Over the past few weeks, we have been writing about how to keep business as usual in these unusual times. How to market your company, how to make sales calls, how to sell your products while not being able to be in front of your customers. I have also offered a plan called Business as Usual: Selling without visiting customers which is available for anyone who wants one (see information at the end of this column). And, one of the things we talked about in this plan is to be prepared for the world as it will look once this great danger has subsided. This led me to think about that so much that I decided to take a shot at what the world will look like on the other side of the Coronavirus or Covid 19 as the Corona Beer people would prefer, we call it (sorry, you gotta smile once in a while).
And after doing some research, and some visioning, here is what I have come up with:
More people will work from Home: The way we work will be now shaped and changed forever as people find that they can work at home much more easily, and effectively, than in a building with other people. This is something I found out years ago when we started the consulting business. It’s amazing how much you can get done on your own schedule, working when you want, not having to attend someone else’s meaningless meetings and not having to put up with the guy who wants to talk about last night’s episode of Westworld for an hour every week. Thank you Zoom and Go to meeting and all the other meeting services we can use.
Shopping habits will change, converting even more people to online shopping as more and more people are now forced to do it and novices are forced to learn how to do it. The transition to online shopping will be complete. This means that retail stores will have to become more engaging and valuable or die. Advice to retail stores, visit an APPLE store and see how you can do it to thrive.
Movies: The way we watch movies will change drastically as even now movie studios are already offering first run movies for streaming, now that the movie theatres are closed. For about twenty dollars you can stream a brand-new movie in your home. Related to this, other streaming services are already taking off like a shot, as people turn to them for entertainment in their locked-down houses. This means the competition will increase and we will benefit by being able to watch even better films in the future.
Universal Healthcare: People will want more universal healthcare now that they see what life without it in a pandemic can be like, expect the biased arguments against it to wane and universal healthcare become a priority.
Stockpiling: Learning from the shortages we have faced, everything from medical face masks, to ventilators, to toilet paper will be seriously stockpiled. I cannot imagine any household not having a year’s worth of toilet paper in storage after this is all over. It is amazing to me how people grew so panicky about toilet paper, and Purell, and soap and water and everything else they could not find when they wanted it in the grocery stores. We as Americans are not used to not having what we want when we want it!
Respect for medical research: I hope that people will come to appreciate science, and medical research and what it can do for us. The fact that hospitals can be erected in a matter of days, or that a vaccine for a virus can be discovered in a matter of months cannot help but amaze us and make us respect science more now than ever.
More onshoring: as we realize that yes, we went too far in turning over entire industries to China, being happy to let them build anything, as long as we got it more cheaply. Having no regards whatsoever for the damage we were doing to our own domestic infrastructures. Hopefully we learn a lesson, that yes although we are in a global economy, we still need to protect our own domestic companies and keep them not only solvent, but profitable for the long term. This should ring loud and clear to the big OEMs like Motorola and Cisco and Intel and Apple and many others who so gleefully skipped over to Asia with their new products, products developed here in the U.S. for the sake of their own bottom line. Let’s remember when we complain about China, that the Chinese did not come over here and take our technology, and our business, we went over there and happily handed it over to them, so that we could buy a DVD player for $29.99 instead of $69.99… maybe now we’ll tend to ask ourselves was it really worth it?
We will be a better country: Of this I have no doubt, we are Americans after all and in the end, we believe with everything that we are made of that we will find a way. Just as we have always done, we will come out of this crisis for it in all ways. That history tells us is something you can count on.
It’s only common sense.
For a copy of D.B. Management’s Business as Usual: Selling without visiting customers Contact me at 207-649-0879 or email me at [email protected]
