Raise your hand if you had a sales plan going into 2020.

Keep your hand raised if that plan was completely turned on its head in a matter of weeks when COVID-19 took hold of the global economy.

Almost everyone’s hand should be in the air.

Organizations of all sizes have had to quickly regroup and develop new strategies to see them through this period of instability and uncertainty. Although there are many ways to approach this situation, it has become clear that keeping sales, marketing, and customer success teams aligned enables businesses to adapt to widespread market shifts much more effectively.

Having these teams work closely together makes it easier to understand how customers are being impacted. This approach can then be used to inform sales and marketing strategies, helping to ensure that everyone is aligned as approaches are overhauled.

Here are a few ways sales leaders can align tightly with their marketing and customer success counterparts to identify new opportunities during a period of disruption like the pandemic.

Control the controllable

During any globally disruptive event such as COVID-19, there will be many elements that simply can’t be controlled – such as layoffs or budget freezes. So, the key for businesses is to double down on the things they can control, namely the experience and support they provide to customers.

For example, some SaaS companies offer education on their platform or courses to support advanced learning that help customers become industry experts in their own right. If possible, try offering these courses temporarily for free if they aren’t already, and virtually if they are typically in person, so customers can continue to train teams without disruption and develop their skillsets from home. In doing so, companies are offering customers goodwill and support, while avoiding any dips in platform adoption or usage. What’s more, businesses should look to adapt how they work with customers and provide additional resources to help them shift to new remote working environments. This might require businesses to prioritize the sale of new product lines or modify the messaging in marketing materials.

For this approach to be effective, customer success teams must share information with sales and marketing that they learn from frontline customer conversations. This goes for conversations sales is having in the field with buyers as well. Collaboration is key to ensuring that customers’ developing needs can be met as quickly as possible and marketing campaigns can be shifted accordingly.

Look for opportunities internally

With sales quotas and KPIs likely to change significantly, disruptive events can provide an ideal time to focus on internal training and development to put businesses in the best possible position for future success. Sales and marketing teams can come together to evaluate sales plays, perfect product demos, carry out content audits and conduct long-term account planning.

Similarly, sales and customer success teams should align to reward customers with high adoption, prioritize customer review meetings and, most importantly, identify growth opportunities with current customers. This customer focus is something that we’ve seen among our user base, with more and more users actively turning to sales enablement to drive more productivity and engagement with customers, partners, and even employees. One international brand needed to activate sellers in days to sell new solutions to meet new demand from customers around the pandemic. Seismic helped them change direction quickly and curate the content they needed to do this ASAP. Another relied on Seismic for increasing employee collaboration and visibility now that we’re all solely remote.

Expanding existing accounts is especially important during economic shifts when new customers are likely to be harder to come by. Businesses have to position themselves as a strategic partner to clients, which requires collaboration between sales and customer success teams. Understanding customers’ key business goals and how they are using products will enable these teams to make strategic recommendations on new tools and features to drive greater value, while fulfilling the role of the trusted advisor who’s in it for the long haul.

Get your timing right

One habit that is essential for sales and marketing teams during a time like this is being aware of their timing. Exercising the highest level of due diligence before engaging with rebounding businesses is vital, as going in too early and attempting to sell to a business that’s still getting back on its feet can irreversibly damage the relationship.

Sellers and marketers have to keep tabs on the activities of target companies for any indicators of stabilization, such as M&A, and work together to ensure that they are appropriately articulating the benefits of their products or solutions in a way that will resonate with potential customers.

Ultimately, situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic force all manner of changes on business operations. Plans go out the window and adapting to weather the storm takes on a newfound importance. But, there are often opportunities in unexpected areas of the business. By aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams, businesses will be best positioned to re-prioritize, meet customer needs, and identify new areas of growth.