How Sales Teams Close More Deals With Video Conferencing

The world of sales is undeniably fast paced and extremely aggressive. This is especially true considering the challenges of the current economic climate. With these uncertain economic conditions, sales teams must evaluate their positioning and strategize properly in order to achieve any respectable level of success.

Sales teams that ultimately achieve success understand that if they fail to keep up with technology, their competitors will steal away their market share.

It’s really that simple.

Moreover, it follows that success in sales can only be achieved by implementing new techniques and tools that will allow you to stand out boldly amongst competitors. In today’s world, technology is the sales professional’s best friend.

This begs the question, which technologies are most important for sales teams to adopt and leverage in order to meet their sales targets?

Among the many areas of technological advancements in sales, video conferencing is one of the most important.

If you are surprised at that statement, take a moment to consider that video conferencing is not just for hosting business meetings. In fact, video conferencing is a powerful tool to reach a wider customer base and better engage with your current customers.

5 Important Ways Video Conferencing Can Help You Reach More Prospects & Close More Deals

 

1.   Impactful Demonstrations and Presentations

Building trust and effectively demonstrating your product are crucial to closing deals. How do you convince your prospects to become customers if they cannot see the product or easily understand the benefits of the service?

Are they supposed to just take your word for it?

A live demo can be much more valuable than the mere words of a stranger on the other end of the phone, or worse, a stream of emails.

Nowadays, clients are searching for that elusive ‘wow’ factor; that special, personalized, hands-on buying experience. The old way of selling does not work anymore.

Video conferencing allows you to show your customers your product and explain your services in real time.

With the right video conferencing solution, you’ll be able to:

• Discuss and Illustrate Ideas: Complex ideas can be illustrated with the aid of graphs, concept maps, and similar aids. This kind of visual content creates interest, engagement, and ultimately, understanding.
• Share Your Screen: Tell your prospects the story you want to tell them by sharing live information directly from your screen. 

• Create a Positive Image: If you are contacting prospects with whom you are not very familiar, it’s your job to create a good impression with a professional and inviting backdrop for your presentation. Remember, your prospects will likely (often subconsciously) make judgments based on your environment and your appearance. Video conferencing enables you put your best foot (or face) forward. 
• Properly Explain Your Product/Service: Use video to control the conversation and shape the narrative about your product for your prospects. Regular video meetings with prospects will ultimately result in a better understanding of your products/services. Moreover, these regular live connections will keep your offerings fresh and at the forefront of their minds.  

If your product doesn’t allow for demos or if you are offering a service, then you can also share slides, photos, testimonials, and “how-to” videos during the call. It’s all about creating an immersive and interactive experience that feels like an in-person conversation.

2. Engaging Face-to-Face Discussions

It can be difficult to sell a product or service when you can’t meet the prospect in person. You have no idea what the person on the other end of the line is expecting or how they’re receiving the information you are providing. Body language gets lost on a phone. 

Sales reps will tell you that it can be rather hard to gauge how a prospect on a call is reacting to their pitch. They don’t always know if their meaning and tone are coming across correctly and effectively.

Is the person on the other end even listening?

In most cases, you can judge by the person’s tone, but that’s not always reliable.

Say Hello to the Face-to-Face Benefits of Video Conferencing:

• Gauge Body Language: Facial expressions and body language convey a lot more than what the person is actually saying. With the face to face advantage of video conferencing, you can gauge your prospect’s responses and adjust your presentation accordingly.

Of course, not all video calls will involve two-way video communication. However, there are always clients who will be willing to have that kind of engagement; and when you meet them, you know half the battle has been won.

• Foster Stronger Relationships: More importantly, video helps build stronger relationships. Your leads will be able to see your face and form an impression of you. As long as you are able to project a good image, you’ll build trust and confidence more quickly.  Remember, a sustainable sales strategy is centered on building and maintaining strong, professional relationships.
• Achieve Faster Sales Cycles: In this fast-paced world, people have short attention spans. With video conferencing, you can create engaging and content-rich sales presentations. This way, you can easily grab and hold your prospect’s attention, leading to faster sales cycles with higher closing rates.

In general, video conferencing allows new products and services to be introduced to the market quicker. Moreover, it allows for easier market validation and other forms of outreach.

