On the menu in this article:
- The keys to preparing for your remote appointment
- How to put your client in the best conditions
- How to become the conductor of your relationship
- The keys to a winning sales meeting
- Tips for a smooth speech
- How to ensure a tailor-made experience and follow-up
Far from the usual physical exchanges, few companies were prepared for the current health crisis. In many cases, managers, sales people, call center employees or customer services have seen their productivity decrease and have encountered some difficulties to adapt to their new daily life: selling at a distance.
Uncertainty is present if we think about the change in buyer behavior and new work methods. Adapting to the sales cycle of a company requires adaptation and perseverance. And precisely, to succeed in selling remotely, it is necessary to question one's habits in order to reinvent oneself but also to create a new source of value for your customers and prospects.
There are many issues at stake:
- Move from face-to-face prospecting and selling to a virtual sales approach to meet the demands of customers who now favor the use of digital channels.
- Get more engagement and visibility through new technologies.
- Sell on a larger scale by abolishing the boundaries of physical communication.
To meet these criteria, the key word is "optimization". Acquiring the right reflexes to set up a videoconference meeting, mastering new tools and preparing your meeting take time. Discover in our article, our 6 tips and tricks to improve the efficiency of your sales teams and increase their transformation rate in remote sales!
1. Prepare for your remote interview
Anticipating the most suitable location for your virtual meeting will allow you to think about all aspects related to distance. Choose a quiet place, a pleasant light, a good internet connection and don't forget to check the background as well as the proper functioning of your equipment (microphone, webcam).
Personalize your invitation with the theme of the meeting and the link to the video connection. This past year, every salesperson and decision maker has faced a busier schedule than ever. Their weekly schedule is usually made up of meeting after meeting. For most of these videoconference appointments, the only context filled in is the name of the company and the contact person (and even then...!).
Before you even start the appointment, put your prospect or caller in a comfortable position. In the details of the remote appointment, fill in the key information that will be discussed during the call. A short summary list will allow your prospect to better prepare for the appointment, and to arrive with the necessary context to move the discussion forward more quickly.
Log in 5 minutes before, so that you can accept your guests' participation beforehand. This will allow you to check that the sound, video and chat opening are working well.
Prepare all the questions and objections you may be confronted with so as not to be caught off guard and leave gaps in the conversation. You will then be able to keep your confidence and composure to carry out your interview.
2. Put your customer in the best conditions
You are the organizer of the meeting! You have all the cards in your hand to set the pace.
Once the connection link has been sent, you can share a tutorial on the chosen platform if necessary. At the beginning of the meeting, take the time to introduce all the organizational aspects:
- Introduce yourself and go around the table quickly. Note the names and functions of the participants so that you can identify them and address them.
- Set the framework for the interview by reiterating the objectives, the duration, the exchange time and the questions.
- Announce at the outset whether your presentation will contain participatory sequences. Ideally, you want to avoid monologue periods, so encourage pauses to allow your speaker to bounce back.
- Get into the habit of telling your contact, at the beginning of the meeting, that the elements that will be presented will be sent to them afterwards. This will allow them to concentrate on your speech, without having to remember to take screenshots at every important moment.
- At the same time as systematically sending the elements presented, do not neglect - most importantly - to reiterate the next steps (which should have already been mentioned at the end of the meeting). Like any good project manager, the salesperson is the head of his pipeline and sales cycle. Your prospect wants to be handled smoothly, it is up to the sales person to ensure clear visibility on each successive step of the cycle.
3. You are the conductor of the remote interview
To prevent participants from losing focus, it is important to provide them with visual aids to help them pay attention and understand. Remember to involve them by asking them questions, which will increase their ability to concentrate. Maintain a steady pace during the sequence of topics to keep up the pace.
During the remote sales interview, you start with the contact phase to connect with your customers. Then comes the discovery phase during which you will be able to ask the wide angle questions. Don't neglect this phase because customers are increasingly expecting companies to show empathy. They have more time than usual and understanding their overall situation will allow you to create proximity.
In the argumentation phase, rely on customer benefits. Be concrete, share one or more success stories related to their activity or similar issues so that they become aware of your added value. Ask for regular feedback during your argumentation to check if you are well aligned despite the distance.
