Reducing COVID-19’s Impact on Sales: Go Virtual!
Questions have been rolling in these past few days about how to reduce COVID-19’s impact on sales from cancellations to client meetings, trade shows and conferences. As a teacher of marketing and sales at the university level, and a paid consultant and coach serving small to medium businesses, my expertise has been tapped for good reason:
Organizations that depend upon their salespeople to drive new business and sustain existing client relationships are scrambling to shift to virtual solutions. The same can be said about the fallout from postponements or outright cancellations to live events, or just reduced attendance to those events that their organizers decide to run, nevertheless.
Many larger firms have been making this kind of shift to virtual selling for years due to reduced travel budgets, and concerns about environmental consequences, traffic and time management. Small to medium businesses are far more likely to have continued sending out their “road warriors” to meet face-to-face with clients and prospective clients, so they are the ones to whom I am primarily addressing this advice.
Companies without an effective and efficient CRM (customer relationship management) application will be hampered by the need to move into virtual selling, so having such a system deployed is really key to virtual (as well as “live” selling) success. But that is another part of the story. This article is specifically targeted to helping you move your sales presentations from live to virtual as well as dealing with cancelled or postponed group events.
Tip #1: Be sure the flow and language of the sales presentation is captured in written form, preferably as a document. Many sellers already have something that uses one of the popular presentation applications such as PowerPoint, Keynote or Prezi to parse out the high-level topics into a slide by slide presentation. This would be used alongside a live chat using one of the software solutions covered in Tip #2, below.
Tip #2: Select a webcasting/video conference platform to use if your organization doesn't already have a good one. There are lots of choices from BlueJeans to Zoom. Here’s a review website that breaks down both paid and free solutions well (note that this and most all similar review websites are ad supported): https://www.techradar.com/best/best-video-conferencing-software#3-zoom-meetings
I suggest checking some of them out, perhaps doing a free trial where available, and then deciding upon what kind of size and scope would best suit your business needs. I can help if you get stuck on a decision.
Tip #3: What if a virtual presentation delivered live in real time is not feasible or possible? A recorded sales presentation may be created using several possible avenues:
· Capture a screencast by recording a live presentation (aka "prezo"). Several “takes” may be required until a good or great final video is ready for prime time, particularly since many of us get “stage fright” in front of a camera. Consider hiring a professional to help shoot, edit and finalize your video.
· Use animation instead. I use animated videos in all my online classes to accomplish multiple purposes, and several drag and drop applications are available on the market today which do not require the creator to be an experienced animator. I personally like Powtoon. Here’s a sample of what can be created without any previous knowledge or experience:
o https://youtu.be/ow3IL5tc6D8
o https://youtu.be/MfuACN5fYPs
As with a recorded sales prezo, consider hiring a professional to help develop your animated video if you would prefer to outsource this task.
Tip #4: Trade show or conference postponed or cancelled? Some organizers may go virtual, so that will at least help your sales team keep top of mind with your clients and prospects. Otherwise, one suggestion I offered just today when on a coaching call with a sales executive for one of my private clients may be something to consider. This client had just invested a significant amount of money on a new trade show booth, so what I recommended was to set up the booth at their facility and shoot a brief video with their sales team inside the booth, and then push this “brag video” out to their clients and prospects either by You Tube or better yet, via a link back to their own website. In this way, they can proudly showcase their new booth while getting some attention for their company and its products, despite not being able to be there in person at the scheduled but now cancelled trade show.
I would be interested to hear from any of you out there in my Linked In community about your experiences and suggestions for taking sales virtual. Caring is Sharing.
Stay healthy! - Ira