A company cannot have excellent customer satisfaction without having excellent employee satisfaction – therein lies both the challenge and the opportunity. Much has been written about staying close to the customer during the COVID-19 crisis. While rightly so, there has been far less attention toward the changing behaviors and the sustained impact on employees.

Welcome to part three of a five-part series of articles on “Emerging Stronger Post-Pandemic,” which has been specifically developed for mid-market companies. In the first article, we identified several key trends and discontinuities that have emerged from the pandemic (which smart business leaders will see as opportunities) and provided four areas that mid-market companies must focus on to not only survive, but thrive over the long-term. These four areas include:

• Redefining the customer experience
• Reviving your relationship with employees
• Restructuring your supply chain
• Rethinking and resetting your strategy

The subsequent articles in this series will spotlight each of these core areas.

Revive Relationships with Employees

Much has been written about staying close to the customer during the COVID-19 crisis, and for good reason. However, a company can’t have excellent customer satisfaction without first having excellent employee satisfaction. There has been far less attention on COVID-19’s sustained impact on employees and the resulting change in their behavior. Herein lies both a challenge and an opportunity.

This article focuses on the changes in employee mindsets and behaviors that demand a thoughtful organizational response to achieve lasting success in the eventual “new normal.” Employee mindsets, behaviors, and even values are shifting, and there is likely to be a struggle to regain their trust, engagement and productivity. As companies consider how to operate during this transition, leaders must address the “human” side of their enterprise. It’s difficult – if not impossible – to return to “business as usual” with a workforce that is forever changed.

Company leaders will need to be deliberate in examining their culture, talent strategy, and employee engagement. This could be a “first” for some companies. There will be a call for a more informed and engaged workforce, a need to reduce anxiety, and a movement to prepare employees for changes in strategy, structure, and ways of operating. Smart leaders will even see this challenge as an opportunity to create a competitive advantage.

Below, we more closely examine the changing employee behaviors we have identified, the factors driving the change, and the resulting actions companies should take to prepare for the ever-evolving road ahead.

The disenfranchised workforce

Many have become unemployed or furloughed for the first time in their careers, which often reduces the confidence and security that these employees once felt from their employers. Those who maintained their jobs likely faced (or will face) pay cuts, reduced hours, mandatory vacation, or reductions to benefits. In addition to the emotional and financial toll this has taken on the American worker, it has also affected how they perceive their employer and engage in their work. To make matters worse, many companies have struggled with the quality and frequency of internal communications during this time. Companies are now faced with rebuilding trust and loyalty in their workforce, and even rebuilding confidence in the success of the company itself.

3) Inform, Engage, and Excite

As with customers, now is not the time to reduce communications with employees. Although some mid-market companies don’t have dedicated communication resources or formal communication processes, they must still provide clear, transparent, and consistent messaging to employees. Lacking in this area has long been an issue for companies during times of change, let alone in times of crises.

Employees want to hear from their company leaders and direct managers, even if there is no new information. Continue communicating to make employees aware that communication is open and welcomed, and that you respect them. Provide leaders with toolkits to help them cascade organizational communications to their teams, while also infusing specific details that directly impact their reports.

Importantly, remember that communication is not a one-way process. Organizations with well-executed communication plans make it a two-way street, with ongoing feedback mechanisms in place such as surveys, focus groups, or internal engagement platforms or communities. Capturing and incorporating feedback in real-time is critical, especially in times of crisis and ongoing change.

When creating informative, timely, and engaging employee communications, we recommend having three purposes in mind, each occurring in different points in time and having different objectives:

Ultimately, an engaged and motivated workforce relies on well-equipped leaders for communication. Employees want communication that is frequent, has clear and consistent messaging, and is delivered via multiple channels. In times of crisis and uncertainty, they want more communication, not less.

Examples of what companies are doing

Verizon Media treats employee communication like the backbone of its business. In response to the pandemic, they:

• Launched a daily organizational newsletter with resources to help cope with isolation, anxiety, and stress
• Created toolkits for leaders to support their teams
• Hold virtual Q&A sessions with the CEO and guest speakers to address issues affecting mental health (Dr. Jennifer Lanier Payne, associate director of psychiatry at John Hopkins, led a session on managing mental health during COVID-19).
• Provided alternative resources through their Expanded Mindfulness program that helps employees manage stress, improve sleep, and cope with anxiety, including virtual crisis counseling sessions.

5) Strategically Manage Talent

Little is more important to a company than the people and the processes that support it, so it’s critical to recruit, develop, reward and retain the right talent. Too often in times of change, crisis, and major shifts in strategy, companies underplay fundamental people processes. If results suffer, then blame is placed on the new strategy, not realizing that key enablers like the right talent and structure were not appropriate for this new strategic direction. Organizational structure must align with the new strategy.

