Maximixing the impact of web meetings.

There was a question on the Salesblogcast.com group on LinkedIn about webinars and how you can maximize your success when using them or more and more are forced to use them as travel budgets get cut. Below was my response. If you are on LinkedIn, I would recommend checking out this group.

Unfortunately, the economy sometimes forces us to slow down or stop our travel but virtual sales can also be very efficient even in good times depending on your product.

My two cents on how you can maximize virtual sales is below and you have some great comments above as well. The number of comments and the quality testifies to how important these virtual sales skills are these days. This has become so important to me lately and such a popular subject that I have started a blog to try to drive more best practices and discussion at http://virtualsales.blogspot.com/. I would welcome anyone who wants to continue this conversation with me.

Virtual sales is more than just a webinar. It starts with qualifying, moves through multiple touch points like your collateral, building a business case as well. it is important to create these multiple touch points with multiple people at your prospect to build the relationships that are easier to build in person. I spent 6 years at IBM in a face to face world where my presence and my brand gave me a big head start. You need to work harder in this environment.

You can use video to do a quick introduction of yourself to start to build the relationship in the webinar. It doesn't hurt to have people see you and I think video can be more powerful than a photo. I have also videotaped some of my key customers so that I can have video testimonials in the webinar.

Tell stories that get your points across instead of just talking about features and functionality. Stories resonate with people long after the features and functionality have passed.

Use graphics, photos and images to make your points instead of all text. Liek stories, the images create a more emotional response to your product or services and prevent people from just sitting there and reading your slides.

When you use text think about build the slide so that you don't have people sitting there reading your slides ahead of you and no longer listening to you. Keep this simple and don't overdo it as it can get cheesy

Ask questions throughout not just at the end or during periodic breaks in your slides. And, ask specific people on the call (if there are more than one) to make sure everyone is paying attention.

Send individual follow up emails to each participant and call them so that you can build a relationship with multiple people in the company since you don't have the luxury to speak to different people before, after and at the breaks.

Good luck.