Sharpening your virtual selling skills

Twitter permanently bans President Donald Trump’s personal account after he incited mob that stormed Capitol, marking the most high-profile punishment the company has ever imposed. Facebook, too, has blocked Trump from using its service—including Instagram. Trump has more than 88 million followers on Twitter and 33 million on Facebook. For the past 100 years, letters and emails have been signed with – sincerely yours or some form of pleasant goodbye. Today, “virtually yours” has taken over. And, just like that, everything changed. During the pandemic period, virtual was the ONLY way to communicate and sell. In a heartbeat, we went from happy hours to virtual happy hours. From conferences to virtual conferences. Virtual selling will become the new normal, there is no turning back, and the only question is: are you ready? Can you do business over email or chat? Can you close a high-value, enterprise-level deal over the phone without ever meeting face-to-face? Of course you can. In sales, everything works some of the time. The most effective way to build relationships and trust, resolve conflict, brainstorm ideas, gain consensus, present ideas, negotiate and close deals is a physical face-to-face meeting. You know this and I know this, because we are human. When it comes to account management, there really isn’t anything like being there. With your top accounts, those face-to-face meetings are gold. They help you get high, wide and deep in your accounts, strengthen relationships, find opportunities to add more value, expand the relationship and lock out your competitors. When you are on face-to-face sales calls, you also have the luxury of reading their eyes, the micro-expressions on their face and the entirety of their body language. Though you can see the other person on a video call or hear their voice over the phone, it is not the same as being in person. Because face-to-face meetings require both parties to make a significant investment of time, it increases the probability that there will be meaningful outcomes. For my entire career, I’d sold face-to-face. I was damn good at it. When I started in the hotel industry, my prospects were spread out all across the globe. If I wanted to grow my business (and I did), my only choice was virtual selling. It required a massive mindset shift. Out of pure necessity, and many mistakes later, I eventually mastered virtual selling. To avoid confusion surrounding the term, let’s stop and define virtual selling. It is simply leveraging virtual communication channels in place of physical, face-to-face interactions. These channels include video calls, telephone calls, text messaging, email, social media. If you look closely that the list, you’ll notice that you are already using some, if not all, of these channels. Therefore, it is not about “revolutionizing” the way you sell. Rather, it’s a laser focus on applying virtual selling tools more effectively to engage and connect while boosting your sales productivity. I don’t want to discount just how challenging virtual selling can be. It requires constantly learning, adopting and adapting to new technology while applying interpersonal skills in new ways and getting out of your comfort zone. When I got my first start in sales, back in my early twenties, I worked in an assigned territory in Malaysia. Because the competition was insanely fierce, it was relationship that mattered most. Those face-to-face interactions mattered dearly, because it was there that I built trust, reduced risk, differentiated and locked my competitors out. I remember my sales manager telling me to “go get lost in my territory” and that he “didn’t want to see me in the office during the day.” If you can’t be there face-to-face, the next best thing is a video call. According to a Forbes Insight study, 62% of executives said that video improved communication versus the phone. Video is more personal than any other form of virtual communication. Yet, the number one challenge of sales professionals is “being uncomfortable on camera.” I get it, because I’ve been in those same shoes and experienced the same fear. Even though I could stand in front of 800 people and deliver a speech, I sounded like a blithering idiot when speaking to the camera. I hated video. There were some incredibly embarrassing moments like the time I did a webinar with over 300 people on the call. I was so nervous I didn’t notice that people could only see half my face. I looked like a Muppet. Over time, though, the more I did it, like everything else in life, the better I became. If you fear or uncomfortable with video, I promise that you can learn to master it. There is no easy button, though. The good news is, most of us have become comfortable interacting with family and friends via video. We’ll FaceTime Grandma on a whim. However, as you likely know, making a video call to your mum on FaceTime is far different than conducting a professional video sales call with prospects and customers. The stakes are higher. The trap salespeople fall into, though, is the false belief that good intentions are enough. They show up on video calls, forgetting the perceptions they are creating within their video frame. Think about it. Would you walk into a corporate boardroom to deliver an important presentation to wearing a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops? Rule number one is that you must dress at the same level you would if you were going into a face-to-face meeting with your stakeholders. In most cases, this means conservative business casual. It takes effort to get it right. You need to care about the details and your audience. Some elements of a highly effective call are: • Your internet connection has a great deal of impact. No internet connection, no video sales call. Poor internet connection, poor video sales call. • Do not run video calls in rooms where irritating and random background noise is an issue. Alarms, traffic, doorbells, pets and random loud noises affect your audience’s experience and your ability to maintain attention control. • Few things are more irritating than audio that is echoing off the walls. You will sound like you are in a cave. • Good lighting makes you look natural and accessible. It also illuminates your facial expressions, making you appear more human and trustworthy. When the light is behind you, your face becomes a dark blob. I call this look “witness protection.” On the other hand, if it is too bright, it can be distracting and wash you out. • How you are positioned within the video frame has a massive impact on you looking professional and confident. Looking down into the camera is the most common framing mistake. This “skydiver look” is typically caused by your laptop being lower than your face. In extreme cases, you can even see the skydiver’s ceiling. If you are too close to the camera, your head will fill the entire frame. In extreme cases, parts of your hard are cut off. If there is too much space between the top of your head and the top of the video frame, your head appears teeny tiny at the bottom of the frame like “Mini-Me.” • Your backdrop represents your personal brand. When I use background replacement on calls, I like to place my customer’s logo in the background image. • Sadly, eye contact is the most challenging aspect of video sales calls. So much so that Apple is working to perfect software that creates the illusion of eye contact on video calls. One of the big reasons why maintaining eye contact on video calls is so difficult is that we tend to look at ourselves. A study indicated that most people spend between 30% and 70% of the time on video calls looking at their own face. Looking at the camera instead of the screen takes effort, though. When people were not looking at themselves on screen, they were looking at the other people on their screen. Thus, breaking eye contact. When you look into the camera, the stakeholder feels that you are making eye contact. Yet, paradoxically, when you are looking into the camera, you cannot see them. When you cannot see them, it does not feel to you that you are making eye contact. This causes you to feel uncomfortable and disconnected. In this state, you look down at their image on your screen to make eye contact, which causes the other person to feel that you are not making eye contact. Since you are the salesperson, it is your responsibility to connect with them, not their responsibility to connect with you. To build that connection, you must make eye contact. So despite what your rain is telling you, when you are unable to see their eyes, you must have faith that when you are making eye contact with the camera, you are making contact with the stakeholders – and they will like you more, become more engaged and feel more comfortable. I trust that this provides you a roadmap for engaging remote buyers and closing deals. I welcome opinions, debates, enquiries from any sales leader or salesperson looking to gain a competitive advantage in the mind, the wallet and the loyalty of your customer.