An Unexpected COVID Side Effect

As startups scramble to adapt with COVID… The most amazing thing is happening!

This Amazing New Approach

I keep hearing: “In this crazy time, we can’t bombard prospects with our usual sales pitch. They’re in panic mode. Instead, we need to understand what they are worried about in their business right now, and then adapt our offering to try to help them as much as possible."

Guess what? That's working really well.

It’s almost as if... maybe that was the right strategy all along?!

New? No. Amazing? Yes!

Understanding what your customers are worried about, talking about their problems and how you can be helpful… That’s actually just good marketing. Get out of your head. Get out of Asana. Get out of your spreadsheets. Go listen to your customers (via Zoom of course!), and understand the progress they are trying to make in their world. Figure out how you can help them achieve their goals (which suddenly changed).

Don’t talk about your amazing product. Talk about your amazing customers and their problems. Use their words, earn their trust, and be genuinely helpful. If you can do that well, consumers and corporations alike will be happy to pay you. (And don’t stop when the Pandemic ends.)

Platitudes? Specifics: A few great examples.

• Health app Zoe built a Covid-19 symptom tracker app in one day, it has over 2 million downloads in 2 weeks <-- Read my case study 😀.

• Heights - nutritional supplement company published a resource guide where they compiled tips from experts on how to stay sane when working from home.

• Candor - helps people manage salary negotiations, build this crowd-sourced spreadsheet listing which companies were hiring vs. downsizing.

• Stairway Learning offers free online GCSE tutorials in maths, biology and physics.

• CountingUp released two Coronavirus Calculators: One for self-employed workers and one for employers, to size the impact and benefit of furloughs.

These are genuinely useful. But at any other time, we’d call these “lead magnets.” Understanding what your customers need, being helpful, providing good resources…that’s good business!