Online & Phone meetings are the new normal

When you’re out for your mandated once-per-day-walk, you’ve probably noticed how eerily quiet your town is.  COVID-19 has really changed how we go about our daily lives, but it doesn’t necessarily have to impact your sales figures. In fact, as someone who manages an entirely remote workforce, I’m here to tell you that there are some serious benefits to selling remotely.

A 1-hour meeting took all morning

For example, have you ever considered the actual time a 1-hour face to face meeting took out of your day? Let’s run through it:

• Prepare for meeting – 30 minutes
• Travel to the meeting – 30 minutes-1 hour
• Hold meeting – 1 hour (assuming it doesn’t overrun)
• Travel back from the meeting – 30 minutes-1 hour
• Catch up with everything that happened during that meeting – 30 minutes
• Then you can get on with your day

Total time taken for the face to face meeting: 3-4 hours

If that meeting were remote: 1-2 hours

That 1-hour meeting could take a whole morning from you! And this isn’t even factoring in the actual cost of travel and food. By comparison, by taking out the time-suck that is travel, you save 1-2 hours per meeting. Realistically, this means you can have twice as many meetings and get twice as many sales!

Plus, you can hang out with your dog the whole time too

International sales

Unless you have a lifetime’s worth of Airmiles to spend on airfare, pretty much all international sales you’d do are going to be online or phone-based meetings. I regularly have sales meetings for potential clients based in other countries. Whatsapp, Zoom and Skype are all easy (and free!) ways to have phone/online meetings.

Embracing the idea that you can sell and deliver your product remotely will help you to take opportunities in other regions. Once you take a face to face meeting out of the equation, geographic territory matters a hell of a lot less when finding new customers. The world is your oyster!

Remote Selling & Lead Generation tips

Here’s our lead generation tips for when selling remotely to help you adapt your sales team to the new normal.

Always offer video meetings, but don’t push it

Face to Face meetings are good because seeing someone’s face builds trust. Having a video call helps you build trust with your Prospect so wherever possible, have one. That being said, some people tend to feel nervous on video calls, so don’t make a video call mandatory if the Prospect doesn’t want to. If they need to see your screen for some online demo, then give an option where they don’t have to turn on their webcam, they can just sit there and see your video.

Make sure the time works for them

One of the biggest remote lead generation tips: Remote meetings tend to have a higher reschedule rate than face to face meetings. Make sure it works for them by giving 2 options for meetings instead of stating a time. Use this 2 option close to help guide them to a time:

• Week: When’s good to chat this week or next week?
• Day: Tuesday or Thursday?
• Schedule: What does your schedule look like? Morning or afternoon?
• Time: 2pm or 3pm?

Looking at your schedule can be daunting sometimes. By giving them a series of easy to answer A-B questions, you can help them whittle down good times to meet

Send a calendar invite

Get the meeting in their diary! A calendar invite can help remind them and feel more committed to the meeting than some general verbal agreement that “you’d call them around 2ish”

Confirm the meeting

As remote meetings tend to have a higher reschedule rate, make sure you confirm the meeting via email, phone or text. It’s a simple thing but it can really help make sure the meeting goes off without a hitch

Build trust

As they haven’t met you, they might not have built the normal levels of trust that would be gained from the face to face meeting. As such, make sure you do everything you can to build that trust:

• Give them oodles of case studies and testimonials – Make it easy for them to see you’re a good choice
• Provide an FAQ sheet – An FAQ with your proposal helps show that you are really on the ball
• Explain the next step before you do it – As you get buy-in from them, always explain the next step
• Make it sound like something you’ve always worked remotely – Use language and a tone of voice that emphasises that it’s totally normal that you work remotely and you’ve got it all in hand

Use an e-sign to get their signature

Use e-signs like Hellosign or Digisigner to get their signature instead of sending the paper version over. What I personally like about these two is their free accounts are actually really good. It’s based on number of signatures per month so you can keep using the free version until you need to upgrade.

Hope you found these lead generation tips useful

We hope you found these remote lead generation tips useful! In light of everything that’s happening with COVID-19 we are offering free sales coaching for any entrepreneurs or business owners who need it. We genuinely want to help companies out during this tough time so you can find out more and sign up here

If you are looking for new leads, we’re available to help with our Pay-Per-Lead Lead Generation Campaigns. Get in touch with us to discuss your lead generation needs.