Choose Video Meetings For Better Customer Engagement June 29, 2015My BusinessOff

Once upon a time there was a thing called a traveling salesman. This salesman would have a line of products or a catalog, a car, a briefcase, and a sales book. The company would assign him a territory and would then have him out on the road, driving to see customers, and presenting the products to them. Often he would be on the road for the majority of the week, coming back to the office only to enter his sales and go home to see his family. The customers would hear from their salesperson by telephone, letter, or by a sales call at their place of business. Even in the “information age” this method of doing business remained in force with very little alteration, other than email and websites.

Fast-Forward
And guess what? That’s still the way a lot of companies conduct their sales today. While you can blame business schools for promulgating obsolete management styles, or take shots at ossified corporate cultures, it does very little to actively empower a sales force to make more sales, engage with more customers, and fatten up the bottom line. In a world where eCommerce now rules both B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to customer), it’s time to get your head in the cloud and move your business forward. Very simply, businesses that do not evolve and adapt to a changing business environment will die.

Take for instance the steady hemorrhage of people dumping cable, or even not signing up for it at all. While there are still 95 million cable subscriptions in the United States, viewership is declining. According to Telecom Paper, cable companies reported losing slightly over 200,000 customers in 2013 and 2014. That may be a drop in the bucket, however Gigaom shows that viewership itself is on the decline and has been for some time. In the meantime meat and potatoes of cable has become frivolous and often interchangeable reality shows, while streaming services like Netflix offer scripted, critically acclaimed, high quality serials such as House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The ability to stream the programs that you want to watch without purchasing a slate of hundreds of channels will never watch has empowered consumers to cut the cord.

Empowering Your Sales Force
Bringing your salesforce out of the 20th century, or even out of the first decade of the 21st , means facing up to a 21st century reality: your workers are burned out. In a Verizon white paper number of meetings that the professionals were required to attend averaged out per month. Workers reported being stressed out by disruptions to their workflow, and the effect that it had on their family life. This may go hand-in-hand with the recent results of a Gallup poll reporting that in excess of 70 percent of educated and experienced professionals aged 30 to 64 reported being disengaged at work.

Giving people face time, doesn’t mean sending them out on the road meet with customers at their place of business. Nor does it mean spending the travel budget to bring your customers to you. Very simply, tools exist that for very reasonable cost can give you high quality video meetings that will not break your IT budget. By using cloud-based videoconferencing apps such as BlueJeans, it is possible for your salesforce to meet with your customers whether they are in your office at their desktop, at the airport with their tablet or laptop, or on the road with their iPhone. Bluejeans video meetings are intuitive, user-friendly, and easy for anyone to set up. Interoperability means that not only can you use them with all systems and devices, but people whose technical ability only extends to tap and swipe can use them. The protocol would be similar to setting up a scheduled phone call or sales call with the client. The salesperson would call, ask what would be a convenient time, schedule that time, then initiate the meeting at the agreed-upon appointment. This way your salesperson and their customer will have important face time together, while at the same time not experiencing any disruption to their individual working operations.

Face time is important, and people do love meetings. They just don’t love the disruptions that they cause, or the hassles of travel and the lag time between the meeting and implementation. Video meetings are not only efficient, but they are much kinder to your staff then extended road trips or frequent business travel. While there is no way to completely remove stress from the working environment, there are ways to reduce stress and minimize its impact on your salesforce’s well-being. Retain and reengage that talent by giving them better tools that will help them to reach out and help their customers.

Photo by Deborah Kolb | Shutterstock

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