Has video calling killed face to face sales?

Being in a sales and/or marketing role can be challenging at the best of times, let alone in National Lockdown number 3. The ongoing pandemic has caused a massive shift in digital marketing and general business operations. And working in an industry that’s so dependent on face to face contact, we’re having to adapt to using online communication platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Go To Meeting, WhatsApp video and Facetime every day!

As much as I miss seeing candidates, clients and my team face to face, these platforms have really helped me over the last 6 months to maximise my activity and boost sales.

According to research*, only 7% of messages are conveyed through text – the remaining 93% consists of body language (55%) and tone of voice (38%). This is why communication via email and on the phone isn’t as effective as a video call.

But the only way that we can convert leads is to convince and educate our prospects that what they would be buying into is better than our competitors and can provide them a good ROI.

Which is why I LOVE zoom, you can use the platform to deliver a live demonstration of a product or run through a presentation, answering any questions your prospect client has.

Video calls also let key decision makers join with just one click! Ultimately becoming more appealing to them as the meeting would take up a lot less time in their diary, than it would to get to a venue, order a coffee and meet face to face.

By sharing your screen, seeing the other person reaction and ensuring that your customer gets a personalised experience, whilst sitting in the comfort of your own home dressed from the waist down in PJ bottoms… surely it’s a win, win?

Don’t get me wrong, the moment we are allowed to go out and network face to face again I’ll be one of the first ones there! However, its easy to say that its ‘harder’ to network and ‘just not the same’ closing a deal via video call but, we move with the times and right now we don’t have a choice!

Zoom recorded a staggering 300 million daily meeting participants, which is a massive increase from the 10 million figure in December 2019. This says a lot about how online communication platforms have become an crucial meeting tool and personally I think will continue to be, even when the world gets back to ‘normal’.

*https://www.pgi.com/resources/articles/four-body-language-secrets-remember-your-next-video-conference/