How Are You Responding To the Coronavirus?

Over the past few days I’ve been receiv­ing more and more requests for help with cre­at­ing con­tent that our clients can use to calm their own clients. After all, with the pre­vail­ing rec­om­men­da­tion being to close your doors and avoid expo­sure, why risk hav­ing a painter or remod­el­er come work in your home, right? 

First, I don’t pre­tend to be an infec­tious dis­ease expert. And, I also don’t want to be an arm­chair health­care pro­fes­sion­al — we have plen­ty of those on social media.

But the real­i­ty, no mat­ter what, is that peo­ple are get­ting sick, and peo­ple are get­ting afraid. So, what can you do from a marketing/​business perspective?

Make a Plan for Min­i­miz­ing Coro­n­avirus Risk

When our clients have reached out to me, I’ve been turn­ing the ques­tion right around by ask­ing: ​“What ARE you doing about it?”

I don’t want to tell peo­ple to just relax in a care­ful­ly-word­ed email or social media post. I’d much rather share what you are specif­i­cal­ly doing. 

Typ­i­cal­ly, these plans involve:

• Care­ful­ly screen­ing the health of your team. 
• Mak­ing pro­vi­sions for addi­tion­al paid sick time, just so that if one of your team mem­bers IS sick, they don’t risk com­ing into work to make their full 40-hour paycheck. 
• If your team has trav­eled recent­ly, espe­cial­ly abroad, give them a chunk of time off to make sure they’re healthy. 
• Keep hand san­i­tiz­er in your vans. And, make sure your esti­ma­tors car­ry it with them!
• No hand­shakes, high-fives, etc. Fol­low the three-foot rule.
• Keep large meet­ings to a min­i­mum (make them vir­tu­al instead!). As an exam­ple, we use Zoom and have real­ly enjoyed it. Oth­er providers, like Loom, are even extend­ing free tri­als and low­er­ing costs to give more peo­ple access to their product.
• If you have an office team, let them work remotely.
• Focus on exte­ri­or jobs when­ev­er pos­si­ble, min­i­miz­ing the risk of work­ing indoors. 

Don’t For­get To Pro­tect Your Team!

With lead counts to reach and sales goals on your mind, it can be easy to focus on pro­tect­ing and reas­sur­ing your clients. 

At the same time, remem­ber that you have a duty to pro­tect your team as well, and pro­vide a safe work envi­ron­ment. I wouldn’t hes­i­tate to make sure your prospec­tive client is healthy, maybe ask­ing a few key ques­tions before work­ing in their home. The cour­tesy needs to go both ways. 

Don’t Ignore the Coro­n­avirus — It’ll Be Here a While

The pre­dic­tion is that this issue is going to get much worse before it gets bet­ter. With­out buy­ing into any hys­te­ria, it’s wise to make a clear action plan and make that action plan pub­lic. Whether it’s a stan­dard email, a page on your web­site, or a blog arti­cle, let peo­ple know that you take the risk seri­ous­ly and have a plan in place. 

In the mean­time? Keep the con­tent flow­ing on social media, show­ing your team at work and com­plet­ing projects local­ly. That will help to pro­vide peace of mind as well. 

Make the plan and work it! We’ll get through this.