While the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted us all in innumerable ways, small businesses have been especially affected. According to this McKinsey & Company study, it estimates that 30 million small business jobs are vulnerable and operations with 100 or fewer employees are among the most at risk.
Like small businesses across the country, local establishments here in Westchester County are seeking creative solutions to stay afloat during these uncertain times. While many have been fortunate to take advantage of various relief or loan programs, these alone are often not enough and only serve as a short term solution.
At the end of the day, businesses need sales to survive. Plain and simple. While we may sell different products and services to vastly different markets, we are all selling something in one form or another.
So, how is a small business supposed to maintain its sales during these uncertain economic times?
As we’ll see from one New York-based company, maintaining sales is often about adaptability and leveraging new tools and resources.
One such tool that business leaders throughout New York and across the U.S. have found especially beneficial is a platform called Seamless.AI.
“While COVID-19 has hit our small businesses hard, just like communities across the nation, we know that maintaining and growing sales is the most important thing we can help our local businesses do and tools like Seamless.AI can make a huge impact,” noted Alain Begun, board member of the Sleepy Hollow Tarrytown Chamber of Commerce and owner of River Towns Media.
Seamless.AI has developed a real-time search engine that allows users to search and find business contacts for virtually anyone. For small businesses especially, identifying and finding the contact information for new prospects is often a daunting task. Not only is it time-consuming, but the pay-off also isn’t great if you don’t have reliable data. Seamless.AI looks to solve both of these problems.
Through its 10-step validation process, which is powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Seamless.AI searches for contacts in real-time, delivering current and accurate data that is continuously updated. From a small business perspective, a platform like Seamless can become a game-changer, helping teams uncover new contacts to sell to and even break into new markets. Sales is a numbers game so having a steady pipeline of new contacts to connect with is essential – especially in today’s economic climate.
LifeThreads, based in New York, is an example of a company that has found Seamless to be a complete game-changer during these chaotic times. Founded in 2015, the company produces premium scrubs for healthcare workers.
Like thousands of other companies across the country, when COVID-19 hit, sales took a dip. Sales calendars once flooded with appointments were now wide open. Just as it seemed like the business would have to make some tough decisions, their VP of sales got a lucky break.
With the demand for masks growing every day, a health institution reached out asking if LifeThreads could help with a specific mask design. Being well-connected with several manufacturers, LifeThreads quickly got to work to fulfill this special request and began thinking about how to expand their business into this high-demand market.
Understanding the opportunity this new market represented, LifeThreads’ VP of Sales turned to Seamless to bring this idea to life. They laid out a plan of the target personas they needed to reach and leveraged Seamless to build their prospect lists. Within the first week of outreach to this new target market list, they closed nearly $5 million in new sales.
“LifeThreads is the perfect example of why we built Seamless,” said Seamless.AI CEO & Founder, Brandon Bornancin. “Through our real-time contact search engine, LifeThreads was able to build a highly targeted prospect list based on the titles, locations, and industries they needed to reach. Not only did Seamless help uncover new leads, but it also provided verified and accurate data to the LifeThreads team so they could connect with confidence and not waste time searching for email addresses and direct dials. I say every day that we’re on a mission to positively impact one billion people so I love hearing how our technology is helping companies thrive even in these uncertain times.”
What we see with companies like LifeThreads is that during tough economic times like these, businesses need to be flexible and adapt to the situation. While adapting is not always easy, platforms like Seamless.AI help make it possible. Seamless helps connect businesses to new opportunities and reach new customers in the process.
Just as no one predicted the global pandemic we find ourselves in, no one can definitively say when things will return to normal. To keep their doors open, businesses here in Westchester and beyond will need to look for creative solutions to maintain sales. That may mean expanding into new markets or looking for new opportunities outside of what they are accustomed to. Tools like Seamless can be a powerful resource to help businesses do just that. It’s not a silver bullet, but an integral piece of a long term solution.
We know that small businesses are the foundation of our economy so finding ways to support them is critical for all of us. While COVID-19 continues to throw us curveballs, whatever we can do to minimize the effect on small businesses will be hugely important to the future of our communities and country.
To learn more about Seamless.AI, visit https://www.seamless.ai and sign up for a free account.
