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Great to see you, and I say this with great sincerity. After twenty months of living and working in a virtual everything, it’s a pleasure to sit, stand, and walk with customers, colleagues and partners.
There is joy in standing up in front of people again. Exchanging ideas face-to-face, watching body language again, and sensing people’s reaction to concepts and discussions. I knew I missed it because I knew that in the virtual world you can overlook a lot. But I’m convinced we lost much more than we had even considered.
People watching, feeling the energy, emotion, and laughter (we can be very funny) is something that I and the entire Catalyst team have missed tremendously.
During the peak of the pandemic, we did many Zoom sessions for the Service side. However, we made conscious decision not to offer virtual Sales training. With the experience of the last seven weeks back on the road, conducting programs across different customers in different countries, I am convinced that this was the right decision. Developing and challenging sales people requires a very high level of engagement to ultimately achieve complete success. A virtual environment simply limits engagement too much.
A Look Back
Looking back on the challenges of 2021 and 2022, we saw an extreme case of “Winners” and “Losers” across all industry segments. Our food, medical, and packaging customers, boomed. Our aviation and print customers had challenging times to various degrees.
For 2022, if you are in Service or Sales and you do not change the way you do your job, the way you communicate in a LWC (Living With COVID) world, then you have missed the opportunity to develop.
In a LWC world, Business Continuity Planning is now mission critical. Helping prepare our customers for the next disruption is essential, be it Omicron, COVID23, mass cyber terrorism, or critical and long-term supply chain nightmares. If you’re not opening discussions with Business Continuity Solutions for your customers, then you are stuck in an outdated, BC (Before COVID) world.
Think about:
Automation options everywhere
Back-up (paid for) maintenance and critical parts stock
Remote support programs
Post-COVID Preventative Maintenance Inspections, for those customers who have run their lines and systems heavily during the last 2 years
Back-up lines or equipment
These are all valuable service products and offerings that will support the client’s Business Continuity Planning.
So, as we are at the end of another interesting (???) year, let’s ensure that we have learnt everything we can from the past two years. Have we thoroughly challenged ourselves and applied new ideas and approaches to the way we do business?
Continuous Improvement to our Sales and Service operations has always been what we strive for, but in an LWC world, we need to make sure we take this to a new level in supporting our customers and their Business Continuity Planning.
From the team at Catalyst Global (.net) we hope the last month of 2021 is a little calmer, a little smoother than then last 22 months. 2022 will be a LWC year and a supply chain juggling act.
Enjoy your year-end break.
We look forward to seeing you in person in 2022.
Tony Kenney
Jonathan Clark
Adair Zanatto
Gary Hughes
Christian Cerfontaine
And the rest of the Catalyst team
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