Virtual selling

25
Nov
B2B Sales  ·  Virtual selling
How virtual selling is becoming the fastest-growing sales channel

Introduction

When the COVID pandemic flipped our life upside down, companies and businesses across the globe were sent scrambling to figure out how to sell in the newly virtual-first world. Virtual selling came to the rescue and rapidly became the obvious choice.

Today, virtual sales have become more popular than ever before because of the major benefits they provide. As the majority of B2B selling interactions have gone remote, customers also want virtual selling to stay, with approximately 80% saying they prefer this method of interaction.

Rapid Adoption of Virtual Selling

The pandemic’s long-term effects on sales won’t be understood for some time. But it is safe to say that we will never fully go back to how it was pre-COVID. Therefore, many companies are rapidly adapting to new sales technology i.e Virtual or Digital Selling.

Most of the employees across the organization and particularly in sales have got adjusted to this digital transformation. This is clearly visible in the numbers video meetings giants reported in their latest numbers. Zoom saw its revenue skyrocket throughout the fiscal year ended January 31, 2021.

Following a 169-percent revenue increase in the first quarter, year-over-year revenue growth accelerated to 355, 367, and 369 percent, respectively, in the second, third, and fourth quarter while Microsoft teams reported 145 million daily active users recently, 5X from this 32 million number pre-Covid. Particularly in sales, Google Meet reported people were spending 2 billion minutes in online sales meetings every day.

Unlocking Opportunities with Virtual Selling

Virtual selling is making the world further flat opening the doors for you to sell across the world without the need for any physical presence or salesforce.

With the possibility of connecting in minutes and no hassles of travel, it is giving that additional time to both the buyer and seller to spend time on understanding synergies with each other and make the selling interaction much more relevant for the buyers. This closer and faster access to buyers have allowed sellers to provide more personalized attention and develop stronger valued relationships.

As per a recent study conducted by Hubspot, 63% of sales leaders believe virtual sales meetings are equally effective or more effective than traditional, face-to-face meetings.

Buyers are also equally enjoying the convenience of meeting virtually for their purchase decisions. According to McKinsey, only 20% of B2B buyers say they hope to return to in-person sales even post-pandemic.

What does the future hold for Virtual Selling

According to Businessweek, Virtual selling is the fastest-growing sales channel in the world. The selling world is going to change with this adoption. The conventional sales strategies and technologies will have to change too.

Virtual selling will be an ever-evolving process from here on. Many companies are now embracing the idea of virtual selling products using a lot of video content, virtual tours, and 3D renderings. This strategy has already proven to be a successful way for retailers to showcase. It elaborates its products/service items to virtual buyers to find anything they need (and everything else) in one place.

Having the sales teams also available to the buyers for them to interact whenever they want and for sales teams to meet the buyers in their buying journeys itself will make the entire sales process very seamless. Further, making these selling interactions more personalized and intuitive will make the buyers love meeting sellers and establish a healthy relationship amongst them to achieve a win-win conversation every time.

Conclusion

The post-COVID buying world is very different from the pre-COVID buying world. Buyers will have more options than ever before, sellers will need to be smarter, more researched, have more technology in their hands, and be more efficient to continue to win deals.

Have you started thinking about how your virtual selling processes will be different? You will need to assess which skills, which technologies, and what metrics you should be tracking to ensure you don’t miss the virtual selling bus.

We at Zipteams are building a full-stack virtual selling platform to help businesses get to virtual selling faster. Reach out to us at www.zipteams.com if you are looking to get some answers on virtual selling soon.

by Ramya S


15
Nov
Sales  ·  Virtual selling
3 New Skills You Must Master to Excel In B2B Digital Selling

Digital Selling skills are no more for B2B Sales professionals as it has opened up a new and incredibly effective avenue to sellers as traditional sales techniques like cold calling no longer interest or convince today’s digitally savvy customers.

To excel in this fast-paced digital world, sales professionals and leaders need to learn and hone several key skills to become successful digital selling machines. 

Here we bring the top 3 skills to learn to excel in B2B digital selling

1. Social Selling Skills 

Social selling is no longer an option but a necessity in the business. Sales reps can no longer rely on prospecting strategies, they must learn the art of social selling and cultural intelligence. 

The goal of social selling is to build relationships with prospects through authentic human-to-human conversations formed through digital platforms. Social selling includes becoming adept at exchanging ideas, helping others, and bringing the community closer together. It’s time to go out there, meet people, and learn how to make people feel a part of your business. Social selling is an important skill for B2B sales professionals.

Cultural intelligence is essential if you want to leverage your network and build relationships with potential B2B leads. If you want to get the most out of social selling, you’ll need to get out of your head and understand how different industries operate.

