5 Business Industries Thriving During the Coronavirus (and How to Start One)

Deborah Sweeney

In Saint Louis, Missouri, a boom in puzzle sales has enabled Puzzle Warehouse, the largest distributor of puzzles in North America, to hire 10 more employees. Rancho Gordo, an heirloom bean supplier in Napa Valley, California, is seeing a massive surge in beans sales, from canned to dry beans. The Party Source, a liquor store in Bellevue, Kentucky, is enjoying more than just increased alcohol purchases. They’re also selling bitters, cherries and every other ingredient necessary for at-home cocktails.

Games, canned suppliers, and alcohol are just three industries breaking sales records during the coronavirus. Other thriving businesses experiencing an uptick in sales include, but aren’t limited to, the following:

• Local grocery stores, like organic grocer Erewhon
• Fitness studios and companies that sell fitness products

As citizens worldwide practice social distancing and hunker down at home, entrepreneurs are innovating their products and offerings. Adapting to these new needs allows individuals everywhere to maintain a bit of normalcy in an unprecedented time — and be productive and enjoy that time, too.

If you’re ready to start a business within one of these industries, or pivot your current business model and branch out into another field to help your customers during this trying time, take a look at the shortlist of questions you’ll need to answer before you begin.

Figure out your “why”

Why do you want to go into business? What are some of your short- and long-term goals for your potential startup? Or, why do you want to pivot your existing business?

Your “why” is connected to your mindset and may be found through these characteristics:

• You have a strong desire to make a difference in your community
• You are driven to do what you love and possess the skills required to execute
• You have found your purpose and want to pursue it
• You are ready for a new challenge that inspires you and allows you to keep learning

Ask yourself: is my idea a viable business?

This question is one you should be able to answer, regardless of the current economic climate.

You may have what you think is a pretty good business idea, but have you considered its variables?

Drafting a business plan can help you better answer these questions before you launch the company. A business plan evaluates the feasibility of the company from an objective standpoint.

It also addresses the answers to these questions:

• What makes my business idea unique and original?
• Is there a proven demand in the market for my business and its products/services?
• How will my offerings and services benefit the lives of customers?
• Where can I collect feedback from customers for my business idea?

When it comes to gathering feedback, consider conducting a survey or utilizing social media platforms reach your audience for unbiased feedback.

Determine your unique selling proposition

A unique selling proposition (USP) allows you create a clear brand identity. You must understand how to sell the products or services to yourself before you can sell them to customers.

In order to develop a USP, you need to be able to address the following:

• Identify your strengths. What makes you stand out from the competition? What do you have that competitors don’t?
• Figure out the ways that your business can solve problems that your target audience has. Do you fill a niche in the market that was previously missing before?

Pick your business model

Will this business be full-time or will it be your side hustle? Many successful businesses often begin as side hustles, and a passion project is a great way to stay afloat during uncertain times. Either way, you’ll need to select a business model for your company. Essentially, a business model is the plan to make money.

Business models are different among industries and are impacted by four key factors:

• Differentiation and pricing
• Marketing and sales
• Production and delivery methods
• Customer experience and satisfaction

Incorporate the business

You’re almost ready to make your business a reality! Make sure you take care of the following legal areas before you launch the business:

• Incorporate the business or form a limited liability company (LLC) for liability protection
• Register for trademarks to protect your company’s unique business names, slogans, logos, taglines and phrases
• Obtain an employer identification number (EIN) in order to hire employees and open a business bank account
• File any necessary business licenses required by your Secretary of State for doing business in your specific industry and state

Whether you’re planning to start a side hustle or pivoting your existing business, it’s important to be prepared. We’re living in uncertain times, but by taking the above steps into consideration, you’re on your way to making the entrepreneurial leap forward.

6 Fatal B2B Sales Mistakes You Must Avoid

Image credit: Patrick Foto | Getty Images

Say yes to face-to-face meetings with the power players.

Marc Wayshak

GUEST WRITER

Sales Strategist and Author

B2B sales can be incredibly rewarding and lucrative -- if you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, most salespeople in this field make the same few mistakes again and again. When everyone around you is making the same missteps and blunders with B2B selling, it can be extremely difficult to know how to fix your approach.

