Improving Your Virtual Selling Skills

Space…the final frontier… If you are a Trekkie or a fan of the hit show Star Trek, you will remember the show’s opening.  Other parts include:  To explore strange new worlds . . . To boldly go where . . . well you get it.  How does that impact our topic this week?  Well, that depends on how you answer these next two questions?  What have you done to help start a relationship using technology?  Have you ever made a virtual sales call or followed a virtual sales process?

Over 90% of the time, when I, or any of my colleagues at Anthony Cole Training, meet a customer for the first time, face-to-face, is when we arrive for their first on-site training session.  Everything up to that point has been done virtually . . . phone calls, emails, Zoom, delivering assessment results, etc.  We find them, bring value to them, qualify them, and get them to commit to using our services, all virtually.

I know, I know, and I can hear you already; “Jack, I’m so much better face to face”, “I don’t like making calls over the phone or via Zoom”, “It feels so awkward”.  To all that I agree and simply say “Suck it up Buttercup”. It’s the reality of the sales world we are living in. You can curse the wind or adjust your sails. The choice is yours. Let this next piece of info marinate in your fertile sales mind: Over 60% of CEO’s would rather watch a video than read an email.

I’ve decided cursing the wind hasn’t helped create relationships. Adjusting my sails to get more sales (see what I did there?) has.

Here are a couple of things to remember when you are video prospecting if you decide to be a sail-adjuster and not remain a wind-curser:

• Purchase a holder for your camera
  • Don’t use your hands, it gets too jiggly.
• Pay attention to your background
  • Are you centered in the picture? What’s behind you? Where is your lighting coming from?  If your lighting is behind you, you will be silhouetted and look like you are in the FBI witness protection program.
• Be brief and be gone
  • 60-90 seconds and GET TO THE POINT
  • Before you create your prospecting video, make sure you know the answer to this statement;
    • I’m sending this video because . . .
      • If you can’t answer that, don’t press the “record” button.
  •  Most important
    • Don’t be a Prospecting Narcissist
      • Who do narcissist LOVE to talk about? Themselves!
      • Your prospect doesn’t care about your company, your products/services, or how wonderful you are.
    • What do your prospects care about?
      • Growing their business and overcoming their challenges.

In closing, keep this in mind: the goal of your virtual prospecting efforts isn’t to get a meeting, schedule a demo, or visit their company. That’s being a prospecting narcissist. Your goal on any type of prospecting is to simply see if you can create a relationship that might be beneficial to that person or company in the future.

Now, go “seek out new life (opportunities) and new civilizations (customers)”.  But most importantly, “live long and prosper”.