Work from Home and Give Up the Office. Will We Stop Meeting Face to Face?

The COVID-19 crisis has sent the commercial real estate world into a spin. Companies have started to move out of their offices or have reduced their office spaces. Real estate investors have lost confidence and have stopped investing in real estate. The uncertainty of the future has left companies confused with no understanding for how to cope with the new normal.

1. What will this do to the business to business marketing?

2. How it will affect sales?

3. What will happen to lunch with clients, networking, and happy hour?

4. What should you do and how?

What will you do when the new trend of working from home will become the new work order?  

Office meetings, staff brainstorming sessions, sales meetings, and the most crucial: client meetings!

Google will keep nearly 200,000 employees working from home until Summer 2021. Other large companies like Microsoft and Facebook have followed. About 42% of the U.S. workforce form Fortune 500, small and medium-sized companies are now working from home full-time.

Does that illustrate a trend or the new “normal”? 

Closing the offices and moving towards a “work from home” attitude has shown so much positivity. It has team members feeling safe with their health concerns and saves companies millions of dollars a year. ­

Working from home most likely will become the ‘new normal’.

Before COVID-19, having a home office was perceived as “a miniature business who can afford rent.” This was not necessarily the truth, but certainly the perception, and in our era perception is reality.

COVID-19 removed the stigma associated with working from home. Today, companies are developing plans for work from home options beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

A recent study by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicated that the share of working days spent at home would increase from 5% pre-COVID to 20% during COVID. This positive increase will continue to forward.

It forecasts that after 6-12 months of social distancing, society will become accustomed to keeping the distance. Distance will no longer become a threat to business, nor will it interfere with creating close relationships with prospects and clients.

But How will you do it when there is no office, restaurant, networking, happy hour place to meet?

In the last 6 months shopping online has intensified. Amazon sells are more than expected.  Fewer people are willing to visit brick-and-mortar stores, restaurants, and bars.

What will sales look like when you can’t meet your prospect face to face? 

Businesses become a number game. Text and email to more, have more phone conversation, video meetings, and study how to close. 

There are many concerns but only one answer.

The Internet!

Without the internet, the outcome is obvious. 

• • Many people start buying books online. Experts advised Border’s Book Store management to adapt the eBook. They refused. In February of 2011, Borders filed for bankruptcy protection.
  • Blinded by its success, Kodak decided that the camera will keep America hooked on film. Kodak didn’t listen to internet advisors and didn’t realize that people walk with the internet while they walk next to it. Kodak has rapidly decreased its sales and is not the giant of the past.
  • In 2000, Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, proposed a partnership to Blockbuster CEO, John Antioco. Antioco refused his proposal. Can you guess what happened next? Blockbuster went bankrupt. Netflix is now a $28 billion-dollar company.

Will you wait, or will you adapt to the new normal?

How will you adapt to the new business order? 

1. Transition to the Paperless Business Card.

• • • Text it to clients, new and old prospects. It connects.

2. Attach a meeting schedule to your website, social media, and email, I would say even to your Paperless Business Card.

• • • It makes you available 24/7

3. Concentrate on collecting and promoting reviews.

• • • It places your competitor behind

4. Ask consistently for referrals.

• • • It pushes great new customers your way.

5. Improve your website.

• • • It will attract 95% of WHO WILL NOT come to your office or store.

6. Improve your SEO efforts

• • • It will send more prospects your way

7. Consider an online ad campaign. It pays!

• • • It will bring you, new clients.

8. Start a constant email campaign.

• • • It will introduce your product or service to a lot more people.

Adapt fast or else the market will push you out.

Darwin said 

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” 

The working world is changing at the speed of light.

Adopt new managerial practice. Register and join a 15 minutes webinar on Wednesday, Aug 26 at 1:00 PM. Learn more about affordable business adaptation. From your first meeting to being on top of the search engine- local SEO.