Virtual meetings are an efficient way to pitch and close leads. A Gigaom Research report stated that 87% of remote users see video conferencing as a benefit that helps them feel more connected to the meeting process. For platforms like FunnL virtual meetings are a normal part of their process. Especially after COVID-19 outbreak companies have to ensure the safety of the employees through work from home policies. As a result, in-person meetings are now shifted online. This blog states amazing tips to make it easy for your sales team to adopt the new virtual sale meetings for better results and how you can keep your sales team engaged with virtual sales meetings:
Tips for conducting efficient virtual sales qualified meetings
- Preparation: Dew Bowers, a research psychologist, at the “University of Dayton Research Institute’s Human Factors Group”, stated, “the first thing we do before deciding what technologies and software will be needed is to decide who the participating audience is and what information is being shared,”. Presenters should always be prepared beforehand. You can’t just present in front of a live audience without any preparations and expect the best results. Limitations being the reason that you are limited to a degree, in how you can react with a virtual audience. The right preparation will add value to your content.
- Tools and requirements: The beauty of virtual technology is that even the newcomer can learn it easily. All that’s required is an Internet connection, audio, and webcam. A quick tip from FunnL – avoid the embarrassment of delays and technical glitches by testing the connectivity before the meeting begins.
- Etiquette: The key to a successful virtual meeting is to remember that you are in a meeting. Keep your full focus and give your full attention to the participants as you would if you were face-to-face. Don’t be distracted by emails, web surfing, or texting. Virtual sales meetings move at a slightly slower pace than a typical meeting due to a two to three-second delay for most systems to communicate. Make sure you there are sufficient halts after asking questions. Always make direct eye contact by looking into the camera. It will make the conversation more natural. The following are some do’s and don’t followed by FunnL leading to efficient virtual sale qualified meetings.
- The do’s of Virtual meeting Etiquette
1. Be courteous to other participants
2. Speak clearly
3. Minimal body movement
4. Gesture slowly and naturally
5. Dress appropriately
- The don’ts of Virtual meeting Etiquette
1. Avoid making distracting sounds
2. Don’t shout
3. Restrict distracting movements
4. Don’t interrupt other speakers, be a good listener
5. Don’t carry on side conversations
6. Don’t cover the microphone - Engaging Participants: Begin by breaking the ice and introducing each other, talking about something to add a social element to the meetings. To conduct an impactful virtual sales meeting, it is important to keep your participant engaged.
Here are some of the best tips followed by FunnL to keep your sales team engaged with virtual Sales Qualified Meetings:
- Avoid technical and time-zone scheduling Issues: You should always be ready for any technical issue during the virtual call. In case there is a technical problem, you don’t have a chance to waste time, you must have a PLAN ‘B’ ready or a way to avoid falling into the pit of technical despair. To prevent this make sure to troubleshoot all the technical issues before the meeting. Many platforms have a technical testing page and good technological support. Know your schedules well in advance so there is no hindrance due to time-zone issues.
- Virtual meeting design: Virtual sales meeting design includes purpose, roles, meeting norms, materials, facilitator, technical, scheduling, and communication. Your goal should be to get qualified sales leads by the end of your virtual meetings. To keep your sales team engaged in the virtual sales meetings, identify different people to assign different roles on a rotating basis to make the job a little easier and comfortable.
Roles may include:
- Facilitator: Designs and facilitates meeting
- Notetaker: Takes action notes, takeaways and emails them to everyone after the meeting
- Technical support: Helps with technical troubleshooting
- Timekeeper: Keeps time
- Yoda: A Yoda is a person who calls it out when meeting norms are not being followed. Some teams prefer to appoint Yoda.
- Always do a virtual icebreaker: For a bang on start to virtual sales meeting you need to break the ice. This activity relaxes the sales team members as well as the leads. Ice breaker not only eases the meeting but creates a positive atmosphere, breaks down social barriers, motivates, and creates trust in each other. You can almost use the same way to break the ice as you would in a face-to-face meeting.
- Create a line for participants to follow: Establish a method for sales of call-in participants. You may include alphabetical order or if you are using a video platform, by order of the screen. If you are in an audio meeting you can use the clock technique. If you are using a video platform, watch for eye movement, arms moving, or typing sounds or bored expressions. Don’t call out the lead particularly, but remind them that one of your meeting norms is full attention. You have to be good enough to make sure they don’t lose interest and stay engaged. Your pitch should be appealing enough for them to keep their focus.
- Evaluate and improve virtual sales meetings: Your virtual sales meetings will improve over time if you take out 5 or 10 minutes at the end of the meeting to evaluate how it was and what you need to improve. Platforms like FunnL always work towards evaluation after every virtual sales meeting. You must try to understand the reason why your lead was not able to connect strongly and engage efficiently so you don’t repeat it. Try using the same methods you would use to evaluate face to face meetings. You can use virtual sticky notes to evaluate meetings using two different methods, “Sad, Mad, Glad” and “Plus/Delta.”
Every platform has its ways to work on engagement but FunnL is one of those few platforms which gives priority to engagement. That is the reason FunnL just doesn’t generate leads but generates sales qualified meetings. They make sure to follow the do’s and don’ts, avoid technical issues, socialize with the lead and consistently evaluate the virtual sales qualified meetings. FunnL today is the fastest growing platform to generate successful sales qualified meetings and has generated more than 10,000 leads for about 100 companies. Keeping the sales time on point with the prospective leads and making sure the engagement level is high is surely one of the main reasons for FunnL’s success.
