5 tips for an SME facing an emergency: what I did in March 2020

March 2020: what I will do from Monday

I am recording this short video on 7 March 2020 to share my experience: the five things I will do in my company from Monday, which become five tips for facing an emergency that caught us unprepared, because in January nobody expected anything like this. From mid-February onwards we have to face it and try to come out of it with our heads held high.

1. Increase advertising spend

The first thing I will do from Monday is increase the budgets for online advertising, because offline initiatives are impossible right now, especially in Lombardy, and I think online is more and more a strategic hub for sales and company growth. How do you increase budgets at a time like this? By looking at the company's fixed and variable costs, trying to save on everything without compromising product quality, and investing all the savings in advertising. You have to sow today to reap in the future. I think it will take a year, the time needed to develop a vaccine, for the emergency to subside, and in the meantime many paradigms and buying behaviours will change. But now is not the time to give up or cut advertising budgets, otherwise when this is over nobody will remember our companies.

2. Innovate in business to business

In this situation we are already seeing a drop in physical contact, in Italy and abroad. The whole commercial side of the company, the people who go out to present and sell the product, export managers, agents, salespeople, a category I belonged to for ten years, travelling to the United States, meeting customers, shaking hands and pushing an offer forward, I see it becoming difficult. Because there is fear, and fear does not accept compromises. One immediate thing to do is move the first sales contact from offline to online, starting, if you are not set up for it, simply with email and Skype. This week, in the middle of the emergency, I had a call with a new contact in New York about a kitchen: two or three months ago I would have met him in person on my first round of customer visits; now we make an appointment, do the video call and move the offer forward. It protects the customer and it protects the company, which shows it is operational.

Then there are more complex systems which, in my view, any SME can put in place with a bit of intelligence, ability and discipline: dedicated web pages that lead to video calls with customers. In business to business, where I am the one visiting companies, architecture practices and customers, you can design an alternative to the first contact, to the handshake, which remains important: in Milan appointments have not been cancelled, on Thursday we visited four architecture practices and next week we will visit as many again. But you have to design an alternative strategy to the physical appointment, and in my view it is online: platforms that replace the first contact and build a climate of trust with the customer through information.

This is the campaign we will launch from next week for furniture retailers, to replace or support the continuous contact with our dealers. A system based on video, audio and written information, which then leads to phone or video appointments. The first test is a video course for our customers and new customers, furniture business owners, which replaces the presentation that our sales team, or I myself, give in person: a 120-minute video that introduces the company and explains the advantages of working with us, virtually but with the aim of making contact, if not in person then at least by phone or video call, to develop projects and sales. We will do the same for architects, recreating the presentation we give in person, since we expect fewer events: webinar, funnel, web page, call it what you like, always to channel demand and develop projects.

Is it a disadvantage, or an advantage too? Good can come out of bad. How many physical appointments can a company do in a day in a city like Milan, New York or Munich, giving each customer the right amount of time? Four, no more. With a system of webinars and online information, how many customers can it reach each day? Certainly many more. Will the result be the same? I don't know yet; I think so, we will see the data. But today we are forced to work differently from two months ago anyway.

3. Innovate in business to consumer

Selling to consumers is different: people walk into your shop. Here too you have to expect fewer visitors to physical shops, even though footfall in our Milan showroom over these two weeks has stayed in line with February last year. It means that if you keep investing in an advertising system based on information and content, customers and prospects remember you even in a crisis. Still, expecting fewer showroom visits, you have to think outside the box and create online purchasing platforms, even for complex products. Online will increasingly drive the search for information before purchases, simple and complex, which will then probably be completed online too. What is more complex than a designer kitchen? Yet even this has to be innovated; think about how to do it in your own sectors.

This is a page in German, because we have an important market in Germany and German-speaking Switzerland, for private clients and for architects: expecting fewer customers to come to the showroom in person, we created an online design page, taking design online wherever possible. This is the moment to put to use all the work done on marketing, all the material produced, and testimonials are the number one thing: the German customer can watch testimonials from other customers, subtitled in several languages, and build trust. If you are starting from zero, if nothing has been done in the last two, three or four years, it is hard now: it takes discipline, hours of work, creativity and intelligence to start developing top-level material and content to put online. This is the moment to put your foot down and not stop. A platform that makes something complex simple, completely online, with no physical interaction, defeats the fear that will grow in the coming weeks, in Italy and across Europe.

4. Lead by example

A psychological tip: today the entrepreneur has to be on the front line with employees and staff, leading by example. Sales visits should probably include the entrepreneur too: if there are customers who agree to an appointment, the entrepreneur has to leave the company and go, to show that we are active and not passively suffering events.

5. Guarantee delivery

The most important thing: guarantee the supply chain. Deliveries break down the wall of distrust. Delivering products, especially abroad, sends a reassuring message of reliability today, and I think that when this is over the customer will remember that, at a time of genuine difficulty for Italy and its companies, the company kept delivering on time. The customer will say: they had the coronavirus outbreak, the panic created by politicians and the press, but the product I ordered was delivered to me and it is of high quality, so why not keep working with them? I see no problem in continuing the relationship with existing customers if delivery is guaranteed. The most worrying thing is the red zones, two in Italy today: if, by bad luck, someone's company is in a red zone, I don't know how much this presentation can help; there you have to plan your communication to customers, and hope that politicians let companies keep working.

To sum up: increase advertising spend, don't touch it, in fact increase it so you reap when this is over; innovate in business to business with online information platforms that lead to calls and video calls, to generate contacts, projects and turnover; innovate in business to consumer with alternatives to the shop visit, for online consultations and purchases; lead by example, on the front line; and, most important of all, deliver, to break down the wall of distrust that foreign customers have towards Italian companies today. Good luck to everyone.