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This blog is the first in a 4 part series that explains the SaaS Sales & Marketing Survival Checklist and gives you valuable advice on how to ensure that your SaaS business will not only survive, but be in a strong position to grow out of the current coronavirus crisis.
If you’ve not downloaded the checklist, you can access it here
Other blogs in this series are:
Part 2: How to Keep on Selling - Support and Close
Part 3: How to Build and Audience While Everyone is Listening
Part 4: How to prepare for the big bounce back
SaaS Sales and Marketing Survival Checklist
How to Look After Your Client Base During Times of Uncertainty
During a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, almost every industry is likely to feel the impact. Service-based businesses, in particular, can expect clients to lean on them for support and help in adapting to the changes.
Identify those most at risk
If you haven’t already, make a list or ask your account managers to identify the clients most likely to be financially impacted at this time. Do you have any clients who are danger of leaving your services? Are you able to offer them any additional support, payment holidays or support to ease the pressure? Offering help in this way can prevent them from cancelling completely.
If you’ve recently signed up new business before the news broke, it would be worth reaching out to these clients personally and letting them know what you are doing to keep operations running smoothly, and how they can rely on your service. Now isn’t a good time to push upsells or non-essential upgrades. If you have any clients who need to leave or reduce your service, then do what you can to leave the relationship on good terms so that once things stabilise again, they’ll want to come back.
Set a sensible communication framework
With global lockdowns and employees working from home, communication is key for your clients’ peace of mind. Make sure all your clients know how they can get in touch with their primary account managers and your management team if a problem was to arise. A personal call is a great way to check in with your clients and gauge how they are doing. This interaction will help you to offer appropriate assistance if required.
It may be that they have changed their working hours to help ease the pressure of working from home, knowing when they’re going to be online or unavailable can help you manage your own time and make sure they know when you’ll be available too.
Taking the time out to make these calls will not only help your clients feel valued but can also prompt conversations that may not happen over email. This creates more opportunities for you to be helpful during this time – without expecting anything in return. For example, you may have an internal process or a useful template that can streamline a tricky task for the customer. Or perhaps you have a contact that can help them with something that may not be directly related to your scope of work with them.
Continue to create supportive content
As we continue to keep calm and carry on as normal as we can, it’s important to try and keep your regular level of marketing communications going. If your planned content seems a little misaligned with the current tone, you may need to review and create new content that is beneficial and responsive to the needs of your clients and prospects at the moment.
From the conversations you’ve had with your clients, are there any common questions popping up? Have you discussed any new pain points that you’ve been able to assist with? Use these phone calls to not only check in but to discover more about what your clients’ needs are. This information will help you to drive your content forward – remember, the key to great marketing content is to always be helpful.
