How to Manage Your Business During and After a Pandemic

During a pandemic like COVID-19, everyone faces uncertain and unprecedented times, especially businesses like insurance and accounting firms. Managing your business through crises like this requires sensitivity, thoughtfulness, and patience — traits that may seem difficult during a crisis like a pandemic. But even in times of uncertainty, it remains crucial that you continue to make good, solid business decisions, just as you have in the past.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer on how to run your business, but hopefully these tips on how to manage an agency or firm during and after a pandemic like COVID-19 will be helpful.

Stay in Touch With Your Clients

Staying in touch with your clients during an uncertain period like a pandemic is crucial. Find ways to work with your clients if they’re committed to continuing. Like you, your clients will be working remotely from home and some of their accessibility — like yours — will be challenging. Try to make appointments to schedule your communications and expand your flexibility. Expanded flexibility in communicating with your clients means utilizing whatever technology they’re comfortable with and potentially expanding your hours for client calls.

Develop a strategy and schedule for how often you need to reach out to individual clients to maintain your relationship and business. During this period you may also be considering cutting a client off. If you find that necessary, be sure to have specific criteria in place that will help ensure any risk-taking decisions are made thoughtfully and soundly.

Be a Thought Leader

Being a thought leader in your industry is relevant at all times, not just during a crisis. But when you’ve positioned yourself as a respected thought leader, you’ll instill confidence and trust with your clients and make them feel more comfortable with staying with you. Ways to be a thought leader include:

• Publishing articles, blogs, videos, and other content
• Sending newsletters containing relevant industry news
• Hosting an online webinar or digital Q&A
• Staying active on social media
• Being up-to-date on industry info and techniques
• Network, network, network!

Establishing yourself as a respected thought leader doesn’t happen overnight and requires creating relevant content and forming lasting connections. Although it takes work, the rewards are plentiful, and there’s no better time to begin than now.

Maintain Your Digital Presence

During a pandemic like COVID-19, maintaining your digital presence is more important than ever. Clients and potential clients need to be able to find you, learn about you and your business, gain trust in your business, and — most importantly — contact you!

Your digital presence includes your business’ website, your business’ social media accounts, and potentially your own social media accounts, depending on your type of agency or firm. Some questions you should ask include:

• Is my website up to date, especially my contact information?
• Can I be easily found on Google?
• Am I using my website to capture leads?
• Am I posting on social media?
• Am I engaging with my social media audience?
• Can potential clients contact me directly on social media?

Again, maintaining your business’ digital presence during a pandemic is paramount. But if you’re maintaining your website and social media accounts, you’re giving your business the best opportunity to thrive during this time.

Reopen Your Physical Business (Correctly!)

Eventually it will come time to reopen your business’ physical office and return to working face-to-face. Choosing the correct time to reopen and reopening correctly can have lasting consequences that can affect not only your health and the health of your clients and employees but also your business’ reputation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that businesses only should open if they are able to comply with state and local orders and can reopen safely while protecting employees and clients. They even created  a tool to help business owners make the decision about reopening.

Remember, some of your clients may not yet be comfortable coming to your office for face-to-face meetings, so even though you may be reopening, it’s important to maintain the same channels of communication you had while your business’ doors were shut. When you do meet in person with clients, it’s important to always be respectful of their concerns.

Once you’ve reopened, your work is not done. Continue to talk with your team and clients about how they feel about the situation and be mindful of their concerns. Ask them whether they feel safe in this new environment and whether there are any changes they’d like to see. Be prepared to act on the feedback you receive.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Things remain competitive during a pandemic, if not more so. One way to stay ahead of the competition is to complete your continuing education courses early and choose courses that can help you and your business during this uncertain period. Being up-to-date on new developments in your industry and using courses to master new topics or skills will also contribute to your status as a thought leader and can help attract new clients.

WebCE offers courses covering every major industry topic, and WebCE’s courses are always up-to-date. The best part is you can take your course from home or work using WebCE’s convenient online platform. To order courses, click the catalog buttons below or call WebCE’s first-class customer support team at 877-488-9308.