At a minimum, we encourage companies to test or “triage” whether your people, skills and structure fit the new business model, strategy, and inclusion principles that are emerging. And do it fast! This calls for careful attention to organizational design, having the right people in the right roles, performance management, and more. Consider the following questions:

• Critical people and roles. Do you know and track the most important roles in your company, at all levels? Are the people in those roles today engaged, or at risk of leaving? How have you treated them and communicated with them during the crisis? Who are the opinion leaders – the “influencers” in the company to whom the organization looks for informal guidance? Are you making strides in enhancing your efforts on diversity and inclusion? Having the answers to questions like these – taking action around them – is important for both business continuity and for accelerating necessary changes.
• Reward systems. Is your reward system tightly aligned with any changes in your company objectives? Do your teams clearly know against what they are being measured? Are your (new) desired behaviors, values and culture connected to this reward system? For example, if having a focus on the customer or having integrity are tenants of the company, how do they show up in the performance management system? If there are changes to how the company will operate, does the reward system need to change to help accelerate? The old adage still rings true: you get what you measure.
• Organizational structure. Will the legacy structure meet the new needs of the company and any shifts in direction? Are the right people in the right roles? Are those roles clearly understood? These points are especially critical for the leaders. Do you have the right leaders in place and are they aligned with the (new) mission and ready to model the right behaviors? As you think about your future organization, consider building in more resilience. More and more companies are building responsive and flexible organizations with an interactive team structure, focusing less on historical departments and more on agile organizations with a network of teams that operate in rapid learning and fast decision cycles. These teams manage business units, geographies, product lines, and increasingly, specific projects.
• Reskilling the workforce. The shift to more remote work will require greater employee autonomy and the need for better decision-making, problem-solving, and creativity. Moreover, to continue to adapt and be resilient in the face of ongoing uncertainty, employees will require heightened emotional, mindful, and social skills. As companies reset their learning agendas, they must address skill gaps beyond new or remote technologies. The cognitive capabilities – once solely the realm of ‘leadership training’ – now must be addressed for employees at-large.

Examples of what companies are doing

Ally Financial is focusing on retaining its employees by:

• Expanding benefits to include additional services, like free telemedicine consults, that are tailored to this specific crisis
• Sending Employees who self-identified as high-risk (according to CDC guidelines) home with pay.
• Giving all employees making $100,000 or less in annual base compensation a $1,200 tax-free financial assistance payment to help cover unexpected costs related to working from home.
• Expanded childcare support for when daycare or adult/elder care arrangements are disrupted; Ally will cover 30 uses of emergency care.

6) Boost Employee Engagement

Given the shift to more remote work and a potentially less-trusting workforce, how does a company maintain and improve engagement? Add to this, as we have seen in the last months, it is more difficult for managers to manage remotely and further drive individual accountability.

Companies should first conduct the “after-action” evaluation: what worked, what did not, and how should we think about remote work strategically? How will we make decisions about which roles should work at home, and the policies and norms around doing so?

The need has long-existed to improve employee engagement in work and in company culture, but this is now more challenging due to COVID.19. Even before this crisis and the rise of a remote workforce, companies struggled with engagement. There are decades of clear evidence suggesting that over two-thirds of workers in the U.S. are not engaged at work, as Gallup survey data suggests. This alarming data is prior to a spike in remote workforce.

While there may be an initial spike in employee engagement as we return to work, our belief is that this will be short-lived, and the already bleak engagement numbers will worsen as remote work continues to be the norm. So how can employers expect to address this now and in the future?

Research shows that employees have clear primary needs to make them more satisfied, happier, and more productive. For example, according to seminal work done decades ago in “The Motivation to Work”, achievement (making a difference, seeing the value in one’s work) and recognition (when others notice and praise) are the main drivers to an engaged and productive employee.

This has not changed today- the motivators are the same. It’s about showing people they matter and that what they do matters. As further refined by Gregg Lederman in his book Crave, the three primary needs at work are:

• Respect- help me feel respected for the work I do
• Purpose- show me how what I do has purpose, makes a difference and has and is relevance to the organization
• Relationship – help me build strong connections with people, especially my immediate manager.

In Conclusion

Reviving the relationship with employees is critical as we emerge from the pandemic. Our employees have changed, and as our teams return to work, they will be returning to a changed workplace as well. Beyond safety, which is essential, the situation calls for improving organizational readiness, clarity, trust, and confidence. Having engaged employees – with the right skills in the right roles – will help them achieve the business results their employers expect.

Remember: To be successful, think not of what has worked in the past but what will work in the future. Listen to your employees and anticipate their needs both in the office and remote.

About the Authors

Rahul Kapur has 40+ years of successful business experience spanning a variety of areas. He served as Chief Strategy Officer at both Aearo Technologies (now 3M) and Dow Brands (a division of Dow Chemical). As a business consultant, he provides companies of all sizes with his expertise in strategy development, M&A, new products & innovation, and data analysis and modeling. He has helped nearly 20 companies develop their strategy to transform their businesses, using Icon Investment Partners’ proprietary business transformation system. Currently, he is Managing Director of Icon Investment Partners, Chairman of Guilford Group, Managing Member of Ark Capital Investments, LLC, and Senior Advisor for &Marketing, Crossroad Transactions, and Quest Safety Products, as well as on the boards of several start-ups.

