DLL’s Tech Solutions Global Business Unit President, Rick Trobman, reflects on new ways to meet partner and customer expectations in the digital work environment.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, the very foundation for how we develop, build and maintain business relationships disappeared. Meeting customers and prospects at their offices, or in restaurants and bars, was simply how business got done. Since March of 2020, almost every company has been forced to reevaluate their customer-facing meeting strategy and ask, “How do we continue to create, nourish and grow relationships in a virtual environment?”
When our global leadership team dug into this, we saw both an urgent need and a clear opportunity. A sales leader’s primary responsibility is to ensure that their teams have the products, tools and skills that best serve the needs of their customers. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded and the immediate disruption to customer engagements became evident, we realized the need to provide our sales teams with new ways to work as well as new tools and skills. Our sales teams needed support to make the shift to selling confidently and effectively in a virtual environment. The big question was: how can we create the right atmosphere to have meaningful conversations with our partners and their customers? Amidst pandemic lockdowns, “Zoom fatigue” and 100% remote work, answering this question required some highly creative thinking.
