Gaining engagement and trust during virtual meetings is challenging. You can’t read the room as you can in a face to face situation.
Here are some tips to ensure you drive value into all your virtual meetings.
- Preparation before meetings is vital, but don’t fall into the trap of being so focused on delivering your presentation, you lose frequent contact with your audience. Use your preparation time to enable you to be more flexible during the meeting and adapt to their key concerns.
- Don’t make assumptions, if a client mentions an issue they are facing is it essential to investigate thoroughly. We need to drill down and find the real reason or cause for the problem and get all the background details to fully understand their situation.
- Asking good questions and actively listening to the responses is the only way to discover how you can add value.
- Confirm back what you think you heard. Why is it important to ask confirming questions?
There are two main reasons:
- You are ensuring that you have clearly understood the issue and background details, plus if you have misunderstood or the client has overlooked any important points it gives both of you an opportunity to correct it.
- Secondly, and maybe more significant is the level of trust that is built between you and your client during this process. When they see you have a) taken the time to fully understand their personal situation and b) have correctly summarised the key issues effectively.
So often we are focused on demonstrating our capability that as soon as we hear our prospective client mention an issue they are facing we dive in with solutions, references and examples. Before we have fully investigated and confirmed back to ensure we are on the same page.
My challenge for you this week is to improve this one aspect of your communication. Focus on staying in the moment, really focus on what your client is saying. Rather than thinking ahead as they’re speaking about what you want to say next.
Ultimately, their last comment will give you the next step to move the conversation forward successfully and keep you right on point!
Follow these tips and you will discover you have all the time, information and insight to deliver value to clients in every meeting.
If you’d like more resources on this topic here’s a link to a full webinar https://www.linearstructure.com/video/how-to-create-an-outstanding-virtual-customer-experience/
“Dedicated to Your Continued Sales Success!”
Peter
