Back in the 1960s and 70s, the Bell phone system had a catchy commercial slogan I remember to this day: “Long distance. It’s the next best thing to being there.” It was all about extolling the virtues of connecting with distant loved ones using expensive long-distance phone calls.
Made me wonder if that jingle still rings true when it comes to how inside sellers — and increasingly even outside reps — are spending more time connecting with prospects and customers remotely versus face-to-face.
Recently, my company partnered with InsideSales.com to survey more than 300 inside and outside salespeople about their virtual sales conversations. On average, 62 percent of respondents conduct at least half of their meetings over the phone or web. With a significant percentage (38 percent) saying three-fourths or more of their conversations happen in non-face-to-face environments.
Whether it’s inside or outside sales, one thing is clear: virtual sales calls are a big deal. But, are they the next best thing to being there? We asked a couple more questions. What’s the best approach for being remarkable and compelling in these environments? Do you simply modify existing engagement techniques to a phone or web conference setting? Or does it demand a total rethink in terms of message delivery?
There are a few schools of thought. At a basic level, the approaches include:
1. Verbal-only – Try to reduce friction by keeping the conversation verbal only and not directing prospects and customers to web links, apps, or other visual storytelling aids for fear of reducing their willingness to participate.
2. Web link with PowerPoint – Ask prospects and customers to go to a web link to show them some form of traditional PowerPoint presentation deck to help tell your story.
3. Dynamic visual storytelling – Use interactive visual storytelling over the web in the form of virtual demonstrations. You can also use dynamic visual builds in PowerPoint or even draw simple images using a whiteboard app.
4. Active Customer Participation – Ask prospects and customers to grab a piece of paper and pen and hand-draw certain concepts described by the seller that help illustrate your core message — moving them from passive observer to active participant.
Interestingly, the highest number of respondents to our survey rank the third and fourth categories as the most effective. But, 87 percent rarely or never ask prospects and customers to draw anything, even though 64 percent believe it would have a positive impact.
This comes at a time when nearly half (47 percent) believe their core messaging is only somewhat well-suited or worse for phone or web conference environments.
Currently, there’s little to no research to help determine the best engagement approach for these critical selling environments. That’s why we’re putting these four approaches described above to the test in an ongoing research simulation being done with Dr. Nick Lee, a professor at the Warwick Business School in Coventry, U.K. We’ll publish those results in the next issue of Sales & Marketing Management.
The Picture Superiority Effect
Based on the Picture Superiority Effect, we hypothesize that some form of visual storytelling will be more effective. The Picture Superiority Effect affirms that pictures are far better than text alone at getting people to remember what you’re telling them. Numerous studies have shown that in terms of recall, a visual story far outperforms one told just with words or text — perhaps by a factor of six or seven.
But what type of visual works best? That was the primary question driving a study my company conducted two years ago with Dr. Zak Tormala, an expert in messaging and persuasion. What the study revealed is that simple, concrete, hand-drawn visuals on a whiteboard outperformed two types of PowerPoint presentations in the areas of recall, engagement, presentation quality, credibility, and persuasion. (View the research at https://bit.ly/2LRyHo4)
Our main point then was that simple, concrete whiteboard-style visuals are more effective in face-to-face sales presentations than traditional PowerPoint techniques. But, we also extrapolated that these results can be applied to the visuals salespeople use in online sales calls. That became the jump-off point for the study to come.
Another motivating factor for researching engagement in virtual selling environments was a recent case study we conducted with a company that sells a $10,000 coaching product to marketing and sales leaders. To do so, it relies strictly on inside salespeople to drive business and close leads. Salespeople had a verbal script that includes a six-pronged persuasion technique following Robert Cialdini’s research.
The company was opposed to using visuals in either drawings or web links, believing it would create “too much friction” on the calls. My company worked with them to develop a simple, concrete visual story modeled on our Why Change storytelling framework, designed to create urgency and convince prospects to break from the status quo. In the new approach, sellers asked prospects to draw the visual themselves.
The visual story had an immediate positive impact relative to their previous verbal-only approach. It increased their sales by more than 24 percent the next month.
While a promising preliminary example, the next step is to test the approach in a more rigorous research simulation, to see how it holds up across different B2B selling situations. Stay tuned for those results.
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