Robert Olsen is a Marketing Expert, Speaker and Consultant with a unique combination of Management Consulting and C-suite experience in chemicals and life sciences.  He is an experienced Chief Marketing Officer, and has also served as Corporate Marketing Director at DuPont and a Strategy and Operations Consultant at Deloitte.  Robert helps companies grow, utilizing his expertise in marketing, sales, and innovation to navigate major changes and new programs including M&A, brand building, and culture transformations. Robert is passionate about creating a better customer experience and employee culture to drive business results.

Rajat “Raj” Kapur is the founder and Managing Director of &Marketing. He strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

Introduction

Welcome to part two of a five-part series of articles on “Emerging Stronger Post-Pandemic,” which has been specifically developed for mid-market companies. In the first article, we identified several key trends and discontinuities that have emerged from the pandemic (which smart business leaders will see as opportunities) and provided four areas that mid-market companies must focus on to not only survive, but thrive over the long-term. These four areas include:

• Redefining the customer experience
• Reviving your relationship with employees
• Restructuring your supply chain
• Rethinking and resetting your strategy.

The subsequent articles in this series will spotlight each of these core areas.

Trend #1: Customer will continue to be uncertain and anxious

Action: Build trust and deepen relationships

Early in the pandemic, businesses were in “survival mode” – keep employees safe, sustain business operations, ensure liquidity, and protect revenue. The companies that survive long-term, though, will be those that execute the fundamentals of communication, even if those customers are not currently in “buying mode.” This builds trust, and trust pays off.

Stay engaged. Even in the height of this crisis with limited operations, customer-first companies remained engaged with their customers. Beyond just ‘selling,’ you should update customers on the status of your business, provide content that caters to their specific needs, and proactively assure them that you’re taking all COVID-19 safety protocols seriously. Communicate through multiple channels, such as individual phone calls, video chats, social media, and digital content. Distribute pulse surveys to understand customer needs and concerns. This is not the time to disappear.

As noted in Forbes, “The research is clear: engaged customers have a virtually unbreakable bond with the company or organization that serves them. They buy more of your goods and services. They tend to spend more per purchase. They are more tolerant of mistakes. And they sing your praises to others.”

Communicate transparently. Let your customers know the steps you are taking to serve (and at times, protect) them. Customers empathize with and are understanding of brands facing a crisis, as long as you communicate with them honestly and in a way that feels “human.”

“Operational transparency can fundamentally reshape the ways customers understand, perceive, and engage with the organizations that serve them. Transparency increases not only sales, but also people’s trust and satisfaction.” – Ryan W Buell, Harvard

Fully leverage technology tools. If you don’t typically use social media, now is the time to start. Update customers and build your “voice” via LinkedIn or Facebook, and encourage engagement. Consider hosting virtual trainings, providing on-demand content, and creating interactive material such as videos, quizzes, and infographics. Also think about implementing customer portals to create a sense of community and increase the number of people talking about you and your brand. Peer support enables even more trust.

Ensure a full organizational effort. You can’t limit communication responsibilities to marketing efforts and salespeople alone. Deepening customer relationships will require you to amplify all customer touchpoints, whether in-person or virtual. Your entire organization, including customer service, technical support, accounting, warehousing, and even manufacturing will need to keep customer needs and engagement at the forefront.

What Companies are Doing.

• A top global B2B industrial manufacturer launched hundreds of virtual courses that targeted every level of the customer journey. They provided content for “breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” across a spectrum of free informative webinars, technical courses for continuing education credit, and interactive Q&A sessions. Since customers were at home, they logged on in droves. Since launching, the sales team has reported renewed relationships with previously dormant prospects. Anecdotally, their strategy has already paid off handsomely.
• Additionally, most banks, insurance companies, and other financial services companies are proactively communicating and even advertising their action plan for protecting customers and supporting them through these trying times. This has included sanitizing premises, reducing or eliminating premiums, delaying payments, and other similar activities.

Trend #2: Customer behaviors have changed and will continue to change.

Action: Weave a deep and ongoing understanding of your customers into the fabric of your business.

The degree of change already underway, along with health, economic, and political uncertainties, creates a new and unprecedented need to better understand customers: the way they now think and their new behaviors, needs, and constraints. However, according to Teradata, only 41% of marketing executives are using customer engagement data to build their marketing strategy. Active listening using customer analytics data, and anticipating where the customer is going, are critical.

There is little historical precedent, but companies do need to go beyond the traditional methodologies (especially digitally), widen their aperture by looking at the entire ecosystem, and build the capabilities (or outsource them) to enable deep market insights. The companies that use these approaches to predict what may change – and the scale of the change – will win.

Go beyond traditional VoC. The old model of “voice of the customer” as an occasional project – usually led by the marketing department – is outdated, because it is not nimble enough to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. Speed of execution is paramount. Gone are the days of spending months perfecting a strategy internally versus experimenting quickly and failing fast.

Listen to customers and observe their behaviors in real time. Now is not the time to guess what they are thinking or what they need – you need to legitimately find out, absorb it, and react quickly but thoughtfully. Consider a “pulse” survey – a short, fast, and frequent survey that is simplified, does away with complex questions, and is intentionally designed to be done often. You can even identify emerging customer pain points that can become opportunities for you.

