By

Simon Hazeldine

Historically, salespeople tended to call in person on their customers. Over time telephone-based salespeople started to become more common. More and more organisations began to realise that in many instances telephone-based salespeople could be as efficient and effective as their field-based salespeople. There was no time wasted on physically travelling between meetings with customers so a greater degree of customer contact could be achieved for less cost. Virtual selling has been around a lot longer than some people think!

The advent of technology such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, the ability for salespeople to have video calls with multiple customer stakeholders and to share sales presentations on-line added to the effectiveness of virtual selling.

In addition, there has been a continual shift over recent years as more and more organisations embrace remote and flexible working for their employees. The Covid-19 pandemic with its restrictions on face-to-face contact accelerated the trend that was already there.

Virtual selling is here to stay

As a result of the changes and developments described above, more and more customers are not only expecting to meet with salespeople virtually, but, as recent research shows, many of them prefer to interact with salespeople in this way. And research suggests that they are not planning on reverting fully to the previous face to face ways of working.

So, whether you are conducting all your contact with your customers virtually or doing so some of the time (many field-based salespeople typically spend at least some of their time communicating with their customer via the telephone or other communication platforms), this is an important capability to develop and master.

Salespeople need to raise their game to become highly proficient at interacting with, and selling to, customers in a virtual environment by leveraging the advantages and overcoming the disadvantages.

Organisations and salespeople that fail to develop this critical competence can expect to be left behind by their competitors, who will take full advantage of the opportunities that selling virtually offers.

The disadvantages of virtual selling

Virtual forms of communication will have reduced levels of what are called “social cues” or “contextual cues”. These are the non-verbal cues such as pitch and tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language which influence our impressions of and responses to others. Social cues make a significant contribution to our overall communication. When they are missing or reduced the chances of miscommunication and misunderstanding increase. More on this and what to do about it later.

Virtual meetings with customers can feel more tiring than face to face meetings. One theory on why this happens is that on a video call, for example, people are having to pay more attention to pick up the non-verbal cues. This requires the brain to work much harder than it would need to in a face-to-face setting.

Anyone attending a virtual meeting may experience personal distractions in both a home and office environment. Face to face meetings will often take place in a meeting room or in an area where distractions will be limited.  Customers may join a virtual meeting from their desk in an open plan office or from home, and distractions such as interruptions from colleagues, family, children, pets, and delivery drivers knocking on the front door to deliver a parcel may occur!

People will typically join a virtual meeting using a device (e.g., a laptop, tablet, smartphone) that also provides their email, messages, social media etc. During a meeting this can prove to be distracting and encourage people to attempt to multi-task which will result in lower levels of concentration.

Many salespeople have told me that when they are making a sales presentation virtually it feels different and indeed strange. It is certainly harder to observe how a customer is responding to your presentation when presenting virtually than if they were sitting in front of you. And if you are not used to presenting virtually then, like anything new, it is going to feel rather strange to begin with.

Some people report that they feel it is harder to create a human or personal “connection” with people in a virtual environment, but as you will see later this can certainly be achieved.

Despite our best efforts and encouragement, not everyone will come on camera when joining a virtual video meeting. As you will see later the use of cameras in virtual meetings is highly recommended, but this cannot always be achieved. Invariably from time to time either you or your customer will experience technical issues such as connectivity problems when joining a virtual meeting. While these can be minimised by the correct preparation, sometimes things will occur that are outside of your control, in the same way that when travelling to a face-to-face meeting you can get stuck in traffic!

What is different about virtual selling, what is missing and what you must do about it!

Any time you are talking with someone in a physical environment, whether you’re casually talking about what you did at the weekend or attempting to close an important deal with a customer, you and the other person are receiving a lot of non-verbal information or “social cues” / “contextual cues”.

As mentioned earlier, these cues give the words that are spoken appropriate meaning.  We rely heavily on body language such as gestures, posture, facial expressions, and tone of voice to give context to the words that we hear.

Face-to-face communication is a “rich” medium as all the contextual cues, from which a significant proportion of the meaning of a particular communication is derived, are present.

If we are communicating with our customers virtually then we have (even when using some form of video communication) lost some visual context cues when compared with a face-to-face meeting. If we are just using audio communication, then we have lost all the visual cues. If we then move to communication by email or messaging, we have lost any contextual cues from voice tonality as well.

Therefore, as virtual seller we must be very careful when working in “leaner” communication mediums (for example, audio only) and particularly careful when communicating in the “leanest” medium of all – email or text / direct messaging.

Psychologists Nicholas Epley and Justin Kruger Research conducted research comparing email communication to voice communication.  They created word-for-word content in verbal and email messages.  They found that people communicating via email believe that they understood the correct tone – but they did not.  Epley and Kruger commented: “People in our study were convinced that they (had) accurately understood the tone of an email message when, in fact, their odds (were) no better than chance.”

So, what do we need to do? To compensate for these missing contextual cues, consider:

• Take the time at the beginning of virtual meetings and during it for light conversation and “small talk”
  
  
• Clarify more often than you would do in face-to-face situations to ensure understanding on both sides
  
  
• Summarise more regularly than you would do in face-to-face situations
  
  
• Concentrate fully on listening carefully to the other person – you are missing a lot of the visual input and in some situations may only have the auditory input. You must focus 100% of your attention on the other person
  
  
• Whenever possible initiate the call to the customer.  If they call you unexpectedly ask if you can call them back.  This allows you to be fully prepared and in control
  
  
• Do not skimp on your planning and preparation just because you are not meeting in person!
  
  
• Promptly transcribe your notes after each call.  In virtual meetings, you have one less sensory input for your memory to depend upon.  As you speak with the customer you will probably make some notes – type or write them up in a structured format as soon as you can after the call.  Otherwise, they may not make sense tomorrow!
  
  
• Send a summary of what you have agreed to the customer by email. Ask the other party to confirm that they agree with what is contained within the summary e.g. “This is my understanding of what we have agreed to.  If this is incorrect or incomplete, please let me know within 24 hours.”

If you take these steps to manage the differences between selling face-to-face and selling virtually, there is no reason that you cannot be as successful and indeed even more successful than salespeople operating mainly in a face-to-face environment.

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For further insights into virtual selling you may wish to look at these articles from the Harvard Business Review

“Where Do Salespeople Fit in the Digital World?“

“How to Reach New Customers When You Can’t Meet Them in Person”

About the author

Simon Hazeldine works internationally as a revenue growth and sales performance speaker, consultant, and coach. He empowers his clients to get more sales, more often with more margin.

He has spoken in over thirty countries and his client list includes some of the world’s largest and most successful companies.

Simon has a master’s degree in psychology, is the bestselling author of ten books that have been endorsed by a host of business leaders including multi-billionaire business legend Michael Dell and is co-founder of leading sales podcast “The Sales Chat Show”.

He is the creator of the neuroscience based “Brain Friendly Selling”® methodology.

Simon Hazeldine’s books:

• Neuro-Sell: How Neuroscience Can Power Your Sales Success
• Bare Knuckle Selling
• Bare Knuckle Negotiating
• Bare Knuckle Customer Service
• The Inner Winner
• How To Lead Your Sales Team – Virtually and in Person
• Virtual Selling Success
• How To Manage Your People’s Performance
• How To Create Effective Employee Development Plans
• Virtual Negotiation Success