Finally, don't be afraid to use persuasive or funneling techniques to conclude your pitch. Offer your clients an alternative such as starting in the current month or after the manager returns. You can suggest a projection with a dashboard you have created beforehand to give them an overview. Don't forget to define a next step such as a meeting with the key decision maker or sending a sales proposal by setting a date.
4. Adopt the right attitude
During your remote appointment, adopt an appropriate tone and flow so that you are understood. It is important to take care of your image because telecommuting has led to a certain tendency to relax in terms of appearance. Looks and visibility are just as important in video for salespeople! If possible, avoid positioning yourself against the light. Make sure your image is bright, no one wants to talk to a silhouette!
Be sure to stand up straight and position yourself at the back of the seat for a good seat. During active listening, use non-verbal feedback to bring the moment to life and give it depth. Remember to take full notes during the exchange. The debriefing stage is always a pain point, but effective notes allow for better (and faster) transcription into the CRM.
Furthermore, if you can provide yourself with a second screen, the experience of you and your interlocutor can be greatly improved. With a second screen, you can ensure a smooth presentation on one screen and then display your note-taking software and video conferencing tool on the other. This allows you to see the reaction of your interlocutor in real time, a clue that can guide you in your presentation: your client is starting to look elsewhere a lot? Maybe it's time to stop the monologue and have a discussion to regain his attention.
Distance selling is still a relatively new process, and even if you feel comfortable making calls, it's important to constantly look for ways to improve where you can.
5. Key tips for winning video conferences
While switching to remote appointments is not a recent change, there are still many tricks we can easily implement to ensure greater success in our video conferences.
Record your calls
Some video conferencing tools allow you to record the conversation for later review.
By watching replays of your sales calls, you may discover areas for improvement that you never thought of before. Verbal tics to fill the silence (which is especially distressing in a remote call), constant shifting in your chair, looking away from the camera, etc. are all easy to correct, but you have to realize it first!
Take care of your video
Couldn't create a dedicated workspace in your home, and the messy living room behind you draws more attention than your presentation? There are solutions!
Many tools allow you to apply a blurred effect to the background of your video, while keeping you in the foreground looking sharp. This helps your interlocutor to focus on you, and offers a refined video quality!
However, you may prefer to hide the background completely, and replace it with another scene. This too is perfectly feasible!
Hide your own video
Or, perhaps, after so many months of video conferencing, you're getting tired of always seeing your own video in the corner of the page during your video conference calls. That's normal! It takes an effort of concentration to ignore your own face and focus on the other person. That's why, in some tools, you can opt to no longer see your video in the corner of the window, while leaving your video visible to the other person.
6. The key tool for top-performing teams
In order to ensure that your sales pipeline is followed up through your various appointments, you need to make sure that you personalize your follow-up and then adapt your message according to your clients' priorities.
Some try to provide this personalization through their CRM. Unfortunately, these types of tools are not designed to ensure personalization, adaptation and selection of content according to the interlocutor, etc.
Our philosophy at Sweet Show is that a customer journey must be personalized and customized. That's why we created a platform, precisely to answer this need.
Sweet Show allows you to customize your follow-up not only by company, but also by interlocutor at each level. Instead of sending an 80-page presentation to your client, who has to find the information that is most relevant to him, in order to transmit it to his management for example, etc., Sweet Show allows you to create customized online spaces to transmit your different contents in a targeted way
Once the content has been shared with your prospect, the big plus is the tracking: you can indeed follow their engagement in real time. Analyze how they interact with your content, the number of opens per person, and much more, thanks to the viewing statistics.
Discover the right time to follow up with each prospect and customer, with relevant information, according to their interest in your different contents.
This allows you to shorten the sales cycle and provide a better buying experience at every stage of the cycle.
Learning how to sell remotely through the use of content is just the beginning of the road ahead for salespeople. The Sweet Show platform accompanies you throughout your sales cycle to save time at every step.
To learn more about how Sweet Show can help you accelerate every step of your business cycle, and to discover the platform, sign up for Sweet Show for free:
%20(1).jpg)