Importantly, study your competitors to identify significant changes in their activity. Are they adapting their messages to your customers? Or, are they quieter than usual? This may uncover opportunities to change your approach.

Many companies are also developing and adapting customer advisory boards, supplier councils, and formal and informal processes to gather quick market intelligence. Predicting and understanding how customer needs will change – and the scale of those changes – will enable you to pivot and adjust your marketing strategies quickly.

Interpret broader market insights. Engage the entire ecosystem and ask different questions. Beyond determining how COVID-19 has impacted your customers, find out how it’s impacted their customers (or end users). What kinds of uncertainties related to health, economics, regulation, or politics apply to them? Project how this might change in both the short and long-terms as you develop your company’s support plans.

To get a more complete picture, factor in how customers have been impacted by their broader ecosystem. In addition to customers, this includes their supply chain, their influencers, their regulatory situation, etc. Also understand what competitors are doing; good ideas can come from anywhere – even competitors.

Ultimately, based on these learnings, entirely new models for customer experience are likely to emerge in how you serve customers, develop products, adapt, and engage. The insights you gain may even help you identify new audience segments and influencers and solutions to meet their needs. This research is even more critical if your business touches healthcare, sports and entertainment, restaurants and retail, safety, and other industries impacted the most by COVID-19.

Understand and adapt to the new customer journey. Given the degree of change that is happening, the customer journey, and the ways in which your customers experience your products and services, have most certainly changed and will continue to do so.

Once mapped and understood, your customers’ experience can then be monitored and updated as you navigate through a series of “new normals” in the future. We’ve included a sample customer journey map for the purchase of a car, where the buyer goes through these similar steps.

Trend #3: Technologies to better understand, serve, and adapt to customers are changing rapidly

Action: Fast-track your implementation of customer technologies

Technologies that seemed cutting-edge yesterday will be mainstream in the new norm. Technology adoption and consumer behavioral changes typically follow a standard adoption curve, but these are not normal times. COVID-19 has been an unexpected catalyst for permanent change, causing a surge in e-commerce, disaggregated supply chains, and accelerated adoption of virtual reality.

For B2B companies, digitizing their sales process, invoicing, and customer service may have been a lower priority just six months ago, but this is no longer. What’s more, consumer expectations (think Alexa, Siri, Fitbit) are spreading into the B2B world. The winners will be agile companies who adopt these technologies, build best practices, and create a simpler and more efficient digital customer experience. This will have a step change-impact on the customer experience and innovation.

To the surprise of many, jobs that were previously “impossible” to do remotely survived the transition unscathed, both for companies and their customers. Accelerating your adoption of these technologies has the potential to impact the customer experience like never before. If you don’t, you risk getting left behind.

In April, the World Economic Forum identified 10 major trends impacted by the pandemic and, to remain competitive in post-COVID-19 world, encouraged companies to “build the necessary infrastructure to support a digitized world and stay current in the latest technology.” Which of these trends impact your business? How are you planning to not just keep up, but stay ahead?

Recognize the Revolution. Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum coined the phrase “The Fourth Industrial Revolution,” in his book of the same name.

“Of the many challenges we face today, the most important is how to understand and shape the new technology revolution, which entails nothing less than a transformation of humankind. We are at the beginning of a revolution that is fundamentally changing the way we live, work, and relate to one another… it is unlike anything humankind has experienced before.”

Beyond everyday technological changes, we’re seeing boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds blur, as new models for ensuring a positive customer experience emerge. We saw this with the use of 3D printing, AI, and robotics to create COVID-19 masks, which was done not by Fortune 500 companies, but by nimbler small businesses, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits. The pandemic is accelerating this “revolution” due not only to technological advancements, but the necessity and confidence to move quickly and adapt.

Modernize Your Customer’s Experience. Digitizing your sales process, invoicing, and customer service may have been a lower priority just six months ago, but this is unsustainable now given current events. In recent months, we’ve seen companies make significant investments in their digital footprints, including websites, social media channels, and customer portals. If you were not implementing these types of technologies before, now is the time; today’s new customer – regardless of the industry – will expect the best experience.

Forge the CMO-CIO Partnership. To accelerate the use of customer technologies and quickly adapt in the new normal, marketing and IT must reimagine how they work together. For years, CMOs and CIOs have attempted to collaborate with the rise of big data, analytics, and digital transformation. However, this previously lacked urgency. CIOs – fresh off the battlefield of transitioning their organizations to a remote workforce – must now work closely with the marketing department to continue to serve and improve the customer experience. They must work together to build a capability of sustained change and agility: to understand, serve and impress customers.

Agility in the new normal will require rapid experiments and a “fail fast” mindset, which is usually not easy for either CMOs or CIOs, but is a necessity. Additionally, top companies will also need to make sure the resulting surge of data from these systems is analyzed and integrated. For many, the last few months have proven just how nimble organizations can and should be when they face a crisis.

What Companies Are Doing.

