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  • Author: Adam Baker, Capability Development Manager, Bord Bia - The Irish Food Board

    This is how to have successful virtual meetings

    Developing an understanding of your customer and communicating to them in an appropriate and engaging way is a constant in the times that we live in. What has changed and continues to change is the advances in technology and the evolution of traditional face-to-face meetings.

     

    So, how will you keep your sales pipeline healthy and continue to engage with both existing and potential new customers during these challenging times? Covid-19 has accelerated the challenges in face-to-face meetings, but has also advanced the opportunities that technology can bring to your business. Pivoting to virtual selling can give you an edge over competition as well as an opportunity to broaden business reach.

     

    We believe there are 5 key principles that you should adopt in the preparation for a virtual buyer meeting:

     

    1: Build your Customer Understanding: A deep understanding of your customersis at the heart of every successful customer presentation, pitch or sales meeting, whether these are conducted virtually or face-to-face. Taking the time to accurately understand what your contact is looking for and what their needs are is the first step to a more rewarding customer relationship. Before you engage in any customer meetings, build or refresh your knowledge of what matters to your customer.

    2: Develop Concepts and Create Content: Now that you understand your customers’ needs, you should be able to identify what are the gaps, builds and highlights among your library of contentwhich you will need to work on and develop to support your buyer interactions. This could be in the form of videos, images, infographics, documents etc.  Developing content for the first time for your initial pitch can be completely different to what your need to develop for an existing customer relationship but it is about taking advantage of the creativity that virtual meetings can enable.

     

    3: Integrate with Digital Marketing: If you are pitching for the first time to a new potential customer, it is important to integrate your pitch, presentation or content with your digital marketing platforms. The reason for this is the basic principle of any new seller-buyer relationship. They will look for information on your business – and possibly on you – to further form their opinions.

     

    Likewise, with current customers, they may naturally become aware of your advertising, social media and marketing communications because of the space in which they operate. Consistency of message among all touchpoints is important.

     

     

    4: Perfect Your Pitch: Build a Commercial Storyboard

    Whether your pitch is about furthering a relationship with your current customer or developing relationships with a new one, at the heart of this is the ability to create a compelling selling story. This ‘story’ is critical to be able to influence your customer, articulate value propositions and sell in an authentic way, as well as being able to manage negotiations effectively in order to deliver the outcome needed for both parties.

     

    5: Perfect Your Pitch:  Effective Delivery Using Technology

    Once you know what your current or potential customer need is, what you would like to communicate and how you are going to do it, now is the time to determine what format you will contact your customer in and how you will deliver your pitch or sell.  If you can plan, manage and control these five areas of preparation, you will be maximising the chances of your virtual meeting success.

     

     

    By investing your time and upskilling yourself and your staff, you can perfect the art of the virtual meeting and remote selling to use technology to your advantage.

    Making your customers’ lives as easy as possible is key. Build and tell your story in an engaging way and convince them that you provide the answer to their needs.

    These principles are part of a detailed set of supports for clients companies looking to meet current or potential customer in a virtual environment. 

     

    Consult the Key Customer Management webpages for:

    • Preparing for the pitch: successful virtual buyer meetings webinar and support guide
    • Simple Graphics Designs and Tricks
    • Picture Perfect – How to use photography for your business