As someone whose primary role involves spending most of my time communicating with clients and prospects, much of a typical day is spent on the phone or sending/receiving emails. As you would expect, it’s proven to be more challenging since the lockdown a few weeks ago, mostly due to people’s focus being on running their businesses.
Changing focus and utilising Rapport3

This time a couple of months ago I was focused on my business development activities, speaking with prospects and presenting to them with a view to getting them on board as a Rapport3 client. Now, my focus has changed direction and is very much about maintaining contact with prospects (with the help of Rapport3); keeping in touch and engaging with them via remote webinars that are very much appropriate to the current challenging environment.
Fortunately, we do practice what we preach; I use Rapport3 to run my business development activities and maintain my daily tasks. As we have a mobile app, it also means I can get access anytime and anywhere - which currently is within the confines of my house and garden!
I’ve been working from home for years now, so I’m quite used to structuring my day around my key tasks, however, for some that are new to home working it can be quite challenging, as many people have to combine home working with homeschooling.
The differences in the current work and challenges of our clients
Since the lockdown, I have been in touch with a number of AEC business owners to try and understand more about their challenges. The main issue over the coming weeks and months for everyone (without exception) is managing finances and in particular “cash flow”. If this is an area of interest for anyone, then it’s worth getting in touch or watching our most recent webinar discussing 'Cash Flow Management'. Another interesting snippet I picked up was that a number of clients are seeing new enquiries from the educational sector. In particular, some universities seem to be activating projects that have been dormant for a while. Naturally, universities will be almost empty at the moment, so it seems to be a good time for them to start looking at new projects. Future home/remote working was another topic weighing on business owners minds. When we get over the current restrictions, some people feel that there could be an opportunity for the continuation of more home/remote working, suggesting that the working environment could look quite different in the future.

How we can help It will be interesting to see what changes come out of the current situation once it’s all over, but right now we are on hand to help you manage remote working and changing workloads by utilising our Rapport3 software. If you would like to find out more about how you could be maximising the potential of our software during the current pandemic, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Also,you can now register below for our upcoming webinar, 'How to Keep Important Conversations Going During Lock Down' , to be hosted on May 18, 2020 01:30 PM.Jointly hosted with Chris Lunn, from Digital Marketing Agency, Digity , this webinar aims to share 'Uplifting Success Stories' and practical 'Strategies' to help AEC professionals improve Business Development and Marketing Activities in these challenging times.