• A cutting-edge healthcare company, which was leading the shift to “on-site” healthcare at corporate offices, was dramatically impacted by the shutdown because of remote work. Immediately, they switched to providing care by telemedicine, filling prescriptions virtually, and traveling to local neighborhoods to deliver care directly at patients’ homes. They even announced a brand new partnership with a biotech company to enable at-home check-ins for clinical trial patients.
• The home-delivery industry (i.e. groceries, furniture, and restaurants) has surged and there’s been an explosion of innovative practices, such as robotics and other “no touch” delivery. These are becoming standard, as they make people feel safer.

Trend #4: The sales function is changing dramatically

Action: Redefine the sales role

With the accelerating pace of technology adoption, entire populations have changed their behaviors overnight, and many of these behaviors will stay. Many companies are asking sales people not to visit. It will be awhile before in-person conferences and trade shows – a major forum for interaction with customers – will resume, and will likely take even longer for companies to actually attend. Sales teams must modernize their approach, enhance collaboration both internally and externally, and rethink their strategy for the future.

Become a True Partner. A Bain Study of successful B2B companies revealed that highly successful companies go beyond the price of entry and table-stakes to become a true partner and satisfy wider needs of their customers. The pandemic has made this mentality even more pressing. Highly successful companies will be more proactive in helping their buyers achieve success – they should provide critical industry insights (i.e white papers, case studies, webinars, etc), help buyers establish connections with other influencers, and enable unique capabilities which meet their end-users’ needs.

Strengthen Collaboration between Marketing and Sales. Sales and marketing teams are too often at odds with each other, but collaboration is especially critical when a crisis has caused an uncertain, rapidly changing future. These functions need to work very closely together on digital lead generation, account-based marketing, content marketing, and sales materials. Ensure these two teams meet regularly, gather and share quantitative and qualitative data on leads generated from marketing activity, and measure success. Marketing creates “sales enablement.” By providing them with market insights and tools, the marketing team equips sales with the foundational components needed to develop and execute a refined sales strategy. Sales in turn, helps keep marketing close to the customers voice.

An excellent best practice of sales and marketing collaboration is account-based marketing or “ABM,” which uses highly targeted, personalized digital marketing campaigns to gain traction with specific accounts that meet certain criteria. With ABM, you map multiple decision-makers at each account, build relationships, and develop customized plans that enable them to meet higher-level business objectives, with you as a key partner.

Develop a future-focused sales effectiveness model. To meet the demands of the ever-changing customer experience, it’s possible that a fundamental overhaul of your sales organization may be required. In many mid-market companies, this type of reset is long overdue, as only 55% of mid-sized companies are using any sort of sales model. Those that implement one typically enjoy, on average, a 15% increase in revenue.

The use of a sales effectiveness model, which “diagnoses” your sales organization, identifies gaps and opportunities, establishes metrics and benchmarks, and develops a path to increasing your company’s capabilities, can put you on a path to becoming a winning sales organization in the coming years. Even if you do not yet fully understand how your customer behaviors will change, begin the process of rethinking your sales organization – its structure, hiring processes, compensation, deployment and coverage models, tools, and training. This will allow you to continuously test both the relevance and performance of your salesforce, as the new normal evolves.

What Companies Are Doing.

• A B2B SaaS company re-trained its salespeople (who were relocated to their homes) to optimize their LinkedIn profiles, learn to network through digital platforms, and conduct outbound calling campaigns, in an effort to make new relationships and keep in touch with current customers.
• A mid-sized foodservice company, whose salespeople had previously only used trade shows and industry events to build relationships, implemented a new CRM, created thought leadership content on its website, and executed targeted lead generation programs via email, social media, and Google Ads. This resulted in dozens of new opportunities

Trend #5: Customers will gravitate toward brands who are taking a stand on social issues

Action: Identify the causes that align most closely with your brand and stakeholders, and carefully craft your response.

As the pandemic spread, every interaction changed overnight, with a major focus on human connection and empathy. “Getting down to business” was initially frowned upon, and conversations almost always started with personal rapport. Safety was always an important issue to a handful of companies in certain industries, but suddenly all customers and employees came to expect a heightened level of scrutiny on health and safety. And many companies are responding.

Societal issues, like sustainability and equality, are also top-of-mind for many, and companies are focusing on how to leverage these trends with the right products and services. The expectation on businesses to respond to social causes has significantly changed over the past decades. For mid-market companies, our advice is to choose carefully, rely on experienced hands to guide your approach, and think globally.

Choose Your Causes Carefully. You don’t need to take a stand on every issue. Instead, pick what’s relevant to your stakeholders (customers, investors, and employees). Understand what they hold dear.

Choose Your Words Carefully. The Public Relations and Communications function has become more important for mid-market companies. Having a crisis communications solution at the ready serves many purposes, and will enable you to be prepared to respond to “hot” topics that impact your customers and stakeholders.

Think Globally. If you operate in multiple countries, remember that these are not U.S. centric issues alone; most have a global impact. When communicating your position around a particular social issue, consider how your messaging may (or may not) resonate with other cultures that impact your business.

What Companies Are Doing.

