An essential GTM change strategies in the Post pandemic economy

Companies are re-writing their Go-to-market strategies heading towards the new economic era

The COVID-19 has opened up for conducting the business in a new unimaginable ways. This pandemic has even forced the higher management to lowest strata labors to engulf into new ways of delivering the objectives to their customers and suppliers.

The demand and supply analogy is off the balance, unemployment rate is higher than the last decade and the stock market is bearish, growth is at all-time low when compared to the last ten years growth rate. To cope up to the situation many companies are digitally transforming their operations and virtually connecting with their stakeholders to serve them in any way possible.

Adoption of remote tools to enable their employees to work from home, getting the aid of several automation software to market their product and services online. Many of the companies are even starting to develop their own e-commerce sites which is again a shift in their sales model.

The present surge in transformation creates doubts and also opens up several questions:

• Does the fully integrated online marketing strategy will enable the customer and companies come closer?
• Will the swift in the digital transformation likely be accepted by employees and shall not disturb the alignment of the teams?
• Will remote working be productive?

But it is very clear that companies and its stakeholders are not in a position to reject this transition. Moving forward it is evident that someday these transformations are bound to happen and now with this gruesome situation it has further accelerated the process. More importantly changes are inevitable and companies are realizing the necessity, upskilling their employees, revamping their process, changing their approach to market, adopting to the new environment and so on and so forth.

Below are some of the ways in which “Go to Market” strategy are changing and how to adapt to these changes which are helping the companies to digitally transform themselves.

Transition from Offline marketing to Online marketing

The outdoor marketing is no more relevant in this pandemic as there are lot of restrictions on travel and likewise marketers are concentrating all their resources into online channels.

There are a lot of advantages of having their online marketing strategy put in place as the marketers can easily get to know website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates and also digital ad ROI can be measured. It also enables marketers to decide on the budget and form strategies accordingly. Most importantly the marketers will be well aware of the customer behavior and plan their strategies within limited time possible.

According to HubSpot data, website site traffic enhanced by 16% from Q1 to Q2, and marketing email open rates were 18% above pre-COVID-19 levels by the beginning of Q3.

Transition from Outside Sales to Inside Sales

The present global struggle has turned the outside sales into inside sales. Although many companies think that this might be temporary arrangement but when they witness the benefits of the inside sales model they might consider this for longer term.

The decision making duration are also very quick as they can virtually meet and decide without any time constraint whereas in the pre-pandemic situation in which accumulating all the decision makers in one single roof would take time and it would be even more difficult if many of the decision makers are geographically scattered.

Tools like Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Team has made the stakeholders work closer together, not that these tools were not available during pre-pandemic but were not used effectively for it is meant to be used.

Another study says that the inside sales team make around 43% more calls and 9% more emails than the companies having outside sales team which has an impact on the customer collaboration point of view. Also according to Gong, having a video call during the sales calls increases the likelihood of closing the order by 41%.

Traditional Customer service to Self-service

Traditional customer service was like having physical presence of a sales personnel who explores an opportunity in the market whereas due to this pandemic, the number of customer initiated calls or chats are increased by 45%. This particular interaction directly from the customer initiates Self-Service mode of business. Even the data suggest that 67% of the customer prefers to have self-service rather than speaking to the company sales person.

Business using chatbot on their website would be able to manage the volume of queries more efficiently than the conventional method. Automated chat services are also one of the ways to provide self-service to the prospecting customers.

Forgo Bloated Tech Stack and embrace Lean Tech Stack

The rush in digitally transforming companies has made them look into appropriate new technologies. A wide array of tools are available at our disposal to consider but they do have some downsides to consider. When a company is digitally transforming and moving all the operations online they do pose a threat on a host of different tools which may not work in cohesion, leaving them with a bloated tech stack which creates data silos, increases administrative workload which further drives the team members out of alignment.

It is of utmost importance in this global struggle to decrease their tech debt and to adopt a lean suite of tools which are more aligned to their objectives, mission and vision.

A clear indication that the world is witnessing a rapid change and in business sector it’s even faster than anticipated. Pre-pandemic business models are subject to change in order to suit the present situation. Business adopting to these changes can have a sustainable growth because, with change comes with great opportunity!