251: Getting New Clients During Covid’s Long Tail

<p>We are all hungry for Covid to end so that we can get back to normal.  It looks like it will be all good by September.  Then it looks like October, then November and this goes on and on as some fresh piece of diabolical news filters out.  Will a bell ring or an alarm go off announcing “Covid is done”?  Unfortunately that isn’t going to happen.  It will ebb and wane and then probably resurface intermittently over the next couple of years.  So when do we start moving out of the orbit of our existing customer base?  Are we just digging deeper  into the fox hole, waiting for the all clear announcement or do we get up and head back into the fray? </p> <p> </p> <p>New clients have been sparse.  Companies are holding their money in a vice like grip concerned about the economic damage from Covid.  Others are almost impossible to contact.  Buyers and decision makers were always protected by an iron wall of nobodies who were preventing us from making contact in the good times.  Now the buyers are not even in the building.  Do we wait for them re-emerge from their hibernation, slip out of their cocoon?  We could be waiting a long time.</p> <p> </p> <p>We were having discussions with clients when Covid slammed into our businesses and scared the living daylights out of everyone.  First in the batting order would be renewing those discussions.  Should we just pick up the threads of that last conversation and continue?  Take a good look at your own business?  Has Covid created new dimensions, new concerns, new problems that weren’t there before?  The answer would be “yes” and so that will be the same for the clients we were happily chatting with, before the virus wall came down to end all discussions.</p> <p> </p> <p>Two good starter questions would be:</p> <ol> <li>What are your strategic plans for a post Covid business world? and</li> <li>What are your most immediate problems of concern</li> </ol> <p>Obviously we will tailor these two broad question to our particular business.</p> <p> </p> <p>The first question is a good o