Successful team and partner management despite crisis and ban on contacts

The economy is currently being severely affected by the global Covid 19 pandemic - productions have to come to a standstill, in many places branches are temporarily closed and employees are sent on short-time work. In decentralized companies in particular, local sales partners are currently fighting for their customers who can no longer get to do business with them. In order to support these sales and sales partners as best as possible, the company's brand and central organization now need to keep in particularly close contact, provide assistance and offer support for customer contact and local team management.

The relationship between headquarters and partners

Especially in uncertain times, it helps to maintain the closest possible contact with your own partners and to be available as a contact person. In this way, you can work out a strategy for dealing with the pandemic together with your partners and propose and make digital options available. Through this exchange, you will recognize the current challenges that the local partners are currently struggling with and can find possible solutions together and at eye level. This not only relieves the partners in the crisis situation, but also promotes successful relationship management. In order to get through the crisis as effectively and productively as possible, you should show your partners opportunities for digital marketing channels and provide templates, training or assistance.

Assistance for team management at the local level

Many local partners are currently in a situation where they need less time to contact customers, but they cannot directly implement them in digital marketing strategies. The directors are currently primarily concerned with supporting their employees in the new situation and creating digital jobs. Here, too, support from the headquarters can help local partners to cope with digital employee management. Regular, virtual team meetings and an internal team chat can help to strengthen team spirit and celebrate mutual success even in times of physical distance. Shared to-do lists and clear agreements help to complete tasks together and provide the necessary overview. In order for the branches to be able to conduct marketing despite difficult times, they now need a lot of support from the head office, which provides strategies, opportunities and grants to ensure local marketing despite everything.

Digital marketing and virtual customer contact

Not only the contact to the own employees is a challenge for the local sales and distribution partners, the customers can no longer come to the branch and many of the classic marketing channels such as trade fairs, printed brochures or large-scale posters in the cityscape are affected by the current situation . Switching local marketing from overnight to mainly digital is particularly difficult when online advertising, social media and search engine optimization have so far hardly been used. However, the switch to virtual customer calls and digital contracts can also lead to uncertainty in many cases. Here it is particularly important to be approachable as a support for the partners and to convey a positive mindset. Even if the digitization strategy is currently being pushed a little faster, this does not necessarily have to be a disadvantage, but can be an opportunity that will still bring me benefits even after the corona pandemic.