Is it just me or did March feel like a year and April flew by like a four-day week?
I sit here on a Sunday morning in what was a peaceful and quiet time with two of my four kids … until I decided I wanted to write my thoughts down. Then, well, it wasn’t so peaceful or quiet. I am sure many of you can relate to trying to find uninterrupted time during quarantine. Even writing that seems entitled and trivial. The world has been dramatically affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. As I write this, more than 300,000 people have died from the virus and there are almost 4,500,000 confirmed cases globally.
Words like “unprecedented” and “new normal” are thrown around at will. Every solicitation email I receive is from someone trying to “help.” No matter what their service or product is, somehow it’s going to “help” me or my team cope with the impact of COVID-19. Seriously, I am pretty sure I get at least a dozen form emails a day with “help” or “COVID-19” in the subject line.
I am sharing this because, as the sales leader at Bright.md, a company that offers a product that can actually help people receive and deliver care virtually, I made the decision to temporarily pause our own outbound activities. We quickly identified that people working at health systems were focused on getting their organizations and people ready for and through the COVID-19 surge. A prospecting message, even related to how Bright.md can help people receive and deliver care virtually, was not a priority or even an interest for the majority of our potential customers. They were, and many still are, very focused on responding to this crisis with the people and technology they know and trust.
So, we paused. We took time to learn and help our sales team be thoughtful and human. Instead of focusing on the quantity of the outreach, we focused solely on quality and tone. What can we learn about the organization and individual prior to any attempt to contact them? Can we really be helpful? Is now the right time to try and introduce a new company, a new way of delivering virtual care? This isn’t to say we weren’t being thoughtful in our previous approach–we most definitely were–but we put more energy into improving, to be more thoughtful, be more human.
Bright.md is a mission-driven company guided by our core values, two of which are compassion and innovation. It was one of my personal career highlights to see our company rally for a cause, with compassion and innovation, by launching a dynamic COVID-19 screener in less than two weeks, and to offer it for free to any U.S. health system. The energy and passion of our development, product, content, marketing, customer success, and sales teams coming together to truly help during the pandemic were incredible. I’d say, we were thoughtful and human.
I feel incredibly fortunate to be healthy and at a company that offers products and services to help people during the pandemic. We as a team and company will continue to be thoughtful and human as we innovate to help during these times and whatever the new normal will be once we are through this.