• In the last decade, many companies have taken up the sustainability challenge and are now providing products and services that better align with this societal expectation. Patagonia is a great example of shifting away from natural “down” and taking the stand that, “At Patagonia, we appreciate that all life on earth is under threat of extinction. We’re using the resources we have—our business, our investments, our voice and our imaginations—to do something about it.”
• Famously, Nike ran a major ad campaign with controversial football player, Colin Kaepernick. Despite initial backlash, the business results spoke for themselves, as Nike’s online sales grew after the campaign. Notably, Nike’s motives were called into question on the Kaepernick campaign: “When for-profit enterprises insert themselves in issues like these, they invariably raise questions about their motivations and how much of the spotlight they should or shouldn’t take.”

In Conclusion

Bain said it well in a recent article, “Preparing for a Post-Pandemic World,” asserting that companies will have to “reintroduce” themselves to customers because their “needs may be dramatically changing.” Leaders at mid-market companies will need to listen to their customers, develop insights through fast market research, and learn from what competitors are doing. It will be a journey; be resilient and adapt as you go.

As you redefine your relationships with customers, remember the entire ecosystem has changed for both your customers and your customers’ customers. In some cases, the pandemic has impacted every level of a company’s network of suppliers, distributors, customers, end users, competitors, and regulatory influencers. Understanding how your customer’s world has changed – and responding accordingly – will be the basis for success in the “new normal.” Sales and marketing are no longer about simply providing products and services. The businesses that win will optimize every customer interaction and experience.

About the Authors

Rahul Kapur has 40+ years of successful business experience spanning a variety of areas. As a business consultant, he provides companies of all sizes with his expertise in strategy development, M&A, new products & innovation, and data analysis and modeling. His experience includes Unilever, Dow Chemical and Aearo Technologies (now 3M). He is Managing Director of Icon Investment Partners, Chairman of Guilford Group, Managing Member of Ark Capital Investments, LLC, and Senior Advisor for &Marketing, Crossroad Transactions, and Quest Safety Products, as well as on the boards of several start-ups.

Robert Olsen is a Marketing Expert, Speaker and Consultant with a unique combination of Management Consulting and C-suite experience in chemicals and life sciences.  He is an experienced Chief Marketing Officer, and has also served as Corporate Marketing Director at DuPont and a Strategy and Operations Consultant at Deloitte.  Robert helps companies grow, utilizing his expertise in marketing, sales, and innovation to navigate major changes and new programs including M&A, brand building, and culture transformations. Robert is passionate about creating a better customer experience and employee culture to drive business results.

Rajat “Raj” Kapur is the founder and Managing Director of &Marketing. He strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

About &Marketing

&Marketing provides the robust outsourced marketing department growing companies need without the high overhead costs of big agencies or full-time employees. Our variable model empowers businesses to reach their growth goals through access to the guidance and expertise of senior level strategists and a flexible execution team.

This article is the first of a series in collaboration with experts, including those at Icon Investment Partners.

Introduction

Most mid-market companies have taken the right immediate actions in response to the coronavirus outbreak: They’ve followed health and safety guidelines in their workplaces, cut costs, and taken out loans and grants. However, the changes occurring in behavior and attitudes are so deep that companies must re-examine how they do business and ensure that it fits the emerging “New Normal.” For many, this will be an opportunity to emerge even stronger and become more competitive. For others, things will never go back to what they were, and strategies that worked in the past may no longer apply.

To build and sustain long-term growth, mid-market companies must examine the discontinuities that are emerging and seize them as opportunities. Flexibility and adaptability will be critical. They will have to transform their thinking and continually innovate around their products, services, and business models to fit the ever-changing needs of customers and employees.

In this piece, we identify some of the emerging discontinuities and how they might shape the future. We then outline specific actions that mid-market businesses must take in light of these trends. Our intent is to get business leaders rethinking – and even repositioning – their business to achieve long-term success.

There will certainly be other major trends and discontinuities not listed here that will shape each competitive space. Additionally, change will continue as the level of unpredictability in the world economy is higher, possibly for our lifetimes. This is not only due to the world acknowledging the risks of future pandemics, but also because of other uncertainties related to geopolitics, environmental regulation, demographic shifts, etc. These uncertainties will result in more change and more opportunities, requiring successful organizations to be more mobile, responsive, and adaptable.

Emerging Discontinuities That Are Shaping Our New Normal 

Even when the pandemic ends, the changes that people around the world have made in how they operate their day-to-day lives will likely persist (and the virus may even return). This will have long-term effects on our home life, work environments, and social settings. It will impact the products and services we consume. Consumers will be willing to pay more to ensure their health and safety and will put their trust in the brands that speak to these issues.

Real innovation that meets this heightened focus is already emerging, and more will follow. Commercial sanitization will be important for years. Travel kits with masks, gloves and hand sanitizers will be needed. Winners will include those who first develop a proven treatment, a vaccine, better protective products, air purifiers that work on the virus, simpler tests to identify the virus, etc. Professional sports are a great example of adapting to the change. Designer face masks or ones with team logos are great innovations.

Consumers will spend more time at home, even when social distancing ends, and will want to improve this environment for their professional and personal lives.

Even when the government lifts stay-at-home orders and the economy dials back up, it will take time for consumers to readjust. A Harvard study showed that social distancing may be needed until 2022. More time at home will result in greater focus on improving the home environment and activities like home delivery, home entertainment, internet use for professional and social interaction, etc. Further, many companies or individual employees may continue working from home depending on their unique circumstance. Companies may also embrace remote employees as a way to reach a larger talent pool in other geographies.