2. Skills to Create Engaging Virtual Meetings

Virtual meetings are all the rage these days. If your face-to-face meetings are old-fashioned and boring, it’s time you learn to create engaging virtual meetings. A digital meeting will save you lots of time and energy traveling, parking, waiting for colleagues or clients.

Before the pandemic, a group of buyers and sellers could network and build relationships in your conference room before the meeting. However, post-pandemic things have changed. Engaging virtually frees up your time (so you can do something other than wait around in an office) and they’re much more convenient to set up. They also provide a level of engagement that face-to-face meetings can’t match, which makes it easy to generate more interest and ultimately sell more. Plus, making them by yourself is incredibly hard — you’re going to need an audience for that!

Sales reps are busier than ever. Sales best practices have evolved in recent years with changes in technology, allowing companies to better leverage their time through virtual meeting technologies

3. Follow-Up: Building Relationships

The new era of digital sales means if you want to have a significant impact on your business, you need to focus on long-term relationships and one way to achieve this is to send follow-up messages.

You might think that contacting a prospect/client once to let them know you made a follow-up would suffice but chances are that most of your prospects and clients would be missing out on leads, opportunities, and the opportunity to win an account.

So the follow-up message should be specific. This means your follow-up message should give your prospects and clients an important message, providing a strong reason for them to respond. Then make it personal, by creating a human relationship with your prospect or client.

Conclusion 

The importance of developing skills for today’s digital selling landscape cannot be overstated. Two recurring themes transcend all other topics: adapting to change and evolving with the times, and mastering your craft.

We at Zipteams are building X to 10X Digital Selling Teams. Do follow us at our LinkedIn page. to keep learning the new age selling skills every day. Cheers had happy Digital Selling!

by Ramya S


11
Sep
Sales  ·  Virtual selling
3 Sales Habits for the Virtual Selling World

There is always light at the end of the tunnel. And we can today say with a good degree of optimism that the worst of this pandemic is over. It is about now for us to challenge the realities. It has left us with and grabbed the opportunities it has opened for us. Let’s discuss virtual selling.

The sales profession has probably seen the most significant changes with the pandemic forcing us to meet only virtually. We have of course made sure that we don’t let become any showstopper in the growth of the businesses. Most of the reviving economies & businesses have accepted the virtual selling challenge and making sure they convert that into more opportunities. The world becoming further flat!

As sales professionals, we have a learning curve on our hands to learn new tricks of the sales trade which will be more suited for the virtual selling world. And the best way to do this as always is by picking up a habit or two which is specifically for the virtual context. We here highlight three habits that may be more suited and can give great results in the virtual world.

Here Are 3 Habits for the Virtual Selling World

1. Keep researching & knowing your prospects more & more

Building a relationship in a “virtual call” environment is much tougher. And one of the best ways you can make that happen is by connecting with the customer more empathetically. This can happen if you know your prospect as close as possible.

There are enough information sources today available to find out what your prospects’ interests & needs are. Researching the sector of your prospects’ business will give you more insights into what are the kind of challenges they are facing. Making this a habit of sorts will make you feel more connected to them. As a result, when you talk to them you’re more likely to establish a rapport with them.

During your virtual selling conversations as well, not just focus on selling your product, but pay attention. Being more inquisitive about your prospect will enable you to relate to their problem statements and accordingly make your pitch tailored to their needs.

2. Maneuver your sales pitches to have a more solution oriented discussion

In today’s scenario, business economics & models are changing rapidly. Even customers sometimes do not know what exactly they need and how best they should approach it.

In a virtual call environment and with more research time on their hands, this gives an opportunity to the salesperson to extend their hands further and make sure they help the customer solve some of their own puzzles. Salespeople with a more “solution mindset” that is realistic and customer-focused plow seeds of building long-term relationships with their prospects. 

Good relationships are based on trust and reciprocity. As a salesperson, you must also understand that there is no such thing as a “one-time sale”. And you should never be afraid to talk about future products or even any unrelated products and use your experience to educate their prospects on how they can be used in their businesses.

3. Being in touch with your prospect more often

A virtual selling environment may not establish the same level of presence in a prospect’s mind as in a physical meeting over a handshake. Also with the significant increase in the number of people prospect meets today for making their purchase decision, it would be extremely difficult for him to recollect you if you have not followed up, especially in longer sales cycles.

Hence, making a habit of reflecting through your past week or month’s meetings and reaching out to them to maybe just say a ‘hi’ will be quite helpful. Also, you need to use all channels of communication available to you to keep yourself up on your prospect’s mind.

Sending a thank-you email or minutes of the meeting can sometimes make a big difference. Following up immediately on the action points from your side is also a great way to establish your credentials further. Further, using social media channels to connect informally with your prospect will give you that additional space in his mind over your closest competition.

