When a client reports they had their best revenue month ever, it always stands out.

But when it turns out that their record month was the result of pivoting their service in response to COVID-19...

You better believe I've got to find out the details. :)

Ever since we published "2 Ways You Can Respond to COVID-19 as a Business Owner," it's been amazing to see these stories pour in.

This is one of my favorite examples yet.

The Result: $41k in total revenue during a 1-month period

The Business: The client does marketing work in the financial services niche (they asked to remain anonymous)

The COVID-19 Challenge: 

Part of our client's core offering is to help his customers drive more leads and sales. One of the most effective ways of accomplishing that was conducting in-person seminars.

Then the pandemic hit.

Suddenly, a massive lead-gen channel he helped his customers tap into was off the table.

If you've ever run a service-based business, you know there are actually two challenges here:

  1. Figuring out how in the heck you're going to continue delivering on your promise now that your plan has blown up (in this case, generating leads and sales)
     
  2. Getting your clients to buy into the new strategy you come up with

The Solution:

The logical thing to do when in-person events aren't an option is to try an online version instead.

The problem?

"In the past, webinars were not well attended in this niche," our client said. "The show-up rates were really low."

Plan B is usually Plan B for a reason, but it's always better than no plan at all. So our client took action immediately:

  • He contacted his clients who had already paid for the month
     
  • He let them know he would transition their in-person events to webinars at no additional cost
     
  • He would test their market to make sure people would actually sign up for webinars
     
  • "My idea was to remove any risk on their part to do a webinar in hopes that it would work for them and then I could continue to charge my monthly fees for marketing," he said. "Once they were able to see how effective the webinars were, it would be a no-brainer that they would continue to work with me."

Proactive communication. Remove risk. Let them know YOU'VE GOT THIS.

That's what leadership looks like. And it's exactly what customers need when a crisis hits.

Whether your plan works or not, at least you can lay your head down at night knowing you did everything you could.

In this case, however, the plan did work.

In fact, the new webinar approach he used with his clients was so effective that word got out in a mastermind group several of them belonged to. The owner of the mastermind ended up sending him 12 new clients in a month.

The really cool part? Our client has since started hosting his own webinars that teach his ideal prospects how to do successful webinars.

He's taken the knowledge gained from implementing a new approach with his clients and turned it into a way to generate even more leads for his business.

BOOM!

This is EXACTLY what I was talking about when I described going on offense instead of defense in response to COVID.

Just because something that used to work for your business can't work right now...doesn't mean new approaches won't work either.

In some cases (like the scenario I just described), strategies that used to generate underwhelming results might be perfect for a world where people are more open than ever before to doing things at home and online.

There's no magic bullet for times like these. But having a focused plan is the next best thing.

If you'd love to have a plan you can confidently follow to grow your business, we can help:

Everything can change when you have the right plan.

I'd love to show you what one looks like.

- Bryan

P.S. Want to see the 103 wins our clients reported from June 21-27? Check them out on our new "Last Week's Wins" page!