Optimizing home work environments will require investing in and adapting to the appropriate technical capabilities that will be needed. Internal meetings – and even important B2B prospect meetings – are occurring online. Teams need to be proficient in Zoom, Slack, and other video/messenger apps. College students are adjusting to e-learning and may even prefer it. As the next generation of the workforce, this will likely influence how businesses operate.

Digital will continue to dominate both B2B and B2C, so tech capabilities will be critical to accommodate online ordering and virtual sales interactions, customer meetings, and events.

The demise of physical locations is accelerating. There has been a major uptick in online sales, such as Amazon and other online retailers as well as delivery services. Research shows this trend will likely continue when the pandemic ends. Customers – both B2B and B2C, especially younger generations – will look for clean, easy-to-navigate websites. They’ll seek information and company updates via customer portals, chatbots, group forums, online communities, and digital libraries. Customer service and resolving customer issues with speed will be difficult but essential to keep them satisfied. Companies will look for vendors who can seamlessly sell, invoice, and hold meetings online as remote work continues. Many companies will need to deepen their digital footprint, grow their online capabilities, and train up their employees.

Smaller competitors will continue to go out of business, creating opportunities for partnerships, M&A, or gaining new customers.

This is an unfortunate reality, but survivors need to seize these opportunities to gain market share. You should consider partnerships (technical, services and commercial), mergers, or acquisitions. Even direct competitors could combine operations to stay in business. Types of relationships that would have been unfathomable in February of 2020 may become a reality in the coming months and years. These new relationships will not necessarily be on a cash-only basis, but take many forms such as equity, commission only, or part cash/part stock

Disrupted supply chains will need to be rebuilt (especially those that are international).

Smaller companies have shut down operations and, unfortunately, over a third may not survive. Imports are stalling, especially from China. A decade or two ago, this would have been less of an issue, as most companies operated closer to home. However, most are now global, with significantly more offshore business and supply chains that extend around the world. Because of this, there is now an increased discussion on diversifying suppliers. Companies may not move manufacturing to the U.S. given higher costs, but to other countries in the Far East, as well as Mexico and Central America. According to McKinsey, “Actions taken now to mitigate impact on supply chains can also build resilience against future shocks.” It is necessary to granularly review bills of materials, catalog components and products needed by service companies to identify what is at risk. Remember, when your business opens back up, some of your vendors may not. You will need to look for alternatives, some of whom may require cash up-front. Domestic manufacturing and simpler supply chains, such as more imports from within the Americas, are emerging.

A blog by Beam, Inc. captured it well: “In times of great challenges, resilient companies reinvent, redesign and regenerate their business to come back stronger than ever.” Examples include Ford and Netflix after the Recessions and Apple in the 1990s (pre Steve Jobs’ return). Further, some of the most well-known billion-dollar companies were birthed out of crisis, including WhatsApp, Venmo, Uber, Airbnb, and one of today’s remote work favorites – Slack. Apple is already moving some of its manufacturing out of China. Nascar and other pro-sports are starting up very differently. These companies identified the emerging societal and business trends, and created business models that fit the new norm.

Today’s mid-market companies need to embrace change – not fight it – and prepare for a future that they never saw coming. Based on the many examples of how businesses have reacted to this environment and past discontinuities, we believe there are four critical areas in which a company must adapt to emerge stronger and more competitive post-pandemic:

• Your Customers
• Your Employees
• Your Supply Chain
• Your Strategy

Your Customers

• Communicate early and often with customers through emails, social media, and digital content. Keep them updated on the status of your business, and create content that caters to what they need during this unique time. Even when the pandemic ends, continue to communicate the health precautions you’re taking; this will be a priority for consumers.
• Improve your online presence, including your website, social media channels, and customer portals. For B2B, ensure seamless online selling, invoicing, customer service, etc. If you were not state-of-the-art, now is the time to make change and develop these capabilities.
• Accelerate technology adoption. The technologies that seemed cutting edge yesterday will be mainstream in the new norm. The winners will be companies that adopt these technologies, build best practices, and train their employees. More and more interaction with customers, suppliers, and employees will be digital. These capabilities include CRM, e-commerce, thought leadership processes, consumer analytics, artificial intelligence, and even cybersecurity. The boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds are blurring as new models for ensuring a positive customer experience emerge.
• Acquire and interpret a broader Voice-of-the-Consumer. As the customer is changing and has a heightened need for communication and collaboration, talk to or survey your customers to better understand their needs. Ask questions such as: How have their needs changed? How might they change in the future? What kind of health, economic, or political uncertainties do they have? What kind of support are they looking for? The results may even help you identify more diverse audience segments and influencers; you’ll need to develop solutions that meet their needs, thereby stimulating demand.
• Support your sales team, as their role is changing rapidly. Sales teams that previously relied on in-person interactions will need to be trained on virtual relationship-building. They’ll need to go beyond table-stakes to become a true partner and satisfy wider needs, as shown by a Bain Study of successful B2B companies. They’ll need support, particularly with digital marketing and account-based marketing.
• Be very conscious of societal issues. Consumers (and prospective employees) want to see that you are a proponent for “good.” This will improve your ability to attract customers, employees, and investors, and should be incorporated into your value proposition.

