Why you should redefine your Sales and Marketing strategy now
Machine Vision players are in a twilight zone: Covid-19 lockdowns are getting released in many countries, but the world has changed:
- Automotive, Aerospace and other traditional target industries for Machine Vision provide little business opportunities, still
- Other industries are thriving now, such as Life Sciences, Food & Beverages, Agriculture, and Logistics
- Traditional sources of sales leads have broken away with the cancellation of trade fairs and conferences
- Your marketing and sales team goes through a time of change. Such changes can trigger emotions like fear or at least insecurity. What is the future going to look like? Will my company survive the crisis? Will I survive the crisis in this company?
Let your team develop a holistic sales and marketing strategy to conquer the crisis. Utilize all available internal and external expertise. This approach releases psychological stress and aligns the mindset to confidence. With the full support of your team, you will be able to emerge as a winner out of any economic crisis. Therefore, now is the time to take a step back and develop a clear view for the next months to be proactive, strategic, and get ahead.
What is the goal of a post-Covid team day?
Now is the time to take a step back. It is the time to review your dependency on the different industry sectors, the targeting of your marketing activities, and your strategies of discovering business opportunities and generating sales leads.
Your team day should include at least four steps:
- Analyze the current situation:
Dependencies on sectors in crisis, ABC analysis of your customers, forecasts for your A and B customers, customer profiling - Identify options:
Where are the easiest opportunities to generate new business by sector, region, customer target group (aka. low-hanging fruits) and on which areas should your sales, marketing, and product development focus strategically (aka. high-potential seeds) - Evaluate options and prioritize
Focus on the best options by setting aside traditional approaches, utilizing an external host as an unbiased advisor, and think outside of the team’s comfort zones - Plan actions and assign responsibilities
Who is the right host?
You have two options: The team leader or an external host
An internal host knows the people, the problems, the personal difficulties. He knows the company, internal structures, and products. Therefore, he can host the team day without gathering this information. On the downside, internal hosts cannot set aside the effects of hierarchy and deep routed behaviors.
An external host shall come with deep know-how in Machine Vision, yet with a fresh, unbiased, inspiring view. He is raising new questions and contributing to new perspectives. He has the expertise in workshop methods to encourage creativity, smooth moderation of discussions, and ensure measurable outcomes. Therefore, the right external host adds significant value to such team workshops that reflects in its results.
Where should such a workshop take place?
With international teams and where contact restrictions are in place, the workshop can well be held fully virtual. Yet, this team day should break from the daily routine and be different than daily team meetings or jour fixes. Ask your team members to choose a different setting to join the team day so this workshop can really be a fresh start and create an inspiring atmosphere.
On-site workshops are best held in an inspiring landscape at a hotel or restaurant with the required meeting facilities.
What methods could be used?
Visualize your creative process!
We are all used to online meetings by now. For the creative aspect of the team day make sure to use meeting tools that have a whiteboard function (e.g. Webex*). A creative process does not match with PowerPoint slides. Scribble welcome!!
Participation is the key to success!
A key aspect is how to involve your team in the process of finding the best solutions based on your internal and external expertise. The involvement of the team in the process is a good basis for their subsequent commitment to the decided strategy.
A gimmick with an informal touch to get instant impressions on a topic might be the Mentimeter app*, a super-handy questionnaire tool for direct participation in real-time.
Record and follow up!
To structure collections of ideas and keeping the focus of discussions, live mind mapping is especially useful, e.g. by using the powerful tool xmind*.
Define a clear action plan including responsibilities during the whole workshop and bring it up repeatedly during the day.
How to include room for informal communication?
The big thing we are missing is the informal contacts, the short chat in the coffee kitchen that so often is the seed for inspiration. Therefore, you need to find ways to include room for random communication. One way to do that would be the donut app* for digital coffee kitchen by randomly connecting colleagues across teams for an exchange and facilitate social interaction.
Get your professional host for a team day to take a step back and develop a clear view for the next months to be proactive, strategic, and get ahead.
*We assume no liability for the security of third party providers
