This article presents seven actions to owner-managers of SMEs about what they should do on the sales side to get their companies and their customers through the crisis. The overarching theme is not to wait but to get into action!
To let your business survive the COVID-19 epidemic, you must be a true friend to your loyal customers. Covid-19 has hit hard on our society. And to say the least, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) worldwide are not spared in this (Cowling, Brown, & Rocha, 2020). Although governments in western societies are financially supporting SMEs, business failures are unavoidable during the coming months and after the epidemic. How fast and to what extent owner-managers will overcome this crisis is influenced by their attitude and behavior on the personal selling role. They need to engage with their customers proactively.
Interestingly enough, owner-managers do no tend to reflect on this vital role after the start of a crisis. Consequently, they do not always increase their sales effort or adjust their sales approach to influence the outcome. In-depth interviews with ten owner-managers of SMEs active in several B2B markets in the Netherlands revealed that seven just sat down and waited for what would happen. If they do not belong to the lucky ones who automatically have benefited from the crisis because of client companies' online needs, they should act on sales if they have the will to survive.
THE SELLING BEHAVIOR OF ENTREPRENEURS AFTER COVID
Of course, there was one major adjustment entrepreneurs involuntary needed to make. They had to replace face-to-face contacts at the office with online meetings on, for example, Zoom or Teams. Entrepreneurs believe this development seems permanent to some extent, even when COVID is under
