B2B Selling on Zoom: The Essentials (Part 1)

Over 90% of all B2B sales meetings are now conducted over a video conferencing platform, whether that be Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or WebEx. That percentage can be as high as 99% for many companies. As B2B sales professionals, we need to be always looking for news ways optimize our remote selling strategies.

If you are a sales professional selling software, hardware, or services, this article will provide ideas for best practices to make you more efficient, productive, and successful. To be a top B2B sales performer today, you need to be a master at organizing, leading, and presenting on remote sales calls.

To gather some of the best tips and practices, I have interviewed and observed top sales achievers at various technology companies such as Google, Elastic, and Salesforce to learn how top performers use different approaches to lead their sales calls on video conferencing platforms.

This article is Part 1 of a three-part series on B2B Selling on Zoom. There are two additional articles in this series:

• B2B Selling on Zoom: Meeting Preparation (Part 2)
• B2B Selling on Zoom: Meeting Execution (Part 3)

The Challenge

The advent of Zoom calls has provided massive benefits in productivity to sales professionals, but it has also brought on new challenges. The ease and efficiency of adding people to virtual meetings have bloated the number of people involved on the buyer's side. With these larger buying groups, getting customers to come to a consensus and make decisions has become even more complex, creating longer sales cycles if not managed proactively. To compound this, people today are overloaded with back-to-back calls all day due to the ease of scheduling virtual calls versus in-person meetings. By the time they are speaking with you, they may be already "Zoomed out" for the day.

You need to think strategically and prepare well in advance to ensure your calls are productive, interesting, and engaging for your customers. Time is a salesperson's most important asset, and this article is a collection of tips, insights, and strategies to optimize your selling time. Embrace the opportunity to experiment, retrain yourself and learn new ways to inspire your clients and partners to take action, make decisions, and move deals forward.?

Presenting Yourself

First, let's talk about the non-negotiables and essential fundamental guidelines around setting up your virtual selling environment.

Attire: It's the most obvious but often ignored. Some salespeople are getting too comfortable working from home and are leading customer meetings wearing a t-shirt or sweatshirt. You should dress for a virtual call just as well as if you were visiting your client in person at their company's headquarters.

Profile Photo: Your profile photo in your conferencing application is presented to your clients when you are on virtual calls. This photo should be a professional-looking photo of you in business attire. First impressions matter, so make it your best.

Profile Name: In your settings, you should confirm that your full name is spelled out as part of your profile so people can easily identify you when you speak in large group meetings.

Background: Whether your background is virtual or real, make sure it is professional. If you are using your real background, ensure that every item in the background is placed with some pre-thought as to the impression you are trying to make. If you use a virtual background, choose a unique and professional-looking image and embed your company's logo into the background. If you have the space within your home office, consider a green screen to enhance your virtual background, it will look even better.

Video Settings: Your video conferencing platform has video settings parameters such as "Adjust for light," "Appearance touch-up," and "Filter effects." Go into these settings and optimize them based on your home office setup and work environment. The features are available, so make the best use of them.

Lighting: Good lighting is essential, whether that be natural lighting, specialized lighting for video conferencing, or just a good desk lamp positioned properly. Test and experiment so you can look your best. Make sure your lighting is in front of you and avoid situations where there is a window or some backlighting behind you that will wash out your appearance on camera.?

Video Quality: Make sure the video camera you are using is high quality and the video settings in your video conferencing platform are set to HD or 4K. If you are ambitious, you can also set up your computer with a DSLR camera for the ultimate professional look.

Sound Quality: The ability of your customer to easily hear you can not be overstated. Poor sound quality is very frustrating for listeners. I recommend staying away from over-the-ear headphones like Bose because these headsets are more optimized for speaker quality, not microphone quality. Plus over the ear headsets are bulky and can look awkward. Instead, use the highest quality air buds, such as Air Pods Pro. Or even better, use a professional, free-standing microphone such as the Elgato Wave 3. Invest in good sound quality; your clients will appreciate it.

If you must use the microphone on your laptop, make sure there is no echo based on your working environment. Test your audio quality with a friend and ask them for feedback to ensure you are coming through without echo or distortion.

Eye Contact: It is scientifically proven; eye contact is essential for creating trust and ensuring good communication. If you are not looking directly into your camera, you miss out on one of the most critical non-verbal communication cues.

Camera Height: Make sure your camera is precisely eye height to your eyes by adjusting your monitor or seat height. Sit straight and speak to into the camera. Avoid using a laptop camera because it puts you in a position where you need to look down. If you must use a laptop camera, put the laptop on a platform to adjust the camera to the height of your eyes.

