When you have a product or service to sell, it’s important to connect and communicate in formats that are convenient and comfortable for your prospect. As we discovered in the early days of the coronavirus shutdown, face2face In Real Life conversations cannot always be arranged. In March and April 2020, you took your first clumsy steps into videoconferencing. Once in a while, you leaned into telephone meetings, one-on-one conversations and group conference calls, too.

You did your best to maintain business as usual (under very unusual conditions) and that included talking with prospects about how your solutions might be of service in COVID era business conditions. As you continued to schedule virtual sales calls and other types of negotiations, it became apparent that the distance inherent in videoconferencing (and also phone calls) presents an obstacle to sensitive conversations. It’s so much easier to to connect with your prospect when you’re sitting in a room together. When in a face2face conversation, you’re more adept at conveying empathy for your prospect and showing your grasp of his/her situation. You instinctively know how to create trust that will nurture a good relationship and encourage the sale.

Virtual mode team meetings are one thing but selling, what with the nuance and expertise required to handle objections in a way that reassures and the diplomacy that supports you during price negotiations, can be rather a challenge. Selling is selling, whether you and the prospect are hashing through details while across the desk from one another, or while you try to make eye contact with a video image, or maintain your focus while speaking to a disembodied voice on the telephone. It’s just that you would be wise to remember that your approach to virtual mode selling must differ from face2face discussions.

Virtual communication requires a pronounced shift to a client-centered perspective. An intentional strategy on your part is needed to more effectively reach across the digital divide to establish rapport and build trust. Below are five actions you can incorporate into your virtual sales calls to show prospects that you understand their needs, priorities and concerns and enable them to feel secure as you guide them through the sales journey.

Lead with empathy

When prospects demonstrate interest in your product or service, perhaps by responding to your inbound marketing, it’s because they need a solution that will solve a problem or enable a goal to be reached. Descriptions of your product or service have aroused curiosity. They hope you’ll understand what they need to do and how to efficiently get it done. Demonstrate both empathy and business acumen by asking questions to show you intend to understand their needs and propose a credible solution.

Employ active listening

It’s been said that the most successful sales professionals devote as much as 80% of their sales conversions to asking questions of the prospect and listening to the answers. The best way to persuade prospects to become clients is to create conditions where they feel seen, heard and understood. You do that by listening more and talking less. When in doubt, or to confirm your understanding of the situation, ask more questions. The more carefully you listen, the more sales you’ll make.

Become the trusted adviser
Your would-be clients are in need of a solution, but they won’t buy until and unless they trust you. The worst move you can make is to get someone on your screen or on the phone and make it obvious that your motive is to rope them into a fast sale. No one wants to have a sales call with someone who just wants to “close” them and maybe even trick them into spending money on a solution that’s not the best and costs more than it should.

Serious prospects want an advocate — a smart, dependable adviser whom they can grow to trust. Prospects, whether they consciously realize or not, want to do business with a professional whose primary intention is to be of service. They back away from those who are too hungry for a sale.

Exhibit the behaviors referenced above and direct them to help you understand the prospect’s need, earning trust and building a relationship as you come to understand how you can be of assistance—-ideally by providing them with the right solution at the right price. A 2019 study published by Gartner Peer Insights found that customer perceptions of a sales professional are a critical element of purchase decisions. Customers are motivated to spend on purchases that support business growth when they feel their sales contact is a trusted adviser who boosts their confidence in their purchasing decisions.

Emphasize outcomes and benefits

The best sales professionals focus heavily on the solution’s outcomes and results, often by painting a vivid picture of how the prospect’s working environment will benefit when the solution is implemented. Prospects want you to take the lead, figure out what’s going on and tell them why your solution will work, without getting bogged down in minutiae. What really matters to prospects is, “How will my life be different after we work together? Will this project be worth the pain—i.e., time and money—-of hiring you”?

Moderate your tone of voice

It’s not only what you say, but how you say it. You’ll be most comfortable speaking in your natural vocal tone, but it may be to your advantage to adapt it for virtual formats, just as you do for speaking to an audience. You don’t want to sound timid and apologetic, but neither do you want to be perceived as arrogant or intimidating.

The ideal tone of voice for virtual (or face2face) presentations is warm, businesslike, confident and straight to the point. Your tone of voice and the pace of your speech should convey a sense of expertise, authority and trustworthiness to your prospects. Use your smartphone to record yourself reading a paragraph and play back to critique your pace, tone, elocution and relatability. Your goal is to find a way of speaking that is both authoritative and friendly.

Thanks for reading,

Kim