How to Turn Your Virtual Meetings
into Closed Deals
- Read time: 10 min
91 percent of Sales Reps find it difficult to gain a buyer’s attention and keep the buyer engaged in a virtual meeting.
It is more difficult to build relationships in a virtual meeting. Everything that we usually use to build relationships is not there.
It doesn’t always work the way we want it to, but everyone is in the same boat, and we just got to accept that situation.
of people work on something unrelated.
of people prepare food or eat.
of people check social media or text.
of people play video games.
of people shop online.
1. Consider your tech stack
- Find out what video conferencing software works for you considering your needs and what software the majority of your prospects use.
- Do you talk freely in virtual meetings? Make sure you stand up and step a bit away from the screen so the person you are talking with can see more than just your face.
- Use your body language so they see what they would have seen if you were in an in-person meeting with them.
- If you choose to use some presentation tool, make sure that it is engaging. The human brain is much more prone to remember something engaging and interactive than something flat.
- Use a tracking tool after your meetings to get a feeling of what your buyer is doing. It is a way for you to connect and follow up while questions come up.
2. Plan for relationship building
Do your research on your prospective buyer and show that you are interested. Remember to smile and make sure you have your camera on – they need to see who you are. Ensure that you are on the ball in the same way as you would have been having it been an in-person meeting.
Be attentive and engaged - your full energy is required more than ever because you are selling remotely. When you go virtual, that need is being magnified and multiplied.
You need to bring your full attention to the camera, invest yourself, and show who you are with your authentic power. Being yourself engages the buyer, and it creates a strong bond, which leads to a strong relationship and further on to a strong collaboration.
Sellers find it difficult to build rapport and build relationships virtually. The more you turn on your authentic power and volume, the better. That is what you can control. You cannot control whether the buyer is sitting at home with their family disturbing the meeting or technical difficulties. But you can control the place from which you show up.
Serve the Buyer
Many sellers focus on the sale – they want to close this deal. But instead of focusing on the sale, you need to focus on helping the buyer while figuring out what are their needs and pains.
Buyers sense immediately if sellers are only thinking about how to close the deal. It’s all about conveying value to the buyer, new ideas and inspiration. This makes a big difference for the buyer already during the virtual meeting, so the buyer is left with a WOW feeling – “this seller is there for me” Serve to sell!
Practice Active Listening
Listen – really listen actively. Listen to hear and understand. Practice deep listening by listening to what the customer wants and needs and not your inner voice preparing what to answer – listen attentively. Rain Group’s study shows that buyers don’t want to work with companies that don’t listen to their needs. It is the second-highest factor influencing the buyer purchase decision.
Understand the Buyer
Understand the customer – a customer can feel if they are not being understood, and it is important that they feel understood. This also prepares you better on what to present to the customer.
Open a Collaboration
Open a collaboration and give the buyer the feeling that you are working on this together. By making sure that the buyers know that you are there to help them solve their problems and figuring solutions out together, you are more likely to close the deal and get a loyal customer.
3. Visualize your needs discovery
You might think:
I can’t put up my questions on the screen!
But, when you are in a virtual setting, as long as you are just talking – it’s just words, and your buyers will get easily distracted. By visualizing your needs discovery with something interactive, your buyer will be more engaged because it’s theirs. It’s their challenges and their needs – they own it. Additionally, you align on expectations and make sure that the virtual meeting is more relevant for the buyer and yourself.
Here is an example of how Prezentor can help you visualize your needs discovery
When your buyer says that it is important for them to convey the ROI of their product and you put a checkmark in ‘ROI', then it solidifies their needs.
On top of that, by writing something together with your buyer, you engage with them, pull them in, and allow them to influence the agenda. In this way, it becomes your common sales meeting, not just yours or theirs.
By visualizing your needs discovery, you build common ground, and it helps you to make the needs discovery effective.
4. Create sales content that facilitates an engaging dialogue
When you are in a virtual setting, visualizing what you are saying, connects the eyes with the ears. You increase the likelihood that buyers will remember what you talked about in the meeting (John Medina). And you open up for more questions and deeper dialogue. Visualization is key regardless of which tech tool you use.
An example of this is Berendsen, a Danish cleaning and hygiene company. They wanted to visualize a public bathroom, and by doing this, they open up the buyer’s brain to what the possibilities are and enable the buyer to see themselves in the solution that is being discussed. It makes something virtual feasible.
By visualizing the needs, you avoid misunderstandings and make sure that when you talk about the soap dispenser, both of you know that it is the soap dispenser you are pointing at. You can click on it to create engagement and ask deeper questions about it, such as the product’s relevance, to probe into what the buyer is thinking about this product.
5. Model Customer specific Impact
Buyers do up to 67 percent of buying research online before we even speak to a seller, so we know a lot before talking to someone. We want a trusted advisor who can help us make the right decision, not someone that pushes something down our throat.
What does it mean?
It means building the case together with the customer in the meeting and visualizing the impact that your solution has for them using their numbers. Not using general numbers. Using their numbers! After that, you can take it further, and you can do an ROI calculation easily, but first model the impact that your solution has. That impact can be anything!
How to model Customer specific Impact Examples
In this example, we are showing one of our calculators. We know that our outcome is that we help our customer increase their conversion rate. So what we usually do is ask; what if we could increase your conversion rate by 1 percent? Only one percent!
We know that we have a much greater impact than that, but we start low to create a sense of security and trust.
So we ask:
How many Sales Reps are you?
What is your average deal size?
How many opportunities do you have on average per Sales Rep per month?
What it would mean for you if you could increase your conversion by 1 percent?
What is your current conversion rate?
It often shows a significant impact and gives us something to talk about; it opens up the dialogue. Once we have agreed that it is a good solution for the customer, we do an ROI calculation, and the customer is much more open to that, and we set it up with the impact.
This can be done in Excel, in Prezentor, really any tool that you have available or would like to invest in. The most important thing is that you do it – it will certainly make a huge difference, especially in your virtual meetings to create engagement and trust.