How to run an Online Sales Meeting – Demo

There are lots of applications which will facilitate the organisation and running of an online meeting or demonstration, popular and well proven applications include Webex and GoToMeeting. Both will incur a monthly fee. There are also FREE lighter alternatives ones which come higly recommended GoLiveRoom and OnWebinar.

When planning an online demonstration, presentation and/or online meeting there is more than the meeting application to consider. When preparing for the meeting take time to think through the following:

1. Keep it Short

Keep it short, 30 minutes – 1hour for a first meeting is about right. They may be able to see you on screen, even so their attention span is shortened by a 2D experience. Do not spend the first 10 minutes explaining who you are and what you do, get straight into asking them questions and showing them the solutions to the problems they share with you. If you have committed to a time make sure you stick to it, it is easy to see impatience face to face, you won’t spot a tapping foot online!

2. Be Yourself

In a face to face presentation your personality and presence can create an impression and leave an impact. Online you loose much of this impact so this is not a time to hold back, be yourself confidently and practice your online demonstration on someone you know first. Ask them for an opinion on how you come across and how this differs when you are face to face, this will give you an idea of where you might need to adapt your communication style to accommodate for online meetings.

3. Ask Questions

You don’t have the body language and facial expressions of your audience to guage the impact of what you are discussing with them. To account for this ask MORE QUESTIONS. Before the meeting prepare a list of all the things you need to know about the prospect / client / delegate. Here is a prompt list to get you started:-

• How did they hear about you
• Why are they looking at your organisation
• What is the reason for looking at your product or service
• What problem will it solve for them / the business
• What must your solution do
• Which other solutions have they looked at
• What would stop them from buying your product or service
• Who is not in the meeting that is involved in the purchasing process
• What are their timescales and budgets

Online meetings are often shorter, you can’t expect to front or back end load the meeting with your questions. So you will need to spread the questions out throughout the demonstration. Try asking them at points when there is a natural stop or break in the demonstration. E.g., when you are launching a new application, running a report, opening a document or file. It will also seem more natural. Having a list at your hand will really help.

4. Don’t over do the detail

To keep an online meeting audience engaged they need to be involved in the meeting, so talking at them for more than 5 minutes is sure to switch them off. If you need to use a presentation stick to a very small number of slides 3-5 at most. Things to include – Clients, reasons why clients choose your solution, awards / accreditations, pricing. Avoid – lengthly feature lists, too many words and diagrams, company histories, detailed product roadmaps.

When demonstrating the application / service stick to showing the features that the client wants to see. The most important questions at the start of the meeting should be “what are you hoping this solution can do for you”, “what would you like to see it do?”. Once they are satisfied it can do what they need it to do then move onto the features which will add value and differentiate you from the competition. Don’t over do it. Remeber Paretos Law – 80% of people only use 20% off an application. You may be excited by all the great new features, don’t assume they are.

Finally, online meetings do create additional challenges and they will not replace face to face meetings entirely. However the benefits cannot be disputed. For both vendor and client it; saves time and money, speeds up the buying process and enables more people to be involved where ever they are based in the world. Whilst online meetings process miss valuable human interaction they certainly make up for this in their ability to involve more people, any time, any where.