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In 2017, I put up my own Marketing and PR consultancy firm with some former colleagues. We all came from one of the largest PR firms in the country. We got tired of the rat race, but we remained passionate about communications. We vowed to create an agency that delivers excellent work without turning our people into slaves. Thus, Rebel Marketing was born.

Three years later, we’ve grown from six to 20 people. We were successful in many fronts, although the challenges were monumental as well. One thing we strengthened was our ability to work under a flexible time schedule. Nobody was required to stay in the office eight hours a day, every day. We focused on output, and we trusted our team to deliver that output in the best way they see fit.

Communication in the time of COVID-19

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the lockdown was put into place, we didn’t worry. Our very foundation as a company was built on remote work. Being forced to work from home did not sound like a big adjustment since we’ve done it in the past three years.

What we didn’t anticipate were the struggles of our clients. From big conglomerates to small enterprises, the sudden shift from office-based to remote work created chaos and uncertainty within their organizations. They had no means to transfer complex workflows into the simple setup they had at home. The panic and confusion were very palpable, and we knew we had to step in or we risk losing our clients during this period.

As a communications firm, we’ve always emphasized the importance of clear and simple communication. In times of crisis and struggle, this is even more important. While we had no control on how to reorganize their home setups, it was crucial for us to set communication protocols in place. Keeping in touch doesn’t only apply to your friends and loved ones – it’s important to do so with business contacts as well.

If you’re working with businesses who are struggling with this “new normal”, here are three ways that can help you stay on the same page as your clients or partners:

1. Conduct regular and frequent alignments. Once a week is a minimum.

It’s important to touch base regularly to keep both of you on track. The situation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic changes constantly, and it’s important for both sides to adjust. Once a week is reasonable, but we’ve found that any longer in between meetings becomes insufficient. The President announces something every Monday, and you never know what it will be about – your and your business partners’ ability to pivot together can keep both of you afloat during this time.

2. Re-strategize with the assumption that this pandemic will last for a very long time.

It’s disheartening to think about all the plans that were lost, but it’s still important to celebrate those that remain. We’ve had to cancel all our events for the rest of the year, which cost us almost 30% of our total revenue. This devastated our clients as well, and they were on the brink of canceling our contracts.

However, we already anticipated this scenario, and we weren’t deluding ourselves that we can still push through with events later this year. We quickly prepared an alternative plan – going digital, reallocating events budgets to online initiatives, setting up stakeholder meetings for donations, etc. There is always a way to move forward.

We all wish that this will be over soon, but we’re planning as if it will not be. This way, we’re setting ourselves up for success in these pandemic times. You’ll never know when things will go back to normal, if it ever will, and it’s crucial for you to retool yourself to be an operational business in this kind of environment.

3. Be a source of information

The simplest way to keep clients is to keep yourself useful. Being useful can mean different things during different times, but nowadays, it means giving them good information. This isn’t about passing on announcements from government agencies and public officials; chances are, they’re reading and watching the same news as you are.

What we’ve done with our clients is to provide them with actionable intelligence. We look at competitors and share their actions with our clients with recommendations on whether or not to respond or do the same. We look at calls for help or donations in municipalities where our clients operate to open doors for stakeholder engagement. We watch out for forecasts from industry experts to help our clients anticipate their next move.

There are many ways and kinds of information you can provide depending on what kind of business your client or partners are in. You just have to be a little bit more vigilant than they are.

This list is by no means a silver bullet to making your work-from-home life easier, but it eases the tension that this pandemic brings. As a consultant, it is our role to hold our clients’ hands in times of uncertainty, and it keeps us in business so we can continue paying our people. In times like these, businesses are operating with so much uncertainty, and your ability to provide a level of stability can go a long way.