Who doesn’t have ‘Zoom’ (other platforms are available and used regularly) fatigue? How many of us have sat through presentations and conversations online over the past few months whilst all the while thinking: “I don’t care about this”?
My time this month has been spent focusing on helping sales teams pitch more effectively in the virtual world. They - like us all - have lost the ability to be onsite and in the physical presence with their clients and colleagues. Floor walking rights have gone, water cooler conversations have disappeared and the real and present danger is that relationships are becoming more irregular, more distant, more disconnected and more challenging. We can’t wait until things ‘go back to normal’ (whatever that is), because it could be a very long time before that happens. So, what do we do if - and when - we can get on the calendar of our clients, and are desperate to show them some fabulous new information about our propositions?
Here are 6 rules to get us started:
Rule Number 1: Make it a positive experience. We’re all tired, we’re all distracted, and ‘more of the same’ won’t cut it. Our goal is to engage our audience to make it a memorable, positive experience and if we do, they’ll remember it far more positively as a result.
Rule Number 2: Don’t bring the same decks that we’d bring to a face-to-face meeting. Why? Because our clients don’t care. We haven’t got the same capacity to engage and involve the audience in quite the same way that we would if we’re all in the same room face-to-face. We don’t have the same time and we don’t have the same communication tools at our disposal. If we don’t plan to change the deck and story deliberately for the virtual sales environment, then we will absolutely and certainly fail.
Rule Number 3: Plan interaction often and do it early on in the pitch. Our audience can (and do) hide behind cameras which are turned off and microphones that are on mute. So they are an invisible and silent audience. We have no idea what they’re up to. As a result, we have to get them involved to enthuse, connect and enjoy the conversation, and keep it up throughout our pitch in a commercially relevant and enjoyable way.
Rule Number 4: Ditch data density. Our clients really don’t want to see endless, overly burdened slides with font size 7 and an eye watering number of visual stimuli. Clean them up, strip them back and tell a simple story.
Rule Number 5: Leverage the technology. Use chat functions, polls, whiteboards, breakout rooms to create an experience that is enjoyable, engaging and interactive.
Rule Number 6: End on a high. Our cognitive bias will look back more fondly on the interaction if we do. Crashing through slides, overrunning, rushing, chaos at the end of a pitch is deeply, deeply unsatisfying.
Are there more rules? Yes. But that’s for another day. So what can your sales teams do now to create more engaging pitches for the virtual environment?