Conclusion 

So, which one do you like the most? Pick the one which appeals to you and follow it diligently by keeping a reminder on your laptop or mobile. You will very soon realize it becoming a habit. And for sure turn out to be one of your biggest sales strengths in this virtual selling world.

Times are changing, we need to get more prepared. But we know how to do this, let’s go for it. Happy Virtual Selling!

by Ramya S


23
Jul
Virtual sales  ·  Virtual selling
5 simple yet powerful virtual selling tips to boost conversions

The sales world has changed drastically due to the coronavirus crisis. Gone are the coffee meetings and face-to-face conversations with prospects. The pandemic will eventually subside, but virtual sales calls aren’t going away. This makes selling or any customer-facing role much more challenging because it’s more difficult to build relationships, obtain critical information and tailor our sales efforts in a virtual environment. Let’s discuss Virtual Selling Tips.

We must learn how to set and manage the virtual stage to understand customers’ needs. This requires being far more observant of their behaviors because a small screen or phone conversation is often our only window into their behavioral preferences.

The key challenge is to gain buyers’ attention and keep them engaged virtually through the conversation. Changing buyers’ points of view on what’s possible or how to solve a problem requires understanding their needs & developing relationships, all of them virtually.

Here are a few simple, yet powerful tips on making this work.

5 tips for boosting your conversions in a virtual selling environment

1. Make video technology your best friend

We all know how one-to-one video exploded with an increase from 7% in 2019 to 40% in 2020. It represents a 471% increase year-over-year. The LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2020 also confirms that. Virtual selling has gone mainstream, with data showing that 81% of sales professionals are conducting more video conferencing. It is just the start of using video powers.

You are the best & strongest in all in-person sales calls, you and your team are totally comfortable “in the room” and can convert any prospect. So actually nothing changes in a virtual world, ensure you don’t even think that you are not in the same room, just be on the video with the same zeal & enthusiasm.

Your basic rules don’t change at all, you would not show up in a T-shirt and baseball hat in an in-person meeting, you would not sit in a dark room, and you would not make a prospect see only part of your face. Of course not. Apply the same simple common sense here, too. Make sure your room is presentable. Look at your background. Is it distracting? Is it messy? Does it present the image you and your company want to present? Try using a virtual background or the blurry background that most video conferencing platforms offer.

Ensure your pitch decks and demos are all ready to be shared and tested well before the start of the call. An important catch is to test the audio as most of these platforms have specific ways to enable audio settings.

2. Relationship building in a virtual environment needs an extra effort

The most critical aspect you will agree on in a selling process is to build a relationship & trust with clients. An in-person meeting facilitates this well because of the way body language & physical behaviors communicate your intent and values to everyone around. How to do this from behind a video needs some extra effort to counter the missing personal touch.

This would mean some extra research on the client to know its growth strategy, needs, and problem statements. Knowing the profile, interests and hobbies of your client’s counterpart will help you break the ice in a conversation and get more active involvement in a meeting.

Another important aspect would be to be a little more observant of the client’s behaviors & reactions in a conversation. Clients’ involvement in the conversation, their reactions to the product pitch, and how much they are talking actively about how it solves their problems will give you a good indication of how to engage better.

3. Make your virtual sales pitch a little more educative

The virtual world provides us with the opportunity to be able to share more by using many technology tools. This in turn helps to make sales pitches more educative and supported by multiple props.

Demos & videos of the product/service can be presented more seamlessly, using screen sharing, and providing remote access you can make clients experience the product in a much more effective manner.

You should also use the power of google search to look for any additional information which can help your sales pitch during the conversation. This will further support your pitch proposition and also enhance clients’ understanding of the need for the product or service.

4. Set your actions steps or next meeting before you leave the call

While you would do this anyway in an in-person meeting as well, doing this in a virtual selling environment becomes much more important. Setting & scheduling the next meeting or sending a summary of the next steps makes the virtual meeting achieve the objective of the end handshake that you would do in an in-person call. It shows the importance that you are giving to the client and their time.

You can use features of automated transcripts offered by some of the video conferencing platforms to make this task very easy for you.

5. Last, but most important add some metrics specifically to measure virtual selling

Now that you’re well set for the virtual world, let’s spend some time talking about data, metrics, and tracking the business outcomes and sales results from going all-in on virtual selling.

You have your sales metrics already set with your sales funnel conversion rate, your productivity in terms of calls per day, etc. But here are a few metrics specific to virtual selling that you should add to your tracker

  • Calls scheduled vs actual
  • Time spent per call
  • No. of calls needed per conversion
  • Customer involvement & sentiments on the call
  • Call quality score

You would notice these metrics are very specific to virtual sales calls and also tracking them requires certain technology support. Zipteams is working in this area to help you measure these metrics so that you can achieve better conversions. You can reach us at www.zipteams.com to get some help with tracking these. 5 simple yet powerful virtual selling tips to boost conversions

by Ramya S


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