If you’re looking to overhaul your strategy for B2B sales so you can start to crush your competition, it’s time to start actively avoiding the most common B2B sales mistakes out there today. Here are the six fatal B2B sales mistakes you’re probably making:

1. Selling to low-level buyers.

It may be easier to get in front of buyers and purchasing managers than C-suite prospects, since you never have to deal with a gatekeeper in order to reach them. But those low-level buyers don’t have the power -- or the budget -- to tell you “yes.” In fact, they’re only really good at telling salespeople “no.” You won’t make money selling to low-level buyers in B2B sales, so make a commitment to seek out high-level decision makers who can actually say “yes” to what you have to offer their businesses.

2. Highlighting your product’s features and benefits.

There was a time when prospects cared about the features and benefits of your product. But they simply don’t anymore. Prospects today only care about the results and outcomes you can create in their world. More specifically, they want to know how you can solve their key challenges and deepest frustrations. Instead of highlighting your product’s features and benefits when selling to businesses, focus on specific outcomes your product or service can help your prospects achieve.

3. Giving proposals with only one option.

One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make in B2B sales is putting together single-option proposals. There are two major problems with these proposals. First, they don’t provide any context, which compels prospects to shop around to determine the value of your solution. Second, customers who really want to invest in a premium option will be limited to a lower-tier solution. Instead, provide a three-option proposal -- ranging from the lowest end option that will still solve their problem to a higher end option with the most value -- to boost your average sale size and the number of deals you close.

4. Relying solely on the phone and internet.

There’s been a big movement in B2B sales towards selling online and on the phone. In some cases, this can be efficient and helpful, but if you’re selling an expensive, high-end product or service that requires a serious investment, you simply can’t skip out on meeting face to face. Hop on a plane if that’s what it takes to sit across from a valuable prospect. You’ll increase your close rate many times over, and being able to close big deals at huge companies is well worth the cost of travel.

5. Failing to clarify your value proposition.

Every time a B2B prospect asks what exactly it is that you do, you should have a quick and rehearsed response that succinctly describes the value you create. Clarify, script out, and memorize your value proposition. This is the only part of your sales presentation you have to memorize, so there’s really no excuse for hazy, rambling answers to this question.

6. Rushing to offer deals and discounts.

Low prices only attract bad prospects in B2B sales. Your ideal customer cares about value, not price, so quit offering deals and discounts. It only lowers your value in the eyes of your prospects. Instead, focus on the value you create, and be proud to offer the premium solution on the market. This attitude will attract the type of customer who values you for years to come.

Which of these mistakes have you been making in B2B sales? How will you correct your mistakes and start crushing your sales goals? Check out this free Ultimate 3-Step Prospecting Call Template for more powerful sales advice.

https://bit.ly/2yFbqAh

The Non-Pharma Pharma Company?

Pharma’s commercial model is rapidly evolving. But where will it be in twenty years’ time?

By Danielle Barron

Across all industries, consumers are demanding more and companies are responding, adapting their commercial models in efforts to meet their customers’ evolving needs.

Pharma is not immune to these wider changes and most companies are actively rethinking the traditional model to ensure they can compete in an increasingly multi-channel, multi-stakeholder environment.

Healthcare is going through an “amazing transformation process” driven by new media, says Tim Kneen, Executive President at Merck. “The standard pharma business model of high volume, get access, make as much noise as possible will not be relevant going forward,” he says. “Across all industries, the most successful companies offer solutions that reflect the individual needs of their customers, but especially those that recognize these needs before the customer does.”

Seismic shifts

There are three “mega trends” in healthcare at present, says Kneen – the delivery of outcomes, personalized treatment and customer engagement. Addressing each will be critical to pharma’s successful evolution.

“Healthcare is shifting from acute medicine to health management, which includes determining susceptibility to certain diseases and early interventions that improve health outcomes. The focus is shifting beyond innovative drug – right now, the best possible outcome is that the patient takes the drug as directed but, with chronic disease, lifestyle intervention can often have bigger impact than drugs themselves.”

Pharma must think seriously about extending its offering through innovative devices and patient support programmes, he says, pointing to Merck’s Rebismart, a connected device that complemented MS therapy Rebif.

“Not only can we collect information on adherence but we can see the impact of the drug in terms of quality of life,” says Kneen. “This means physician and patient can have a discussion based on data, which essentially transforms the interaction to improve outcomes.”