Video Frame: To ensure good eye contact, reduce the size of the video frame of the person you are speaking with close to its minimal size. Then move it to the top and middle of your monitor right under the camera. This way, when you are looking at the video frame of the person you are speaking with, you are looking directly into the camera, thereby creating virtual eye contact.

Note Taking: If you need to look at notes or take them during your call, put the the note-taking application directly under the frame of the video of the person you are speaking with. This way, you will still make eye contact with your counterpart while reading or writing notes. And if you are using a messaging application like Slack to communicate with your colleagues during a call, put the application as close to the camera as possible to maintain eye contact with your customer. Try to avoid working with an application on the side of your computer desktop because you will be looking away from the camera, which does not promote trust.

Non-Verbal Communication Cues: Body language is another essential non-verbal cue you want to utilize in your virtual communication. Although you are not physically present in a virtual meeting, your body language will come through on the screen, so you want to ensure it is positive.?

If you are slumping with bad posture or sitting back in your seat, this will communicate disinterest to your counterpart. Instead, lean in and show full engagement when your customers are speaking. If you have a standing desk, experiment standing up during calls, this will keep your posture alert and straight.

If you are on a large group Zoom call with a long duration and need a rest, turn your camera off while others are speaking (unless they are speaking directly to you) if you need a break. Turning your camera off for a few minutes when you are not speaking is a better alternative than looking bored when other people are speaking. When your camera is on, you should always assume that someone is looking, even when you are not speaking.

Framing Your Video: Frame yourself on camera so your audience can see your complete profile. Do not jam your face too close to the camera, and do not sit too far back. It could feel uncomfortable for your audience if your face is right up into the camera, and if you sit five feet away, you could be perceived as disinterested. The best way to frame yourself is to enable your audience to see your upper body and hands so you can use non-verbal cues to help you achieve your communication objectives.

Zoom & Computer Settings

In advance of your meetings, ensure everything that affects your virtual environment is perfect, just as you would tidy up and prepare a conference room for a visiting client at your offices.

Video Frame: Have you ever felt uncomfortable speaking to someone in person when they are right up in your face? It is entirely natural; this is your fight or flight response and is automatically activated. You can experience the same stress when you are speaking with someone on a video call if you have their face at full screen on your computer. To avoid this feeling, keep your Zoom frame small on your computer instead of full screen.

And as mentioned in the section about eye contact, keeping the video frame of the conferencing application small and putting the frame up top right under your camera will help you create direct eye contact with your counterpart.

Screen Share: Make sure your conferencing platform is set up to allow anyone on the call to share their screen by default. You want to encourage screen sharing as much as possible so you can learn about your customers. Enabling by default will allow quick and easy screen sharing by your customers so they can share as much as possible.

Control of Admittance: Make sure your settings so that you are required to allow people into your conference call. This setting lets you control your meeting and gives you a few seconds to prepare yourself before your initial greeting. First impressions have an impact, and you need to prepare yourself for that initial interaction.

View All People: Enable your setting to see all the people on the call instead of just the speaker. This will allow you to read the body language and facial expressions of people who may be just listening but could be an important part of the decision-making process.

Recording: Of all the times you recorded a meeting, how often have you gone back and reviewed the recording? Chances are very few. People who know they are being recorded may be more guarded and less open and transparent than you would like them to be. Unless necessary, it's better only to record the meeting if the client makes the ask.

Desktop Notifications: Turn off all notifications on your desktop. One, you want to be absolutely present for the call. Two, you want to avoid your counterpart hearing background pings and dings on your computer while speaking with them. This will distract everyone on the call, including yourself. In an in-person meeting, looking at your phone or computer is rude, and the same rule should be observed on virtual calls.

Browser Setup: When presenting content or a demo from your browser, ensure you have all the tabs open and ready to go in advance. This way, you don't have awkward silence waiting for a page to load, and you can easily transition between tabs. Also, keep your desktop as clean as possible because people will look at everything visible to them, so close all tabs that are irrelevant to your presentation.

Happy B2B selling!

If you found any of the ideas in this article interesting, please see Part 2 and Part 3 in this series:

• B2B Selling on Zoom: Meeting Preparation (Part 2)
• B2B Selling on Zoom: Meeting Execution (Part 3)

About the Author

Thank you for reading my article. I have a passion for B2B Software Sales, and I am constantly looking for ways to level up my performance. If you have any questions or insights to share, please feel free to contact me via my?open LinkedIn profile .

Andrew Paulsen – [email protected] / +1 415.269.7350