by Catia Mondlane
Everything has drastically changed and having to adapt to the new situations hasn’t been an easy task especially when one is used to being outdoors, interacting and building new relationships. When selling a service, one can easily customize to meet a range of needs or even solving specific problems. Since the social distancing began it has been a challenge for many service providers because it might be difficult to describe one’s service to prospects, especially if customers have a hard time visualizing what one does or how can be helped.
The truth is whatever you are providing it must add some value to the potential buyers. And one must counter this by being very specific, because some customers may express more reluctance when buying a service, since unlike a product, they can’t evaluate it before they use it, and usually services can’t be returned. So instead of serving customers face-to-face, many have had no choice but to move the interactions and relationships to COVID-proof digital channels where customers have been supported through online platforms, buying services through content, insights and advices. The good news about selling services is that one can also give trial offers, or discounts without losing money (such as money you may have invested in a product) and there is no such thing as dealing with return shipment costs and re-storing items, as with a physical product which makes services require little to no financial investment, and no inventory storage space.
Understand that this won’t fully replace face-to-face interactions but can help your salesforce to focus their time on the most attractive customers and automate the rest, which might take time to build and optimize because this requires a continuous development and investment. Although this requires training and experience to approach customers and sell services online, the transition has to take place and these sales channels are important to consider and organize because it is an opportunity to deliver efficient and scalable digital sales to a wide range of customers through video and messaging connections.
Testimonials, social proof, and word of mouth help ease potential customers’ minds that one service is worth the time or monetary investment which might lead to permanent high online brand recognition. This is for sure a great opportunity to apply various remote self-service models and resource efficiency through centralization. And even after this all is over, we must continue to improve new forms of sales and businesses operations so that we don’t paralyze regardless.
Cátia Mondlane is the CEO & Founder of Isabella – Estética & Cosméticos, an innovative Mozambican cosmetic company that brings natural skin solutions based on locally sourced organic and fresh ingredients. Her brand is especially for people with sensitive skin and who want to be kind to their skin at affordable prices. She is currently based in Maputo, Mozambique.
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