Gain an advantage in your Virtual Sales Meetings

January 22, 2022

“Virtual selling will continue even after we get a successful COVID vaccine.” A client told me this just last week, confirming what many others are now saying.  As a result, she, along with other Sales Leaders have asked us to help their sales-related personnel to better execute the various types of virtual sales meetings that they will be facilitating. To whet your appetite, below are a few best practices—not Zoom technology tricks—that can help to differentiate yourself, your services, and your company during upcoming virtual sales meetings:

Preparation is key for your Virtual Meetings – Whether you have been successful due to your prospecting efforts or you are reacting to an inbound lead/RFP, it will be important to answer the following before you even begin your Virtual Sales Meetings:

• What are you trying to accomplish during your virtual sales meeting? The type of meeting you hope to have has to be determined first. You could have at least 3 different objectives, including 1) Discovering a prospect’s needs; 2) Sharing/proving your capabilities, and 3) Dealing with risk/completing the sale
• With whom is your virtual sales meeting?  Is just one person participating or are there many?  Additionally, is it with someone that can make a decision; someone that is prepared to introduce you to a decision-maker, or perhaps is it with someone that cannot make a decision, nor are they planning to introduce to someone who can?
• Do you, or perhaps your competitors, already have answers to any of the below components of a sale (See our prior article on Sale = Pain x Power x Vision x Value x Collaborate x CRTA).  If you don’t, one of your goals during a virtual sales meeting is to get answers to each of these critical components. 

The Four C’s for Organizing & Facilitating Effective Virtual Meetings – Below are 4 steps for organizing future virtual sales meetings – They can be adapted regardless of the purpose of a sales meeting:

• Capture the attention of the attendees with an interesting & stimulating opening, perhaps by doing something unexpected
• Connect with the participants and get their buy-in by establishing your credibility
• Share Content that is organized and easy to follow – Your content & questions should facilitate the buyer gaining a clear & compelling vision with quantifiable value
• Conclude by finishing strong and with a call to action. This strong summary should be after the Q&A is finished. 

Handling Questions – There is an art to handling questions during a virtual meeting.  While there is a proven 5-step method for handling questions, a few finer points are below:

• Re-State the Question – Whether the question is asked verbally or through a chat feature, it is important to re-state the question so that all participants get their attention focused on your answer
• After Re-Stating the Question – Choose which method to use to answer the question, including: Outline, Story or Segue
• Don’t end the Virtual Meeting with Questions – If there is a Q&A at the end of your Virtual Meeting, take back control of the meeting following the Q&A and then wrap it up with a strong summary as well as a discussion of next steps.

Virtual Sales Meetings are here to stay.  If you want to learn the tricks or best practices for leveraging Zoom or Teams, do a google search.  However, if you want to truly differentiate you and your team from your competitors, it may take a proven process for facilitating successful virtual sales meetings—as well as training and practice—to excel.  Let us know if we can support your efforts.