A little rain can fall on any business, but when that rain becomes a flood, the wind takes a roof off the building, Mother Earth decides to go for a rumble, or the power company chops a line and power won’t be restoredfor a week or more, mayhem has arrived at your doorstep. How can you leverage your sales team to keep customers calm and ensure that promised work gets completed and delivered? It takes a village, and some planning, as noted in Parts One and Two. Here’s how to set your sales team up to manage mayhem.

Assume that you will not have access to the company server or your business management systems. If some of your systems are cloud-based,you may have someaccess to be able to determine what is owed to whom and what is on deck, but you may not. While we all know that it is good data hygiene to have current backups of all the systems and data files, including customerdesign and print-ready files, in an offsite location (the cloud counts!), reality for many companies is that everything from customer contact detail to print files for current jobs are not as well-maintainedas they should be.

Start with the basics. Is your employee contact database up-to-date? Is there a primary and backup contact for every employee? If the emergencyis big enough to take out your print shop, it may also impact your team, so you need a “Marked Safe” plan for your employees. And, in the case of your sales team, they may be impacted and unable to take care of their clients. Who will be the back-up and work with the customer? In some companies,the customer service team takes on the back-up role. In others,the plan is that sales team members back each other up. If you have multiple locations, consider having the back-upteamselected from another location. As you create your plan, get it documented and socializedto everyone so that expectations are set.