A good friend of mine – the best man at my wedding, in fact – has sold for about two dozen firms over the past two decades. He thinks that using web conferencing to make online sales calls is unlikely to prove very effective. (Actually, he compared the entire idea to the end product of a male bovine’s digestive process.)
I see his point. Selling is all about building relationships, and it’s hard to do that without face-to-face meetings. So I asked Curtis O’Keefe, VP of sales at the web conferencing firm Communique, whether it’s really possible to use web conferencing in sales situations. He told me out that there is one area – getting potential prospects to attend “get to know you” informational meetings – where web conferencing can work, providing you adhere to the four following guidelines:
- Offer something valuable. If you want prospects to tune in, give them the opportunity to interact with a recognizable speaker, like your CEO or maybe a semi-famous guru. Or offer attendees a prize drawing at the end of the program, or a special gift if they stay online for the entire event. This may sound a little like bribery but, hey, if you were having an informational meeting at a hotel, you’d be doling out a free meal, which is pretty much the same thing.
- Remind them about the event – then remind them again. If somebody commits to an offsite meeting, they’ll put it in their calendar and build their day around that event. That’s not true with an online meeting, which will be squished and squeezed into a busy schedules — and thus easily forgotten. So use e-mail, voice mail, and immediate messaging to remind attendees of the event. You run the risk of being annoying, but if you aren’t persistent you could end up with a meeting that has more presenters than participants.
- Start and end on time. When there’s a live audience, merely being in the room is part of the experience. People look for familiar faces, search for a seat, greet their neighbors, and so forth, which is why live meetings intentionally begin a few minutes late. With an online meeting, though, attendees are at their own desk reading e-mail, and (if you’re lucky) checking the clock for the event to begin. If the meeting starts late, they’ll just assume that the meeting was canceled — or that you’re hopelessly inefficient. Always remember that your meeting is a mouse click away from oblivion. This is the opposite of a captive audience.
- Lay the groundwork first. It sounds both obvious and corny, but you absolutely MUST start your online meeting with a welcome slide that lets attendees know they are the right screen and to expect. Review the ground rules, like how to use any special features — like chat and instant polls — that you might be using. Make the audience comfortable with the process, and they’ll be a lot more likely to participate, and you’ll be that much closer to making an attendee into an honest-to-goodness prospect.
