Online workout sessions and couch sales: Adapt to change or perish

The Covid-19 outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China, last December, meaning, the virus has been around for some five months.

Almost half a year is gone as we continue to speculate and anticipate a cure. In Kenya, it’s been close to two months since the first case of Covid-19 was reported.

In a bid to flatten the curve, many businesses have had to shut down or send their employees to work from home as they wait for things to “normalise”. But will they? Perhaps we should close our eyes for a few seconds and imagine a post-Covid-19 economy. Would everything resume to the “normal” we knew or does a new normal await us?

Think of the ongoing change as a skin-shedding process. It may not be pleasant, but it’s necessary and will be worth it once the process is complete.

HIGH-RISK GYMS

During the pandemic, some businesses will shed skin in preparation for future growth, while others will resist change and insist on continuing to operate in their old skin. Others still will just die.
This week, we take a look at businesses and individuals that have already started to reinvent themselves.

Frankie Kiarie, a gym instructor, founded his fitness business, Just Gym It, in 2014. Before the pandemic, he was offering a range of services, some of which required face-to-face interaction.
After the first case of Covid-19 was reported in Kenya, he realised that gyms were high risk areas.

“There would be multiple people touching equipment, sweating and exhaling throughout the day,” he says. Body fluids and aerosols are known to carry the virus and increase the risk of infection.
Also, surfaces are notorious for spreading the virus. Cleaning up after everyone would not only be time-consuming, but also costly. He therefore decided to close his gym and stop one-on-one personal training.

After a few weeks of staying home, however, he realised that business had to go on. He employed a number of people who perform different tasks, and they all depended on the salary he paid them for survival. He either had to let them go or find a way to keep the business running.

He admits that finding good people to work with isn’t easy and so downsizing wasn’t an option for him given that his staff have become crucial to his business.

To stay afloat, he had to assess the situation and how his clients’ needs had changed. For one, face-to-face training was out.

TRIMMING EXTRA WEIGHT

Secondly, people were no longer focusing on looking good by gaining muscle or trimming extra weight. They were more concerned about mental health issues, boosting their immunity and avoiding weight gain (as opposed to losing). Social communities at the workplace, religious sanctuaries and social gatherings were no longer accessible, yet they serve as escapes from daily stress.

With these escapes out of reach, exercise and healthy diets remain viable options for dealing with mental health issues.

Kiarie tapped into these new needs and developed a new marketing strategy to not only attract new clients, but to also retain the existing ones, stressing the need to stay healthy and boost immunity. This new need goes hand-in-hand with his meal prepping and meal-planning services.

He also changed the content he was sharing on his social media pages, which have always been great marketing tools through the years.

“I don’t post images that were taken in gyms or restaurants as people will automatically scroll past such content. These places are inaccessible at the moment. They’re therefore a reminder of what people cannot have,” he explains.

Currently, his content is tailored to mirror the kind of environments and activities people are engaging in during the pandemic.

With a marketing strategy and a broad audience online, he only needed a channel to deliver his services. After all, the end goal of a business is to deliver measurable value and maintain a reasonable sales curve. Back when he started the business, Kiarie tried to introduce online workout sessions, but unfortunately, the market wasn’t receptive to it.

“When I started out, people were resistant to personal training, since it was a new concept. As is the norm, people take time to accept change. Adding online sessions to the list of changes was therefore a tough mission,” he recalls.

TOUGH MISSION
Interestingly, it took a pandemic for the “tough mission” to be accomplished. Kiarie reintroduced zoom work out sessions, which entailed taking people through work out routines from the comfort of their homes. The video conferencing app, Zoom, allows him to host up to 100 people and take them through workout sessions. With a subscription upgrade, he could easily double that number and have a bigger community of fitness enthusiasts working out with him.

Zoom workout classes support social distancing while allowing people to enjoy the social benefits of a community virtually.

Cameline Muasya, a sales and marketing professional at Liquid Telecom, also had to reinvent her career to survive the pandemic. Like any other sales person, she was expected to meet her targets, but the methods she once used were proving to be unworkable.

“Closing sales deals relies heavily on face-to-face interactions with potential clients,” she says.

Besides, there is a lot of field work involved as she moves from meeting to meeting or as she does walk-ins in an effort to sell the company’s products. At the moment, her movement is limited since, like many, she is alternating between working from home and a closed office. Closing deals has therefore been taking longer, especially when dealing with new clients.

REINVENT
To survive, she has decided to change her marketing strategy. For instance, she has started following businesses and entrepreneurs on LinkedIn, the professional social networking platform. This way, she is able to monitor new needs, which then serve as an opportunity to market Liquid Telecom’s products.

