With the rise of the current health crisis, many companies find themselves having to pivot their businesses and focus on selling their products and services remotely. Remote selling or virtual selling is considered a great technique because businesses don’t need to meet with their potential clients or customers physically. Instead, they can discuss products and services through phone and video meetings. Even though remote selling is currently more popular than ever because of the pandemic, it has been around for quite some time already.
Benefits of Remote Selling
Virtual selling is not just helpful at keeping you and your customers safe during uncertain times. Over the years, many businesses have found a lot of positives to using remote selling techniques. Aside from ensuring safety, here are some other benefits of virtual selling:
- Cost Savings: When businesses let their staff work remotely, they can save money on travel expenses, office spaces and other office supplies, and technical costs.
- Empowered Sales Representatives: Your sales reps will feel empowered that they have control over their schedules and strategies to create their own success.
- Increased Productivity: Managers will have more time to take on other responsibilities and can focus on creating strategies to continuously improve their remote selling techniques.
- Increased Access to Customers and Stakeholders: If your business aims to widen its reach, remote selling offers you the opportunity to reach more potential customers and stakeholders outside of your office area.
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How to Increase Your Remote Sales?
There are a lot of benefits to remote selling; however, there are also things you need to be aware of. For instance, there will be times that remote selling won’t feel personal enough, and you may struggle to gauge how customers perceive their offers. Remote selling is limited to online or telephone interactions, meaning you’ll be unable to see physical signals such as body language that can indicate the decision-making process of the potential client.
The key is adjusting your traditional sales techniques to suit remote selling. Here are some tips you can follow to increase your remote sales:
1. Create Personal Connections with Your Audience
One of the keys to improving your remote sales is becoming as personable as possible. Most people buy from those they can relate to. Some business owners overlook the importance of establishing a personal connection with their prospects. When you don’t put importance on having this connection, you run the risk of losing the prospect to another business.
To improve your connection with potential clients, make sure that you use video calling rather than voice calling. Seeing your face will help customers determine that your brand is trustworthy. When talking to your audience, you should do the following:
- Set a warm tone when you talk and be a little informal.
- Ask them how to pronounce their names correctly.
- Make small talk; don’t limit your conversation to business.
Modern selling techniques recommend salespeople to offer a solution to their audience’s problems rather than selling the product or service to them directly. Before you start meeting with your potential clients, it’s best you conduct some research about them. What are they struggling with? How can your product or service make their lives better? If the answers to these questions don’t come up in your research, you can start asking them how you can help improve their current situation.
2. Lighten the Mood and Break the Ice
Breaking the ice in your sales discussions is important; your audience won’t feel burned out or forced with the information you’re providing them. You can do this by telling a personal anecdote or cracking a joke every once in a while. If there’s more than one participant, it’s best to ask everyone to introduce themselves before starting the meeting to make them feel welcomed. Once you’ve been chatting for a while, it’s a good idea to encourage a five-minute break so people can get a drink of water or use the bathroom. This will improve their attention and focus, making them more likely to be engaged when it comes time to secure a sale.
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3. Invest in CRM Software
Customer Relations Management tools are helpful in many ways, but particularly when your business is focused on remote selling. There are many reasons why businesses need CRM software:
- Provides you with a database of all customer and potential customer data.
- Tracks customer interactions.
- Email and website tracking, so you can see when prospects open emails or when they click links leading to your website.
With the information provided by CRM tools, you’ll know who among your prospects has a higher chance of buying your products and services. This way, your sales staff will know who to connect to first and how best to interact with them.
There are four main types of CRM tools you can work with:
Conversation:
This type focuses on apps that are built around your sales team’s emails and phone calls with prospects. The apps will organize every conversation from across the business and add the information to the correct contact’s profile. You can also see the conversations of your sales team to know what has been discussed with the prospect. This data helps managers see if the sales rep has given the right information or has an idea of how to contact a certain prospect for follow-ups.
Lead and Deals:
This software helps you close the deal with the most promising prospects. Because of its focus on leading prospects, this type of CRM software is quite popular with many businesses. The application adds information regarding these leads as you work to convince them to purchase your product or get your services. The software also helps you trace interactions from the first contact to finalizing the deal. This information is crucial so you can evaluate what techniques can work with other prospects as well.
Contact:
This type of CRM application is the simplest and the most budget-friendly of all CRM tools available today. Applications focusing on contact information have designs similar to common address book apps like Google contacts. The software focuses on your contacts and helps you gather much more information about them. You can also log in to your interactions and write notes about your prospects, as well as schedule the next meeting.
Marketing:
This software helps you put your data into action by automatically sending emails or messages to your prospects. Marketing tools typically include contact or lead and deal with CRM features. This software also includes automated workflows. It sends an email to a lead after they click a link in a marketing email you sent them. It also works by tagging a prospect as a lead when they’ve opened four or more marketing emails you sent them. Because of its functionality, these types of software are more expensive than others; but it helps you close your next sale faster.
4. Prepare Your Materials
Before you can start hosting virtual meetings, make sure that you have excellent visual tools and materials on hand, as well as a high-quality webcam. Make sure you utilize the screen sharing feature of your chosen communication software, so your audiences can look at or read your materials. It’s a good idea to have these materials professionally designed, so they’re reflective of your brand. The idea is to make your digital sales pitch as professional as any in-person meeting to increase your chance of closing a sale.
Your materials should also be visually impactful to keep the attention of your audience. You can include a funny image relating to what you’re discussing, or animations to keep it interesting. Aside from that, make sure the information you present in your materials shows how to address your customers’ problems while staying on brand. Don’t forget to display slides with proven results, or videos or quotes from satisfied customers.
Lastly, you should remember to practice before you present to your audience. Stepping into a meeting unprepared is the worst mistake any sales rep can make. It’s better to have a script as mumbling and hesitation will be much more evident during virtual meetings.
You should practice your tone and the flow of your presentation so you will be more confident. Prospects trust people who can carry themselves well as they will see you as an expert on what you’re presenting.
5. Don’t Forget to Ask and Answer Questions
Allow your audience to speak their minds and ask questions. Before your presentation, considering asking attendees what they want to get from the meeting. Afterward, encourage questions and feedback. During the meeting, make sure you check-in and ask whether they’re following your explanation or if there’s something you need to explain further. Asking questions of your prospective customers will keep them engaged and show them you’re listening, too.
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Summary
Due to limitations brought about by the pandemic, many businesses are creating remote selling teams to make the most out of the situation and increase their revenue. The key to a successful remote selling strategy is to stay connected with your prospects. When holding virtual meetings, keep the mood light and make potential customers feel welcome to ask questions or give feedback. Lastly, invest in customer monitoring tools like CRM to ensure you’re engaging with people effectively.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