With personalized treatment, the use of molecular markers and advanced algorithms can help companies to identify those patients who would benefit the most from treatments. He points to Merck’s use of Crispr genomic technology for gene editing as an example, but looking more widely asks who will pay for such approaches in the short-to-medium-term.

His third megatrend is customer engagement. “Patients have unparalleled access to health information, and pharma has to respond to this changing reality. Requirements for engaging with healthcare organisations are radically shifting and pharma is constantly seeking compliant ways to engage with patients.”

Commercial teams have changed hugely over the past 20 years, he says, when pharma was based on a large monolithic sales model with commercial teams tasked to see as many doctors as possible and disseminate promotional materials. Such a single channel model of face-to-face interaction is as good as obsolete, he says, while multichannel selling is essential.

“Historically, the commercial model was repetitive and lacking differentiation, with little guideline influence, for example. The past decade has seen dramatic change; now, multiple stakeholders are involved in treatment decisions and patients are key decision-makers, in addition to physicians, guidelines, HTA, payers, and government, among others,” says Kneen.

“With an increasing number of stakeholders involved in treatment choice, commercial roles have multiplied and diversified, while traditional back-office functions have become customer-facing. Key account management to tailor the right information to the right customer is a critical component.”

Enabled by digital, information now flows through multiple channels, moving beyond face-to-face to social media and remote calls, for example. “It is bi-directional and continuous,” he says. “Now, we can listen and learn, we can provide information as it is required, and this makes a massive impact on how we function as commercial entity now and in the future.”

Integrate or die?

Amid such change, much discussion and debate has revolved around whether the sales and marketing functions should be more integrated, given the undoubted benefits.

GSK is one company that is re-evaluating traditional ways of working, moving into a more cross-functional approach to delivering customer value. “Our aim is to deliver an exceptional customer experience through an integrated approach across sales, marketing, medical and market access.  This includes everything from capability building and benchmarking to business planning and execution on the ground,” says Colleen Schuller, Vice President, Global Head of Selling Excellence.

The company now has joined-up teams that look after multichannel marketing and launch excellence, selling excellence, medical excellence and market access capabilities, she adds. “What is most critical here is to be crystal clear on the strategy and how cross-functional teams will work together to deliver value for both health care professionals and patients,” says Schuller.

For Laurie Gery, Head of Commercial Operations at Sanofi Pasteur, integration means education. “We need to make people understand the value of what they bring to the commercial plan – then integration will happen more seamlessly because you are automatically aligning objectives. Integration means fewer head count but it also means that sales gets more complex. It is a matter of mindset and not who is reporting to whom.”

Sales and marketing must be “reinvented” into a seamlessly integrated, commercial outfit, says the Head of Commercial Excellence for a top 10 pharmaceutical company who wishes to remain anonymous.

Ultimately, a successful integration will be based on trust, he says. “The equation for trust is credibility plus reliability plus empathy. Often when it comes to a bad leader, one of these is missing in their role or they have all these components but everything is eroded by self-interest. You have to continually be doing things to build that trust, to ensure it is not eroded.”

A key element is to identify ‘them’ as something external, not sales versus marketing, he says. “It sounds like a minor thing, but it has a big impact on performance.”

Running a digital marathon

Digital underpins the metamorphosis of the current commercial model, with next-generation pharma adopting a multichannel selling model to reach plugged-in patients and healthcare professionals.

Pharma needs to become better at selling in a multichannel world, says GSK’s Schuller. “Reps need to become better at facilitating peer-to-peer dialogue, better at selling using the iPad, and better at virtual detailing. This will help take the sales force into the future.”

For Bogdan Rakitskiy, ‎Associate Director of Commercial and Business Excellence at Teva, pharma must become “efficient in digital strategies through the transformation of the commercial team into powerful skilled contributors. This is the hottest topic across all industries, not just the pharmaceutical industry. Proper management and implementation could bring a quick win in our fast-changing market.”

Building a cross-functional team, with buy-in from employees, is critical. Rakitskiy cites a personalized digital multichannel campaign run internally that aimed to engage 10 percent of employees that in fact reached closer to 50 percent, demonstrating that the staff are willing.

“Modern commercial teams are running an endless marathon of digital transformation,” he says. “We need to give our employees this new knowledge and skills.” A digital manager is necessary for overseeing this process, acting as the ‘coach’ of the cross-functional team, offering skills, support, coordination and communication.

