The uncertain future of our business can be secure if . . .

Testings are a great way to determine the integrity of what we believe.

In marriage, it is the presence of faithfulness through hardships that love is tested. In products, it is its durability despite regular use that its quality is tested and in business, it is its ability to thrive in the presence of a crisis, like COVID, that its model is tested.

Some are overthrown by testings while others thrive.

Why? (That's what I hope to uncover in this article.....)

When COVID-19 launched a full swing over businesses in March, mine wasn't spared, I recalled receiving phone calls to cancel work engagements and suddenly ALL offline speaking and training engagements "poofed" into thin air.

(and no, they didn't think of running those sessions online as an alternative) my pipeline was dry as a bone

I can't lie, I panicked.

Just then a good friend of mine (an awesome digital marketer) shared an idea about how I could still effectively serve my clients during this period of time by utilizing digital means to conduct courses.

BUT it was to be, NOT JUST any other course,

it was a course that would not only change the way I started to do business but also how my clients did theirs.

We called it . . . . . .

"GET CLIENTS IN 5 DAYS CONTENT CHALLENGE"

the target market was for Solopreneurs, Financial Consultants & Real Estate Consultants. We wanted to help them because, for them, traditional methods of generating sales leads such as roadshows, canvassing and sales calls had to be put on hold. The plan was to, over 5 days, teach them bite-sized techniques (in under an hour) on how to create sales converting content to generate sales leads via social media.

This plan made my heart skip a beat, I was revived!

In just ONE week, we build the whole digital infrastructure that would allow us to facilitate this whole initiative. Landing pages, email autoresponders, pre-session questionnaires, Facebook groups, course content, slide, invites etc . . . It was amazing!

and we were scheduled to run our first challenge on the 22nd of April 2020. (One week later) invitations were sent out . . . . and the amazing thing was

our participants were asking if they could share it with their friends!!

It was a huge validation that we were providing something that they cared about and saw value in

22 April 2020 - close to 70 People registered for this challenge

We had a turn out of around 35 on the first day (usual turn out rate is 20%) and it got slightly lesser by the fifth day but get this

???? those who followed through the program and completed the task we gave them saw a whopping 100% - 800% increase in their social media post engagements compared to a similar post they did in the past.

???? What's more amazing is many of them walked away with sales leads even before the 5th day of the challenge was up

I can't lie, I was so amazed and thankful

because throughout this whole process, 2 things happened simultaneously

1 - We evolved digitally ( I wasn't sure that we could before this )

2 - As we evolved so did our clients

Subsequently, we went on to conduct more digital programs, helped more businesses digitize and as a result more opportunities came to our company as a result of that ONE initiative.

My business and I almost buckled under the weight of COVID-19 but I'm so thankful we didn't.

I have learned that the uncertain future of our businesses can be secure if

if we are open to getting uncomfortable with change,

if we are open to learn and implement new skills and

if we are open to work together or seek help

what's scary is when we are either afraid to or when the deception of familiarity hijacks common sense.

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Get in touch with David [email protected]

David is the founder and lead sales speaker and trainer at Story Box. To date, he has impacted more than 5,000 lives across the world teaching professionals to utilize stories to drive action in their favour.

www.facebook.com/storysellingspeaker | www.dhirubhai.net/in/storysellingspeaker