Your Employees

• Communicate frequently. Keep employees informed about the state of the business, company policies, and expectations. Do this in-person in the office; via email, an Intranet, if you have one, or even a recorded video message to add a personal touch. Honest, frequent communication will help mitigate fear, prevent the spread of misinformation, and boost morale. Further, your employees will be able to help identify gaps in a coronavirus plan and make improvements. Importantly, always communicate with empathy.
• Be flexible and accommodating. All circumstances are different. Consider individual needs to keep your top talent and boost morale. Give local managers authority to make operating decisions based on their unique circumstances.
• Consider erosion of loyalty. Companies will experience an erosion of loyalty and trust due to job losses, furloughs, lack of raises, pay cuts, paused contributions to 401ks, and so on – not to mention the fear and uncertainty associated with the virus itself. Focus on improving your company culture and reengaging the workforce.
• Adjust workforce planning and talent management strategies. This includes reward systems, compensation, and providing remote work essentials (supplies, monitors, etc.). Labor markets may become less restricted to specific geographies and locations. Employees may expect much more than standard benefits.
• Build a more flexible and agile organization. To manage your business in a changing and evolving world, your senior management team will have to be more hands-on and create a working rhythm to gather and process market feedback more frequently. Your ‘central office’ must lose its grip on centralized decision-making, and be dependent and trusting of teams closer to the action to manage business segments, geographies, product lines, and specific projects; this is a hallmark of flexible and agile organizations. Many organizations create a role or small team to act as COVID-10 “Czars” to ensure that issues are being reported quickly, and guidelines and best practices implemented quickly.

Your Supply Chain

• You may need to find new vendors. When your business reopens, your vendors may not. New vendors may require different arrangements such as cash-on-delivery that will require you to rethink previous ways of doing business.
• Focus on building new relationships domestically. Your problems may be more severe when your supply chain is international. The world is likely to move toward developing more domestic alternatives, or at least look for alternatives in the Americas. A strategy of mixed sourcing – especially for more critical parts, components, or ingredients – will be more common.
• Develop a risk index for each commodity, based on uniqueness and location of suppliers. Granularly review bills of materials (BOMs) and catalog components to identify the ones that are sourced from high-risk areas and lack ready substitutes. According to McKinsey, “Actions taken now to mitigate impact on supply chains can also build resilience against future shocks.”
• Make supply chains agile and flexible. Increase visibility and create easier processes to onboard new suppliers.

Your Strategy

• Develop opportunity lists and prioritize these based on size and level of difficulty. Use external and internal experts, brainstorm, and tap into your deep knowledge of the competitive space to develop opportunity lists. Then use a 3X3 prioritization matrix, based on the size of the opportunity and the difficulty of achieving it.
• Evaluate partnerships, alliances, and acquisitions. There will likely be a significant amount of new partnerships and M&A activity as, unfortunately, some competitors may not survive. Partnerships could help you be more efficient, grow your customer lists, enhance your supply chain, provide access to other geographies, and build or add to your current competencies. These partnerships will not necessarily require cash and could take many forms, such as equity, a commission basis, or part cash, stock, or commission.
• Develop a simple strategy map to define the four to six key external strategies for the company. This will become the “box-top” for your strategic direction and should include your vision, financial goals, what you need to execute externally, and what resources and capabilities you need internally. Business segments, geographies, and functions will then determine what they need to do to support the company strategy.

In a recent &Marketing webinar we dove deeper into the resulting business trends from COVID-19 and the necessary actions mid-market companies should take to build and sustain long-term growth. Watch the entire webinar below!

About the Authors

Rahul Kapur has 40+ years of successful business experience spanning a variety of areas. As a business consultant, he provides companies of all sizes with his expertise in strategy development, M&A, new products & innovation, and data analysis and modeling. His experience includes Unilever, Dow Chemical and Aearo Technologies (now 3M). He is Managing Director of Icon Investment Partners, Chairman of Guilford Group, Managing Member of Ark Capital Investments, LLC, and Senior Advisor for &Marketing, Crossroad Transactions, and Quest Safety Products, as well as on the boards of several start-ups.

Robert Olsen is a Marketing Expert, Speaker and Consultant with a unique combination of Management Consulting and C-suite experience in chemicals and life sciences.  He is an experienced Chief Marketing Officer, and has also served as Corporate Marketing Director at DuPont and a Strategy and Operations Consultant at Deloitte.  Robert helps companies grow, utilizing his expertise in marketing, sales, and innovation to navigate major changes and new programs including M&A, brand building, and culture transformations. Robert is passionate about creating a better customer experience and employee culture to drive business results.

Rajat “Raj” Kapur is the founder and Managing Director of &Marketing. He strives to provide growing businesses of all sizes unparalleled marketing strategy and execution services. Raj brings two decades of professional experience in marketing, sales, and strategy development experience spanning B2B and B2C Fortune 50, mid-sized, and startups.

About &Marketing

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