One critical issue for pharma is the need for a continuous stream of new content, he says, pointing to Snapchat stories that are only live for 24 hours. And generic messages no longer cut the mustard. “Pharma content needs constant revision in order to meet customer demand for personalised messages. Before, we could use a sales presentation for over a year, now everything must be changed and updated all the time,” says Rakitskiy. As the longevity of content decreases, so too the cost of content production must decrease.

Beyond pharma

Is the future of pharma an integration of sales, marketing and medical into a seamless, virtual selling organisation?

“Perhaps,” says Kneen, who says that pharma companies must continually revisit and redefine. “The model of commercial teams will continue to evolve at a pace aligned with the rapid transformation of healthcare systems. The challenge for the industry is to identify the solutions required before anyone else, to respond and evolve quickly. Pharma will need to develop and bring in the variety of skills and knowledge that can respond to this pace of change in our transforming healthcare market,” he says. “As we move away from a focus on volume, it is the valued solution, not the product, that will dictate future winners.”

There are three possible approaches, he says. Pharma can remain as commodity producers, become value innovators or it can become digital health integrators, providing integrated healthcare solutions that reach far beyond the traditional tablet. The latter is where the most interesting changes will occur, he says, as it would clear space for disrupters to enter the market. “Which will be the first pharmaceutical company that does not produce a single drug?” he asks. It certainly seems to be a case of when, rather than if.

Winning Service Wins Clients

Earning a new client takes hard work, effort and a real understanding of their needs and desires. A couple of posts or knowing your own value isn’t enough. You need to actually demonstrate your expertise, gain trust and validate your ability to solve their most pressing problems.

SERVICE versus SERVICES

Your service, not services is one of the key factors that can be your unique selling proposition. Your competitor may sell the same widgets, but it’s YOU who has the opportunity to capture your audience and offer something exceptional and distinctive.

Be compelling.

Putting an end to their troubles is what they want most. This is your real product. It is you, your service and your ability to meet the customer/prospect needs that will drive your business. Their greatest pains are your selling features; how you’ll add to their lives like the genie in the magic lamp.

You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.  Jerry Fritz

As a Virtual Assistant, a few key areas where my clients struggle are:

1. Not enough time to contribute to their day to day business operations
2. Social media management
3. Productivity
4. Work life balance
5. Understanding the digital environment
6. Focus and staying on task
7. Project management
8. Business development

These all essentially relate back to time; something they don’t have enough of, nor do most solo-preneurs. Let’s just say I can create a highly sought after commodity. Now if I could snap my fingers to solve “world peace” we’d all be better off.

Being in business isn’t just about the sale; it is about fulfilling needs, valuing your customer and providing impeccable service. Remember, if you aren’t making love to your clients, prospects or associates, someone else will.

Serve and deliver to generate not only happy customers, but brand advocates; the foundation of your success. Shape your organizational culture around real pledges, results and solutions to encourage the trust of your buyers and potential customers. Your business can’t survive online without it.

Your network is always looking for confirmation to ensure that a potential partnership or connection is dependable, trustworthy and “real.”

• Warrant the trust and loyalty of your audience; your community.
• Cultivate your relationships through trustworthy communications and reliability.
• Remove the feeling of vulnerability and risk of doing business with someone in the digital world.

“When you try to get close to people you build trust.  Staying consistent with that strategy will not only build your influence and authority, but it will also help you make true connections! In order to create a personality that people will trust online, you have to learn how to make time to be personal.” Wade Harman

You are the architect of your business growth.

Establish trust and comfort to build the foundation for a long-term partnership. Make it evident that you genuinely care about your clients and their goals. Your paycheck comes second to their ultimate satisfaction because without them, there is no business. No success. Just a sign that says “Open.” You can’t eat that.

According to the report by Customers 2020:  “The customer of 2020 will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive. They will expect companies to know their individual needs and personalize the experience. Immediate resolution will not be fast enough as customers will expect companies to proactively address their current and future needs.”

Don’t be a statistic. Understand and acknowledge the inherent value of creating an impeccable customer experience. Innovate and be intuitive to stay at least one step ahead. Simple everyday measures to honor and respect your clients/prospects will far exceed any type of product you sell. It is the behind the scenes sincerity of thought that generates the win-win.

SERVE up some hearty unsurpassed service

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