Vital Than Ever
During this time, the employees are feeling a lot of uncertainty. They need straight and honest communication, but most of all they want to see that there is a vision of the future and what is coming next. It is clear that there are a lot of variables and that any plan will need to have some pivots and adjustments as time goes by, but it is a critical starting point.
Six-Months Planning Cycles
It is not the moment for making long and ambitious three or five year plans. Instead, Kathy suggests breaking planning into three six-month cycles. The first cycle is the emergence plan, and it is all about the financial viability and how to survive this period as a business. Changes are inevitable, and your product and service offerings might have to be different than before. The goal is to make the business as efficient as possible. The second cycle is the resurgence plan and it marks the transition from reactive to cautiously proactive mindset. In this stage, the target is to stabilize the business as much as possible, while assessing the internal processes, the external world, and the competition. The final phase is convergence, the time of determining what the new reality of the business is and bringing back marketing and a more strategic approach.
Adjusting The Marketing Strategies
Right now, it is essential to give your target buyer the reasons why they should do something with you in the next 6-12 months. People are becoming tired with emergency messaging, they want hope and positivity, but above all, they want to be heard. It is important to understand the personality of the people you are interacting with because everyone reacts differently to the conditions we are in at the moment. As a company, you want to acknowledge and be empathetic towards everything that is happening but still stays on a business foot.
If you have contact and you bring value to the people you are communicating with, you are building opportunities for the future.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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