“I thrive on inspiring other people on my team,” she says. “I spend a majority of my time in an office because I love the interaction. I feed off of that.”
Before the pandemic, she was spending about half her time with customers and half following up with her team. Now she’s working out of her home office about 70% of the time, and making no customer visits. When she needs to send out proposals and samples, she still occasionally needs to go into the office, but takes precautions with PPE.
“For all of us, we're wearing masks,” says Jones. “There's no discussion about us not wearing masks or not keeping social distance.”
That’s not the only new habit she’s adopted. Where her normal go-to way to reach out to customers was the phone, now she relies more on FaceTime and Zoom. “I'm finding there are other extroverts out there to have conversations with that are more than happy to get on a video call and talk about business and what we need to do,” says Jones. “So that’s substituted for in-person meetings I would normally have made.”
She’s also finding that this lets her connect with people she hadn’t met yet. “I might be their rep, but they may be in New Zealand and it doesn't occur to us to get on a conference call,” she explains. “Now it seems like people are isolated. So they're more open to getting on a video conference with their sales representatives. They're lonely, I think, and looking for people to talk to. It’s nice to be more well received as a salesperson.”
Jones says she’s discovered other advantages to being on all those video calls. “I'm in a very visual job because we have label samples. On Zoom, I can see what they're talking about. They can share their screen on new designs. So it's very practical for us. And I think I'm getting more coverage having Zoom meetings than I did when I was driving around. My customers aren't just sitting in Sonoma. They're in Oregon, Washington, and on the central coast of California. It takes a lot to get to any of these places.”
“We're getting our work done in spite of not being in person,” she says. “I developed new patterns, having a meeting every Friday. The clients and I discussed that we're having so much fun on Zoom, that when COVID is over, we're gonna keep up our Zoom meetings together.”
Her clients have already suggested that the stay at home order is showing how productive they can be—and they’re making new plans about how often people can work remotely. “I've heard from three different clients so far that this is going to change how they do business in the future, even if they're allowed to go back in offices.”
Moving from stage to screen
A concert promoter without a crowd is kind of like an astronaut without a rocket. Sure, there’s work you can do while you’re waiting for takeoff, but it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anywhere.
KC Turner is a friend of mine who books, promotes, and presents live music in venues all over the San Francisco Bay Area. When the shelter in place orders were first announced, he’d already booked most of his 2020 shows. In a matter of weeks, he lost an entire year’s worth of work.
“No one understood the magnitude at first,” says Turner. “I remember that first weekend, around St. Patty's Day, I had a few shows planned and we were still thinking about doing them. Then it became more apparent: this is really serious.”
This isn’t the first time he’s had to deal with disruption. Last year, wildfires and widespread power outages causes several show cancellations.
“With the fires, it was very unique to our market,” says Turner. “Whereas, this is worldwide. It’s the entire industry. I've talked to booking agents and talent buyers from all over the country. We're all sharing the exact same story. It really reminds me that I'm not alone in this one.”