Selling Through Crisis

Paul Gassée
8 min readApr 9, 2020

It’s been a series of tidal waves. First came the news of a virus coming out of Asia’s wet markets. Then came the cruise ships that were floating petri dishes. Then the growing number of cases in countries like Italy and China. Then our sheltering in place orders across most US cities. And now the growing number of domestic and global cases.

There’s no question it’s a terrifying time for all of us. A natural instinct may be to crawl up in a big ball and hibernate. Or even worse: panic. When this quarantine first hit us, my therapist told me, “The Chinese character for crisis is composed of danger plus opportunity.” We are undoubtedly faced with a dangerous situation. But our only choice lies in how we respond. Despite the chaos around us, we always have the option to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and establish a plan of action. We need to make the conscious choice of seeing opportunities where they lie, and pursuing them relentlessly. Here’s how I would think about sales in this Coronavirus reality.

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Paul Gassée

Founder 2X. Currently: SaaS Sales Coach/Consultant to Startups. Former: sports talk radio host/blogger & Head of Sales @Whitetruffle. Product of France & US.