“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” John Maxwell
As the Field Marketing Manager at Tealium, I had just come off of planning our annual internal sales kickoff meeting in San Diego and was further behind than I would have liked in preparing our Q1 field events for our sales teams. In a panic, I went heads down at the end of February and churned out ten events set to take place across the U.S. between March 24th and April 23rd. I was excitedly gearing up for what would have been my busiest month for events on record.
Cue March 2, 2020.
All of the major industry conferences began cancelling in rapid domino succession due to the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. My team and I had to make the difficult decision to cancel all of our physical events for the first half of the year.
At that point, I was left asking myself, “now what?”
When presented with extreme change, you can either let it paralyze you or you can let it fuel you. Here are the top 3 things I found helpful to remain agile when you find your role changing rapidly:
1. Invest in yourself
Is there something you’ve always been interested in learning to further your career, but never had the time to do because of your “day job?” Now is the time to explore and put yourself out there. Show value beyond your job description. There are many organizations like Coursera that are offering complimentary online education courses ranging from digital marketing to web design. I personally have a passion for slide decks and have been honing my design skills.
2. Be a team player
This is the perfect opportunity to apply your new learnings. Reach out to your fellow colleagues to see where you can lend a helping hand. Your workload may be light right now, but there is a good chance that the other members of your team are in overload (looking at you Digital teams). Bonus: they’ll remember this when your role quickly ramps back up and will be eager to return the favor.
3. Plan. Plan. Plan.
This crisis won’t last forever. You’ve probably found yourself with more time than you know what to do with, just dreaming about when things will go back to normal. Well, back to normal will happen before we know it so use this downtime to prepare. Plan all of your programs to the best of your ability for the second half of the year, that way you can hit the ground running when this is all over.
Thanks for coming to my BlogTalk. If you are looking for ways to invest in yourself, consider becoming more proficient in a data-driven approach to marketing and analytics with the following upcoming virtual events:
- April 14 [Webinar] – CDP Workshop, Part 1: How Organizations Buy, Implement and Use Customer Data Platforms
- April 14 [Webinar] – CDP Workshop, Part 2: Using a CDP To Make The Most of Your Customer Data with David Raab, Founder, CDP Institute
- May 12 [Digital Virtualocity] – The ultimate event for DATA-lutionaries that want to deliver better customer experiences, drive growth, and lead digital transformation through data!