It is quite surprising how unexpected needs such as businesses engaging in charity work to support those in need during the pandemic present unique selling opportunities for her. She also transitioned from physical office visits to more cold calls, an old sales tool that was almost fading away.

Lastly, she focused on maintaining a good relationship with existing clients who already know her. Good relations lead to referrals and more sales deals. As much as she may be selling the same products, her selling angles have had to change.

From experience, Muasya has realised that for businesses to reinvent themselves, everyone in the organisation has to be willing to reinvent their style of working. The employer has the key role of revising services and how they are delivered to determine whether it is possible for marketing and sales teams to close deals as they used to.

While some businesses are able to sell what they had in stock before the pandemic, others have had to make a 360 degree turn by introducing new products. These are the people who suddenly turned to manufacturing new hand sanitiser brands or the hawkers who turned to selling masks. They could have easily shut down their businesses, but they saw opportunities and new demands and jumped right in. Popularly known as Covid-prenuers, these people are winning big during this pandemic.

While not all of us may turn to selling masks and hand sanitisers, which are in high demand, there are new opportunities in most fields. For instance, a photographer may offer isolation/social distancing-themed photography (for memories’ sake) as opposed to studio-based services. They may also shift focus to businesses trying to be visible online. In a nutshell, unless you’re selling essential products, you just have to be creative and adjust to the situation to earn a living.

LOCKDOWN
Muasya also advices businesses to establish the marketability of a new product before investing in it.

It’s crucial to define your audience and its location. “Would you be able to deliver the services during a lockdown for instance? How unique is your product and what advertising channels will you use to reach out to your target market? Lastly, does the product coincide with your long-term goals?” she poses.

Interestingly, reinventing one’s business or career may be easier than imagined. Muasya, for example, doesn’t have to make multiple trips to physical meetings before closing deals or marketing products. Her work has become easier. The cost of closing a deal has also reduced extensively. Besides, the sales cycle is bound to shorten as clients grow accustomed to making decisions fast without meeting sales people and marketers physically.

Kiarie, too, has cut down his operational costs extensively. He only needs to subscribe to Zoom, invest in a strong internet connection and a good screen. With reduced running costs, he can charge less and reach a bigger market.

There is also the added advantage of working out with people who’re in different counties and even countries, because physical distance is no longer a barrier.

NEW TERRITORY

As we get down to another 21 days of a partial lockdown, Kiarie says that people are warming up to the idea of virtual workout sessions.

“People are realising that there is a new normal. Those who were partially receptive are beginning to accept the idea fully,” he says. The lockdown and curfew extensions are, therefore, not a blow to his business, but a boost to the renewed service.

As expected, this new market will not just disappear after the pandemic, his business has not only shed skin but also expanded into a new territory. After the pandemic, he says that he intends to explore distant markets and even accommodate a wider clientele base.

But this kind of expansion comes with an equal measure of challenges and lessons. For instance, Kiarie had to adjust to change as fast as possible, which to many people isn’t easy. Psychology shows that our decisions revolve around repeating the past or choosing the future/unfamiliar territory.

And according to a 12-year study conducted by Dr Salvatore Maddi, a renowned psychologist, only 1 in 3 people are able to take a bold step and choose the future when hit by an overwhelming wave of change. This one third of people not only survive, but also thrive in highly stressful situations resulting from sudden, or even expected change. Interestingly, according to Maddi’s study, this one third of people are not necessarily geniuses or people with special genetic traits. They’re just courageous enough to move past fear.
Kiarie says that he had the year planned before the pandemic came calling.

“For instance, I was to visit 12 locations in 12 months with a team of clients and friends as a way of keeping fit and breaking the gym monotony. I’d visited two locations, and 10 more were in the pipeline. The last visit was a hike at Ngong Hills” he says.

LAID FOUNDATION

To not only survive but thrive, he had to let go of these plans. The transition was obviously frustrating, but fortunately, he had already laid a foundation.

He had embraced the digital space long before the pandemic came about, therefore, it was just a matter of adjusting his marketing strategy. Through the process, he learnt that there’s always a silver lining, even in a pandemic, but there is need to remain positive and flexible.

For Muasya, she has realised that sales and marketing is not just about closing deals. Customer relations go a long way in making future sales. She says that the pandemic requires sales people to be aggressive, resilient, positive-minded and sociable. Failure to develop these traits will make it difficult to progress.

Unfortunately, the future is and will always be unknown. Therefore, learning to brainstorm and adapt to change is a necessity. Kiarie admits that things would be different now had he not adjusted his strategy.
“Someone else might have come up with the idea and executed it, and I would have probably lost my existing clients who would have switched to a dynamic and progressive fitness instructor.
And who knows, maybe they would never have considered returning after the pandemic,” he says.