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Preparing Your Emergency Sales Plan: What If You Couldn’t Work for 30 Days?

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What if you weren't able to work for 30 days? Do you have an emergency sales plan? Thankfully, I did. My husband tore his Achilles tendon. What was first diagnosed as an injury that could be fixed with physical therapy turned into one requiring surgery and one month of not being able to put any weight on his ankle.

Think about all you do with both feet. Now think about how dificult your mobility would be if you only had the use of one foot. Falling, for one, would be a real issue. So, in my husband's situation, I had the choice of either hiring a nurse or becoming one—I chose the latter. Because I couldn’t work for 30 days, I had to implement my emergency sales plan. Luckily, I was prepared beforehand.

Here are three important things to consider when developing your own plan:

1. Familiarize yourself with technology tools

After your ability to work stops is not the time to starting embracing technology solutions. You had better be ready to implement technology tools when your time and abilities are limited.

I had meetings scheduled before my work situation changed, so I changed those my meetings to Webex meetings. When I myself had a hand injury and was unable to type on my laptop, I learned how to use voice recognition software. Android and iOS have excellent voice recognition software built in. Learn how to use these kinds of tools now, before you need them. You don't want to be learning the technology on a day you're feeling overwhelmed giving care or in a brain fog. Learn the technology now.

No matter where you are stuck working, remember that your phone is an excellent sales tool. You can easily pick up the phone to call customers and prospects instead of arranging face-to-face sales meetings. When you call your customer, explain the situation you’re in, and you may even end up learning more about your prospects and customers on the phone than you would during a typical sales call.

Let’s be clear here: it’s not your job to sacrifice your personal recovery for your customers. But if you are able to continue working during this period and explain your situation to customers, the empathy they feel for you could strengthen your business relationship (and might even translate into more sales). The fact that you took the time while caregiving or during recovery time to call your customers demonstrates your personal concern for them.

2. Prioritize what's most important

You’ve heard the expression “First things first.” However, when your time and your abilities are limited, your new expression should be “First things only.” Other less critical tasks can wait until your schedule is back to normal; now is the time to go over your to-do list and determine what is and isn't essential.

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Do you have any reports with firm deadlines? Are there tasks that others are depending on you to get done for them? The way to determine whether a task is critical or not is to think about what would happen if you didn’t do anything for a few weeks. Would anything serious happen? If not, you can forget about that task for the time being—it’s simply not that critical.

When you're out of the office during this time period, your only job is to make sure that the most essential and critical selling tasks are taken care of. You will be better able to evaluate which tasks are critical if you can think clearly and have the time to make thoughtful decisions.

3. Learn how to better delegate your work

You must learn how to delegate critical tasks. Think now about which people you could delegate certain tasks to. You may even want to discuss these kinds of back-up plans with those people now.

Be specific when you ask for help. You are more likely to receive it when the person you're asking for assistance clearly understands what is expected of them. But you might get pushback, which is why now is the time to find out if they would be willing to help you should you need it later.

Having an emergency sales plan gives peace of mind

Being kept away from your normal sales routine can be a big disappointment for many high-energy sales professionals. Disappointment, however, will not serve you well as a caregiver or as a recovering patient, so banish the "woe is me" attitude. You will have peace of mind if you have an emergency sales plan ready to go.

You may also end up finding out your that your business flourishes with the help of others. And it would be wonderful to learn that people value you just as much as they value your products or services.

RELATED: 10 Ways to Keep Your Business Running Smoothly While You’re on Vacation

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.