You can’t meet in person. You can’t go to trade shows. You can’t network like you used to.

So what do you do if you’ve built your sales efforts – and your business – on these types of face-to-face tactics?

The answer is to use your digital tools to clearly showcase your experience and expertise.

In this article, I’ve listed three low-cost, highly effective tactics you can start using today to earn more meetings and rise above your competitors in the age of Covid.

Consistencies In The Anxieties

If you are a financial services firm, an engineering firm, an investment advisor, insurance agency, marketing, attorney, or consultant of any kind, you’ve been impacted at some level by Covid.

If you’re stressed about it, relax. You’re normal. Everyone else is stressed too.

The bad news is this – this normal is here to stay for a while. Simply waiting for things to come back to the way they used to be isn’t an effective strategy.

The good news is – adjusting doesn’t’ have to be hard or expensive to be effective.

Over the past six months, I’ve spoken with many professional folks just like you who are feeling the pinch and trying to navigate the ‘new normal’ of business development. In almost all of those conversations, the following three topics have proven to be relevant, meaningful, and perhaps even necessary.

YOUR WEBSITE

This is easily the most common issue I’ve been addressing with professional service firms. If all you do today is to revise your website language to help potential customers understand you better, you win. Because you’re losing potential business right now by not being clear and obvious.

This is the one thing you can do today that can add a tremendous long-term return on investment (ROI) to your business development efforts.

Specifically, pay attention to the following:

• Can a potential customer understand quickly (under five seconds) what you do and who you do it for?
• Is it easy for potential clients to see you understand their problems and how to address them?
• Is your contact information clear and obvious?
• Are you answering the most common questions in a highly visible location and being thorough in your answers?
• Do your services have their own pages, with thorough explanations and testimonials?
• Here’s a page that takes a deeper look at each of these points and how you can address one.

Bonus Tip: Show Off Your Personality
As you know, your personality is a powerful weapon in building trust, confidence, and likeability in the minds of potential clients. One of the reasons in-person meetings are so effective is that potential clients get the opportunity to connect with you as a person.

Review your website and find ways to inject your personality into it. Video is an easy and effective way to do this. One simple video tactic that has a high ROI is answering common sales questions.  By simply using your phone, iPad, or computer, you can build a library of answers to frequent questions that can help bring your personality, experience, and expertise through even when you’re not in the room. Here are practical tips to help you use your phone to make videos that have selling power.

WEBINARS

If you had asked me in the first quarter of 2020 how often I use video calls, I would have said: “rarely at all”.  Now I’m on Zoom or Google Meet at least twice a day and often much more than that.  It’s quickly become a part of the business day. And with it brings the opportunity to you and your firm.

In-person workshops are a fantastic lead generator and a powerful way to demonstrate expertise, showcase experience, and build connections with your audience. Since in-person activities are not an option for many of us these days, webinars have become an effective alternative.

A webinar doesn’t need to be high-tech and fancy. In fact, the more authentic, approachable, and relatable you are in your webinars, the more effective they are.

An easy way to get started with webinars:

• Start with an audience you comfortable with, like your own clients.
• Pick a single topic that you’re familiar with and would be of interest and value to them.
• Develop a simple presentation in a free tool like Google Slides.
• Keep the presentation to no more than 20 slides and keep the text on each slide to a minimum
• Use an easy tool like Zoom to schedule your webinar
• Zoom will automatically create an invitation with the proper links for sending to clients.

Bonus Tip: Cross Sell Clients Other Services
If you’re like most professional service firms, you already are frustrated that your clients don’t know all that you offer. In fact, you most likely have good clients, long-time clients,  using services from another consultant that you could be delivering. Use the webinar exercise as a way to promote those services and expand the understanding of your firm’s offerings.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Are you active on social media? You should be.

Use Facebook or LinkedIn to get your content out in front of more prospects.  Use the videos you’re creating to build interaction and show off your personality. Answers to frequent questions, especially in video format, make for excellent social media posts.

And while you’re creating those single-topic, high-value webinars on the topics that you already know inside and out, promote them on your social media channels.

Bonus Tip: Use Webinars To Find Prospects
Find companies and contacts that look a lot like your best clients by using the search feature on LinkedIn. Reach out to them directly and simply share the topic of your webinar and invite them to join you. Chances are, if you’re addressing a topic that is simple to understand and valuable to them, you’ll earn the opportunity to showcase your company, your services, and your expertise to prospective clients as well.

---

For tips on how to post with sales purpose for your business or for tips on how to get the most engagement, visit the social media category in our marketing blog.