• Your Team Members are Always Available: Often, your prospects will require additional perspectives on the product/service. In some cases, they’ll want to ask questions that you, the sales rep, cannot or should not answer. For instance, they may have technical questions or ask for a legal opinion.

Standing in front of the prospect outside of the office, you would probably cower at the question and nervously mumble a quivering response. That doesn’t create much confidence in you, nor your offering.

On a video, however, more often than not, you will be doing the presentation from your office. This means technical, legal and other important personnel can join on the fly. Most people will appreciate the opinion of a specialist, your transparency and your dedication to great customer service by getting them the answers they need. They’ll take you more seriously, building trust in the process and confidence in your presentation.

Moreover, this can shorten the decision process because they will have all the information at the end of the video call instead of waiting for the additional follow-up.  

3. Lower Costs and More Frequent Contact

Video conferencing allows regular business meetings with less frequent flier miles, thereby drastically cutting costs. A reduction in expenses associated with the sales process can have important ripple effects within your sales team:  

• More Meetings in Less Time and Greater Collaboration: Video conferencing allows for more frequent meetings which enables sales professionals to uncover opportunities for greater collaboration much more quickly. Several organizations use video meetings to connect with their clients on a regular basis, thereby strengthening partnerships.

• More Flexibility: Video conferencing allows more flexible scheduling. Prospects are important decision makers who are strapped for time. So often, sales reps travel half-way across the country for an important meeting just to find out that the contact has rescheduled. Remember, productivity is important for sales teams looking to close more deals.
• Expanding Sales Focus: Many sales reps who are required to travel prefer to choose leads within their immediate or fairly close surroundings. Video conferencing allows these reps to schedule calls with people in a wider geographical area, thereby expanding the scope of their business and reducing the competition for limited prospects.
• Reduce Training Costs: Often organizations spend hefty amounts sending employees across the country or even out of the country for training events. In some cases, trainers have to be sent to several countries to conduct sessions. Surely enough, you can incur hefty bills with these expenses which smaller companies often struggle with. Virtual training allows the benefits of providing relevant training content at a significantly lower cost.

4. Increase Productivity and Employee Satisfaction

Less frequent traveling for sales meetings means a reduction in the time spent away from home and family. Moreover, it reduces unproductive commuting time. This, in turn, increases employee satisfaction with better work-life balance. Generally, this can decrease the high turnover rate that is often commonplace in high impact sales organizations.

In turn, this will build a stronger culture within the sales team as reps display a greater attitude to work and increased enthusiasm. As you can imagine, this helps to drive more sales and improves the positive image of the organization.

5. How Can I Repurpose Video Conferencing Material?

Creating high quality, custom videos can be expensive. There are several important factors to consider, with staging, personnel and demo material being just a few. Video content recorded during video conferences can often be repurposed in several ways, including to aid your marketing efforts.

In fact, some of the most compelling videos are created from video conferences because most businesses are hosting these video conferences to address the questions their customers ask the most.

As an example, a meeting to explain the benefits of a new firewall to your managed IT security clients could easily be re-purposed as an explainer video for your website. Clippings of the video could be sent out in newsletters, included in ads, etc. In fact, there are several other ways to re-purpose your web conferencing video material:

• Publish on Several Platforms: Apart from YouTube, there are several other video platforms to post your marketing videos including social platforms, Vimeo, Wistia and Daily Motion.
• Reaching a New Audience: Some users prefer visuals (such as infographics) over text. Some people simply prefer the written word. Many organizations transcribe their videos or use clippings to create graphics that can be used to reach a new audience base.
• Convert To Slides: Other organizations convert their videos to slides. For example, demos and tutorials are good topics for slides for sharing on platforms such as SlideShare and SlideSnack. This gives your content extra reach and potentially introduces your brand to a new audience.

Conclusion

Sales and marketing have greatly evolved in the last few decades, and that’s all thanks to technology. Today, standing out from the typical sales call means going beyond the ordinary to provide a truly immersive experience. With the benefits of video conferencing, you could realize a real competitive advantage in your sales process.

With the high level of motivation and hard work required to become a top performing sales representative, it is important that you make every effort to improve your sales process. Video conferencing is one of the tools that can help you to meet the demands of the modern customer and close more deals.

Are you currently using any form of video conferencing to drive sales? What results have you achieved? Let us know in the comments below!