Virtual sales presentations are more common than ever. Research shows that 66% of employees have seen an increase in remote selling since 2020.
Since more sales meetings are virtual these days, you need to know how to lead a productive virtual meeting. Here are some of the best ways your sales teams can conduct virtual sales presentations:
- Create an Engaging Virtual Presentation
- Use High-Quality Virtual Selling Tools
- Share Your Screen With Meeting Attendees
- Ask Open-Ended Questions
Let’s tighten up those virtual selling skills so you can convert more leads into customers.
Create an Engaging Virtual Presentation
A virtual face-to-face sales presentation shouldn’t feel like a lecture—it should be a conversation between you and a potential buyer. Making a virtual presentation more personable helps the decision-maker feel more comfortable with your business, increasing the likelihood of converting them from a lead into a customer.
While a virtual sales presentation should be conversational, it’s still vital to prepare ahead of time so you touch on every key aspect while effectively getting your point across. Like a face-to-face meeting, you need to craft a pitch deck that provides an overview of your business and expands on how your product or service addresses their pain points.
As you design your virtual sales pitch deck, it’s essential that you:
- Keep slide text minimal and only type out key talking points. If you want to instantly turn off a potential buyer, a copy-heavy pitch deck is the best way to do that. Only type out the key conversation points, and you can expand on them later. This will keep your audience engaged.
- Make it short and relevant. Have you ever sat through a lecture or meeting that lasted over an hour when it could have easily been 20 or 30 minutes? As you create your virtual sales presentation, remember to keep it focused, so the decision-maker doesn’t leave feeling like they wasted their time.
- Do not read directly from the slide. The person giving the sales presentation should never read directly from the slide. Direct reading doesn’t give potential buyers any new information, and it increases the risk of them just reading the slide rather than listening to what you have to say.
- Give active listening cues. If you look distracted or act like you’re not listening to the potential buyer, you risk losing your credibility. When a decision-maker is providing feedback or answering questions, consider the body language you’re giving them to show that you’re listening carefully.
Use High-Quality Virtual Selling Tools
While your sales leaders may be experts at closing business, they can’t do it all themselves. For a virtual sales presentation to be successful, they need to have the necessary virtual selling tools to communicate with potential buyers effectively.
These virtual selling tools include:
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot CRM manages all the information you need to customize the perfect virtual sales presentation. A CRM should be used for every step of the sales cycle, from prospecting to securing the sale. With HubSpot, you can access the latest data about the potential buyer in real time, such as what emails they’ve opened and what product or service they’re interested in learning more about.
Zoom Business
Zoom is more than a social outlet to have a virtual happy hour with your friends or colleagues. It’s a selling platform used to connect with decision-makers who are interested in your product or service. With Zoom Business, your sales executives have the opportunity to speak face-to-face without the need to be in the same vicinity.
This platform is a more effective way to sell compared to a phone call because your sales leaders and potential buyers can look at one another and provide non-verbal social cues to show each other they’re listening.
Additionally, Zoom Business enables your sales and account executives to share a presentation with potential buyers onscreen or provide a demo of how your company’s products or services can benefit their business.
Share Your Screen With Meeting Attendees
Virtual selling tools like Zoom Business allow salespeople to share their screens with meeting attendees. If you want to have a productive virtual sales presentation, sharing your screen is vital because it:
- Lets attendees see your pitch deck
- Supports company–client transparency
- Shows the attendee that you’re not distracted
- Enables sales reps to present a demo of your services
Ask Open-Ended Questions
Since a virtual sales meeting is a two-way conversation, you should frequently ask open-ended questions. This opens the floor for discussion and encourages attendees to be more upfront with your sales reps.
It’s important to stay focused on the potential buyer and their needs. Here are a few examples of open-ended questions you can ask decision-makers:
- What are your short- and long-term goals for the next year?
- How can our products or services support your organization?
- Why are you considering other products or services?
Key Takeaways
Since virtual sales presentations aren’t going away anytime soon, it’s important to understand how to make them engaging. With an engaging sales presentation, the right virtual selling tools, and the ability to share your screen and ask open-ended questions, your sales experts have the opportunity to close more business.
At Sapper Consulting, our sales development reps set clients up with qualified virtual sales meetings so they can secure better business opportunities. If you need help generating sales leads, contact the business growth experts at Sapper!
