How to win more deals when selling virtually?

As a sales professional, you probably invested a lot of time and effort in devising sales strategies, building customer relationships to do what you do best — sell. Nevertheless, a sales strategy is only as good and effective as your conversation with a prospect in an ideal sales environment.

In a typical situation, you would analyze your prospect’s body language to gauge their interest in what you’re selling to them. You’d read their expressions, assess their needs, and pick up on their requirements during a face-to-face conversation. But things tend to take a drastic turn when you have to transition into virtual selling.

Virtual selling is not easy for more reasons than one.

Being in the selling industry for quite a while, you’re probably aware that a sales rep has to be an active listener before he/she can sell. It’s no rocket science to understand that it’s important to listen more than you talk, and active listening is the cheapest yet most effective tool when it comes to closing a deal.

A good sales professional asks the right questions, understands the prospect’s needs, takes note of everything, and is able to convey value through his/her product. But it’s all easier said than done, isn’t it?

Because more often than not, most calls do not convert into deals, and your potential leads may not always convert into buyers. Your prospects may not be interested in the call at all, or your meeting may not go as planned, and you’re left feeling more frustrated and agitated than ever, especially after putting in all the long hours of work.

Back to virtual selling and why it may not work, there are several reasons:

• Your prospects tend to get distracted on the call. Because the environment is not particularly ideal for a professional meeting, there can be several things that can distract your potential buyer on a video conference call.
• It’s hard to focus on what your customer is saying while trying to jot down their needs. It’s easier to assess your customer’s needs through face-to-face interaction, but taking notes is an important aspect of building better customer relationships in virtual meetings. So how can you listen to the customer, take notes, not misinterpret or miss anything simultaneously? It’s a lot of work to juggle when there’s a lot at stake.
• Maybe your prospects weren’t interested in the call at all, to begin with. If they’d made up their minds beforehand and just attended the call because they felt obliged to, there’s nothing you could’ve done as a sales professional to nail the deal.
• Your prospect wasn’t the actual decision-maker. The person who could’ve been your potential buyer didn’t bother attending the call and requested somebody else to do it on their behalf.
• You juggle between multiple meetings with several customers every day, so maintaining organized documentation that separates the needs of each of your prospects is extremely taxing.

Let’s face it, most of these issues aren’t particularly in your control. You’re used to selling, and that’s exactly what your focus should be upon. And not having to worry about taking down notes during your calls or organizing documents. Your focus should be on your prospects and their needs alone. In fact, a whopping 69% of the buyers expressed that their sales experience is much better when the sales reps just listen to their needs. It’s their top priority.

So how exactly can you enhance the experience of your virtual sales calls?

• Research sufficiently on your prospect’s background beforehand. When you know you’re about to go on a call with your lead, have all the information regarding them already at your fingertips. Understand their preferences, their businesses and other key factors prior to the meeting.
• Use a virtual meeting assistant to capture our customer calls. This saves an incredible amount of time. With the help of it, you can automate several processes like automated follow-ups, complaint analysis, repeat call analysis, understand your customer’s sentiments on the call, etc. You will also have data in a format that’s easily shareable with the rest of the team. You’ll be able to edit, assess, and distribute this data as and when you prefer. It’s a win-win solution.
• Plan a proper structure and agenda for the flow of your meeting with your prospect. Define the outcome, let our prospect know beforehand who you’d prefer to be at the meeting, what things you will be discussing, and so on. For the same purpose, you could also use a pre-designed meeting template that defines the agenda for your meeting call.
• Ask the right questions and show your customers that you care. Direct the call in the right direction by actively listening to your customer’s inputs. Make them believe that you care by asking them open-ended questions. Understand the challenges they’re facing, and provide optimal solutions. Give relevant information, provide a range of options, all without being pushy. No prospect likes being pushed. Only suggest. Only sell the value.
• Obtain conversation intelligence. Assess what your leaders think about you and the product/service/company you represent. Understand what your callers are feeling, and how they perceive your product with the help of speech recognition technology.
• This is a simple yet effective solution. Use a meeting assistant. You’re in a virtual meeting for the purpose of selling. You have no reason to worry about taking down notes. Listen more, write less. Sell more, type less. It’s important to be present in the meeting. For this reason, use a meeting assistant that takes notes on your behalf. It could potentially change your entire virtual meeting experience as it finishes most of your work for you.

Marsview Notes is an AI-powered meeting assistant that automates your meetings. It listens to your conversations, reviews your meetings, and writes down everything for you while you focus on the meeting. By keeping track of all your meetings and delivering organized records via email, this can help you close deals faster, and more effectively.

Get your own personal meeting assistant today to nail your next sales deal! Sign up to know more!

Originally published at https://blogs.marsview.ai on September 14, 2020.