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Hi Community members,

 

By now, Virtual Selling isn’t an unfamiliar concept to you. The fact that you are in this Community shows how you’re practicing virtual selling methods and may already be a natural at it! However, do you have colleagues who are not fully onboard with virtual selling? Are there some execs in your organization who can’t see the urgency and value of virtual selling? Worry not! Today, I will touch on the importance and benefits of being a virtual seller and how to become one (or a better one).

 

B2B buyers engage with an average of 13 pieces of content before deciding on a vendor. And according to our latest Sales Technology guide:

  • 53% of sales leaders are rethinking their approach to sales and 51% are using new technology to help tackle the challenges of the current climate.
  • Organizations are using on average four different sales technologies.
  • The most popular tools are: 57% sales intelligence tools for reporting and analytics and 57% for customer relationship management.

 

Importance of Virtual Selling

These numbers alone demonstrate how prominent sales technology and sales enablement tools are, which no doubt play a large role in virtual selling, especially in today’s unique times. It is not that traditional selling methods aren’t valid or useful anymore — they simply don’t produce the same results, mainly because the buyer today also looks different from traditional consumers in the past.

 

The buyer today has already done their preliminary research by the time you connect with them. What that means is they are not looking to be sold to. Instead, they want to be educated and see how your product or service can fit into solving their business challenges. To achieve this, sellers need to adapt and adopt new sales technology and the virtual selling approach, such as:

 

Benefits of Virtual Selling

Those were examples of the virtual selling approach and how they look like when put into practice. Next, here are some of the benefits of adopting a virtual selling program and methodology:

  1. Easily search for prospects and identify leads with Sales Navigator and other virtual selling platforms
  2. Find your personal brand and be the voice for your company with thought leadership
  3. Deliver value specific to each buyer to nurture the relationship
  4. Make informed decisions based on timely and actionable insights from your CRM or other sales technology
  5. Be more prepared for future changes in selling, consumer behavior, and business trends (than those who don’t have a virtual selling program in place)

 

Final Thoughts

Now that you understand the importance and benefits of virtual selling, what’s next? Last week, we shared our third Community Member Insights Series on driving program adoption and getting executive support for the program. If you’re looking to run a successful virtual selling program, don’t miss this guide that’s packed with insightful tips from fellow members in the Community! Make sure to check it out to see how you, too, can increase your program usage or gain executive sponsorship!

 

 

Finally, if you are wondering how you can combine some traditional selling methods with virtual ones, check out this article by Vengreso for some examples. Now, I’m curious to hear your thoughts and experience on traditional vs. virtual selling. Has your company gone through the full transition? If yes, do you have any best practices to share? If not, what do you think is holding you back? Looking forward to the discussion as always!

 

Thank you and happy selling,

Eva C. 

@Tamika B​ @Alejandro C​ @Paul L​ @Liam Q​ @Chris B​ @Isis L​ @Rebecca P​,

 

Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well! Does anyone have anything to add to the above? I would love to know how you yourself have evolved from a more traditional to a modern selling method — or would love to hear about that experience went! 😄

 

If not, feel free to share this thread with the rest of your team as I believe not only is it a great summary of why and how's but it also includes many other great discussion threads as well. Thank you and let me know if you have any questions! 😊

In today's world, virtual meetings and the electronic exchange of information allows business to be conducted rapidly and more cost efficiently. Using these tools I can rapidly filter prospects in the cycle and travel expenses are better spent on well qualified business. Cost of customer acquisition is reduced and better overall margins are achieved.

Love what you shared here, @Scott R​! You mentioned how tools in virtual selling have not only helped save you time but also overall costs as well — two very valuable things to a salesperson, no?

 

I'd like to hear more on how you're able to "filter prospects in the cycle" specifically — perhaps with a Sales Navigator feature? — and how you're able to convert them to virtual meetings. 😊

Tools like Navigator allow you to filter quickly to decision makers or at least targeted key points of contact. In a prior role, selling equipment for medical research, I would create lists of prospects that may be or have identified interest in specific pieces of equipment. Navigator, today, allows you to create those lists faster. I created a general information webinar and invited prospects to the group meeting. This strategy is less threatening to a prospect vs. one on one selling. The strategy is simple. Provide value ie. free information with good take -aways to build audience and trust.

 

*The whole world of YouTube is filled with content providers giving you free information with intent to drive the viewer to a next step in the funnel towards a purchase. In many cases, Click Funnels are used. Every one of us has been exposed to social marketing on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram by now.

 

Create interest and curiosity during the webinar. Hosted Guest Speakers/ Key Opinion Leaders are also great for attracting people in. During the meeting I asked good leading questions and noted responses. I watched body language as much as possible. Post meeting I sent out a thank you with a brief survey regarding content. The last question asked if they would like to schedule a phone call.

 

  • Using technology I got out the same general information to multiple prospects at the same time vs multiple 1:1 informational meetings
  • I still was able to get pretty good body language reads via the web from participants
  • Using survey tools, I could gain intelligence and do my second ask for 1:1, First ask would be at end of webinar
  • No Travel Expenses related to informational meetings

Now the responses allow me to funnel prospects into the next layer of the funnel where a specific need or project can be identified with a one on one phone call or video meeting. After this one on one all parties can decide if there is need for a site visit. In this example, there were always construction related issues so at some point site visits had to happen in addition to meetings with additional decision makers in the pipeline.

 

Virtual meetings allow for:

  • all parties to be respective of each others time (Value Sell)
  • controlled travel expenses- travel to a project when it makes sense in the funnel (Value Sell)
  • facilitating project meetings with stakeholders from multiple locations (Value Sell)

 

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