Sellers typically depend on a few key skills to close their deals, including the ability to get in front of prospects, build personal rapport, and read a room. But all of those things become infinitely more difficult when you selling remotely, and there’s no actual “room” to read.

The COVID-19 lockdown has touched all industries, some more severely than others. Social distancing has hit small businesses the hardest, but remote work mandates have also impacted sellers’ ability to execute at their usual level. Sales leaders and their teams still have quotas to hit, and it’s a lot more difficult in a lockdown environment and a precarious economy.

Reading the Room

Web conferencing has been gaining ground for a while, but it’s quite suddenly become the rule. Video calls can certainly get a seller part of the way there, but there’s still a barrier between the rep being able to look into a prospect’s eyes and determine whether or not that person is truly interested — or even paying attention.

In these situations, sellers need technology that can give prospects a frictionless meeting experience and insight into prospects’ engagement with the presentation. Above all, sellers need to be able to respond to prospects’ cues — verbal and nonverbal — as they clearly and succinctly demonstrate your organization’s value proposition to prospects.

Meeting engagement analytics and content analytics can provide those cues, even from a distance. It’s the data that lets sellers share truly useful content at the right stage in the sales cycle. Sellers need to know what content prospects are clicking on, even how long they’re spending on individual slides. This gives sellers precise insight into what the prospect cares about and points towards what the rep should deliver next to keep the conversation moving forward.

Content is a more valuable sales engagement tool than ever, now that prospects are as close to a captive audience as they’ll ever be. That makes content analytics critical, so that sales leaders can further educate and train their teams. This, in turn, also helps reps share better solutions with buyers and measure engagement. The more access to engagement metrics sellers have, the better they can tweak their strategies on an ongoing basis.

3 Strategies for Socially Distant Selling

It’s not impossible for sellers to still meet their quotas during this chaotic time. Below are three ways to sell effectively, while still maintaining a safe distance:

1. Be sensitive when adapting your pitch to the coronavirus crisis.

The same selling points you used with buyers before the pandemic still apply; they just need to be re-framed for the current landscape. Sellers still need understand the individual prospect and the prospect’s overall organization — but now they also need to understand what has changed in the prospect’s industry on a day-to-day basis. Sellers’ grasp of buyer data and holistic view of the current sales landscape, buyer pain points, and available resources need to be constantly updated to keep pace with developments.

Many companies are dealing with pain points related to business disruption, supply-chain shutdowns, collaboration challenges, and remote security, for example. Think through how you can tweak your messaging to better speak to pain points such as these.

2. Be ready to pivot on the fly.

This landscape requires that sellers be more nimble than ever during presentations and pitches. Sellers need to be able to customize presentations on the fly and adjust messaging based on how the prospect is engaging, without them knowing it’s happening.

This might be a good time to leverage the power of personalized videos, which allow for quick and tailored follow-up. They also subtly communicate to the prospect that you’re willing to invest your time in them before they’ve even committed to a purchase. That goes a long way in building rapport. You can also get creative with video, perhaps even giving corporate tours to prospects that you normally would have conducted in person. This is the time to think outside the box.

3. More than ever, leverage your analytics and tech capabilities.

As mentioned above, sellers should always be using engagement insights and analytics to inform their sales approaches — but now it’s more important that ever. You have to understand how prospects consume your content, including the timing and level of engagement.

The next step is to tailor messaging based on the buyer’s stage in the sales cycle. Leverage a platform that allows you to track engagement and respond with personalized, marketing-approved templates. That way, you’re maximizing time both on and off the phone, saving time and resources while also shortening your sales cycle.

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown has drastically altered the way the world does business. As you adapt to this new normal, it’s vital to leverage data and analytics, tailor messaging appropriately, and learn to be nimble during prospect calls.

This is a temporary situation, and we know you need a temporary solution to deal with it. So we’re offering shortened licensing terms and expedited setup to get you and your team up, running, seeing value and advancing deals fast. Reach out to our sales team to help, or request a demo.