For anyone who’s part of a sales team, your job has probably got much harder recently. 

You’ve had to quickly adapt to remote working. You’ve had to pivot your aims from chasing new business. And you’re now selling to people who suddenly have a lot more to worry about than buying your products.

But at the end of the day, the world is still turning: people are still buying and deals are still closing in many industries. COVID-19 may even be surfacing new use cases which urgently require attention, and businesses are competing on delivering against them.

Ultimately, sales leaders are looking for ways to address today’s current challenges. Which is why we compiled a list of the top 5 COVID-19 challenges faced by sales teams today. 

Let’s go through them.

Challenge #1: Everyone is now virtual selling

It’s even more important to make sure everyone is working from a mutual view of account and opportunity information. Many businesses are also responding to the current economic climate by offering their customers free products, pausing subscriptions and providing more flexibility with payment terms. However, if not done properly, this can cause major operational issues.

How do you support reps to run the end-to-end sales process from home? 

How can you rapidly adjust billing and invoicing to be sensitive to the financial needs of your customers?

Challenge #2: Lack of visibility into how COVID-19 is affecting customers

The key goal of any sales organisation right now is to help customers successfully navigate through this time. That means developing strategies to know your customer better and elevate your role from provider to valued partner. This means efficiently understanding the current state of your customer’s business, and potentially segmenting them to tailor your outreach. 

How do you get visibility across your organisation about your customer? 

Challenge #3: Risk of sales rep productivity and participation declining

In the new remote sales world of no more in-person meetings, sales people may feel unmotivated, overwhelmed, pressure to be productive. Already pre-covid, sales reps spend only 36% of their time actually selling - the majority of this time 64% is spent doing manual administrative tasks (Salesforce State of Sales report). So even if you had the visibility into which customers to target and engage with…

How do you mobilise your remote sales teams to act? 

How can automation and AI-powered tools help to make their lives easier?

Challenge #4: Sales leaders have to make decisions faster than ever, but are faced with uncertainty

During this unprecedented time, sales leaders are telling us that decisions that used to take 6 months now take place in a matter of 6 weeks, or even days. Many leaders are also facing the pain of having to pull reports themselves. And given all the uncertainty, many leaders have taken a scenario planning approach to their sales forecasts to account for best case, likely, and worst case outcomes.

How can you easily visualise data to identify bottlenecks and quickly assess where teams need support? 

How can AI help with scenario planning in new updated forecasts?

Challenge #5: Working on deals with distributed cross-functional teams

We know it takes a village to get a deal to cross the finish line. But when there is no more possibility for the usual corridor conversations between departments, deal information is scattered across multiple systems, and all teams feel stretched with extra work and an influx of video meetings...

How can you collaborate effectively across functions? 

How can you bring everyone up to speed without unnecessary meetings?

We answer these questions and more in our latest webinar about selling in the new normal

While we can’t be certain yet about what sales could look like post-Covid, companies should use this as a time to understand if they are getting the maximum value out of their current tools and software. Now is the time to be doing as much as possible to be ready for that time, and have everything in place to thrive in the next normal.

Learn more by watching ‘Selling in the New Normal’ to see how we can help your business thrive right now.