It is an unusual time with each of us striving to live and work during a global pandemic. With stay-at-home orders, social distancing, and work from home mandates, there is much to adjust to in the new normal. If you now find yourself working from home, you may be asking yourself how you can run your business from home. Let’s take a few minutes to talk about how you can make the transition to the new normal – successfully working from home.
Communication is Key When Working From Home
While communication is always key to a successful business, it is even more significant now. Plus, right now, as you transition to the new normal of working from home, it can be even more challenging. To move forward, you’ll need to communicate effectively, even to the point of overcommunication. Think about it, you’re texting, emailing, calling, but getting the message across via online methods can translate differently for everyone, which means you’ll need to be more conversational than ever before. Here’s how:
● Recap the conversation for clients/colleagues to ensure everyone is heard and understood.
● Communicate with a friendly, warm tone to create a positive connection.
● Keep the conversation relational and professional, in other words, don’t be so informal that you lose your position as the expert on whom your client is relying.
● Tap into video conferencing and screen-sharing apps to connect with clients and colleagues effectively.
● Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of a phone call particularly if videoconferencing is not available for all clients.
Enhance Your Online Presence
With your communication well in hand, next is enhancing your online presence. This is especially important now, as many are at home looking for ways to occupy their time. Much of this free time is spent online, and you can leverage that to your advantage. With many brick-and-mortar businesses closed temporarily, your online presence is of utmost importance. You’ll need to translate goods and services you would normally showcase in person and bring it alive online for your clients or customers. And while a picture is worth a thousand words, video demonstrations are worth much more! Depending on the nature of your business, you may even want to consider offering samples of your work or products (fabric swatches, colors, etc.) to enhance your online efforts.
Make the Transition Successful
There is no doubt the transition to the new normal of working from home will not be without challenges. But, as long as you keep at it daily, setting a routine, and sticking with it, even with all the interruptions likely to come your way, you’ll be successful in making the transition.
