How Web Conferencing Accelerates Your Sales Process
A guide for making your customer relationships more profitable
B Y G ERHARD G SCHWANDTNER , F OUNDER
AND
P UBLISHER , S ELLING P OWER M AGAZINE
®
Sponsored by:
How Web Conferencing Accelerates Your Sales Process
Over the past 10 years, sales professionals have embraced practically any technology that helps them sell, including cell phones, GPS, and email. Many sales professionals are now embracing Web conferencing as a tactical tool to develop more prospects and close deals more quickly. At the same time, sales managers deploy Web conferencing to create more adaptive sales processes and build better customer relationships. There are three reasons for sudden upsurge of interest in, and adoption of, Web conferencing: 1. Web Conferencing is Easy to Adopt 2. Web Conferencing Strengthens Customer Relationships 3. Web Conferencing Increases Revenue and Profit Let’s examine these three factors in detail, illustrating how Web conferencing results in a shorter sales cycle and a lower cost of sales, thereby generating a significant competitive advantage.
Reason #1. Web Conferencing is Easy To Adopt
Selling Power magazine recently made the observation that sales reps used to be in the transportation and delivery business. “Much of the activity that a sales rep performed on a day-to-day basis consisted of carrying product information to the customer so that the customer would have the information required to make a buying decision.” In that kind of selling environment, the main purpose of a face-to-face meeting was for the sales rep to explain the information and translate features into customer benefits so that the customer could make a decision. With the Internet, customers now have direct access to information and can easily find out any amount and depth of information necessary to make a buying decision. As a result, the role of the B2B sales rep has become “consultative.” In order to successfully serve the customer, the sales rep must become a “trusted advisor” capable of offering insight and clear choices for a specific segment of the customer’s business. With a consultative sales approach, the sales rep helps customers identify, analyze, and clearly define problems and then design profitable solutions that can either solve the problem, or create an advantageous business opportunity for the customer. Web conferencing, as a technology, is particularly well suited to consultative selling because it allows the sales rep to adapt the selling process more quickly to the customer’s buying process. That’s just for starters. What’s more important is that Web conferencing technology allows a level of interaction and collaboration that would be impossible to duplicate in a face-to-face meeting. Stu Schmidt, vice president of solution sales at WebEx (now a part of Cisco), says, “We’ve created more sophisticated levels of online collaboration while increasing the ease-of-use which has become a huge hit with the thousands of companies that are now using Web conferencing inside their sales organizations.”
THE SALES MAKEOVER
Web conferencing technology allows a level of interaction and collaboration that would be impossible to duplicate in a face-to-face meeting.
“With WebEx we’ve been able to get the right people involved with the sales process, leading to quicker decision-making.”
Bill Ross, Position2
SellingPower magazine recently held a contest in which the award was a “sales makeover” from WebEx, the market share leader in Web conferencing facilities. One of the two contest winners was Position2, a California-based provider of online marketing services. Position2 works with its clients to improve lead generation, customer acquisition, and brand visibility through pay per click advertising (PPC) management, search engine optimization (SEO) and Web analytics. Position2’s target market consists chiefly of companies funded by venture capital, primarily in the high tech sector. Prior to the makeover, the company’s primary lead generation activity consisted of hosting roundtable discussions to educate prospects on PPC and SEO, which (being relatively new to the market world) are not particularly well understood. Then, once a lead had been generated, Position2’s sales process used telephone meetings and teleconferences to move the sale forward. Adding Web conferencing into their existing sales process proved surprisingly easy, according to Bill Ross, Position2’s director of sales and marketing. “With WebEx we were able to educate a larger number of prospects, thereby generating more leads,” he explains, “And we were able to make our customer communications richer and more substantive, which has allowed us to close more business.” Web conferencing has a significant impact on Position2’s market growth, according to Ross. “The ability to share screens and then circle and point to various areas on the screen makes it easier for us to explain concepts to customers. Plus, the ability to call multiple customer stakeholders into an online meeting reduces the amount of time that it takes to develop a prospect into a customer,” he says, “In many cases, customers and prospects don’t have time to leave the office in order to attend a sales presentation, even if it’s in the same building. With WebEx we’ve been able to get the right people involved with the sales process, leading to quicker decision-making.”
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How Web Conferencing Accelerates Your Sales Process
ESSENTIAL TOOL
“I like the fact that we can control the flow of the presentation and stay on a collaborative path that ultimately leads to the close.”
Pankaj Malviya, LongJump
None of this could have happened, though, if the WebEx software hadn’t been easy to adopt – both for Position2 and for Position2’s customers. If, for example, the use of Web conferencing had required Position2’s customers to download a special program, it would have become more difficult, if not impossible, to get multiple stakeholders to participate in a salesoriented online meetings. In short, Web conferencing is now so easy that it’s transformed itself from a technological novelty into a must-have tool that can be quickly integrated into virtually any sales process. The second company to win the WebEx sales makeover, LongJump (a vendor of Customer Relationship Management software) had a similar experience, according to the company’s founder and CEO Pankaj Malviya. “We are a big proponent of Web conferencing as a vehicle for selling our products, because it’s easy for both our sales reps and our customer to understand and use,” he says. LongJump discovered that the WebEx feature called annotation to be particularly useful. (Annotation allows one participant in the Web conference to circle and point to elements being displayed on the screens of the other participants.) When it came to consultative selling at LongJump, Web conferencing with annotation turned out to be superior to both faceto-face meetings and traditional teleconferencing. “I like the fact that we can control the flow of the presentation and stay on a collaborative path that ultimately leads to the close,” says Malviya. “The annotation feature puts me in control of the sales process in a way that is quite different compared to a traditional teleconference or a seminar. This allows us to control the flow of the presentation and emphasize what is needed at each point in the sales cycle.” Because it helped improve their sales process and create new ways of communicating with customers, the Sales Makeover experience was highly positive for both firms. “We try to be forward-looking in our vision of technology for sales, so it made good business sense for us to participate,” says Malviya. Position2’s Ross agrees, saying “Web conferencing should be in the tool box of every sales professional.”
Reason #2. Web Conferencing Strengthens
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
“It’s becoming an increasingly common way for sales teams and buying teams to work together, before, during, and after the sales cycle.”
Stu Schmidt, WebEx
Consultative selling tends to be highly collaborative, with seller and buyer working together to solve a problem or take advantage of a new opportunity. Salespeople are no longer pushing solutions; they actually co-create the sale with the customer, which dramatically enhances the relationship with the customer. What’s more, the relationship becomes ‘competition proof’ based on the psychological principle that people vigorously defend what they’ve helped create. Web conferencing allows that collaborative activity to occur in the context of the customer’s work environment –the computer on the customer’s desk. In many cases Web conferencing may be a better communications vehicle than face-to-face meetings. Case in point: a marketing manager recently called two marketing software vendors for a quote. Both vendors drove an hour to visit the prospect and an hour back. Both vendors spent an hour and a half going through their relationship building routine, talking about the prospects needs before launching into their demo. After both visits the prospect gave the buying experience two thumbs down. Why? Because both salespeople could have presented their product online in less than 20 minutes and saved themselves and their prospect precious time.
SELLING VIA INTERNET
The past few years have seen a fundamental change in the way that customer and prospects use the Internet. Originally, customers viewed the Internet as a way to retrieve information about products and suppliers, which greatly enhanced their product and market knowledge. Today, however, customers are increasingly viewing the Internet as a vehicle for customers and prospects to communicate with one another through so-called “Web 2.0” mechanism like blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. Even when a seller is 100 percent certain that the people commenting on their products are actual customers, Web 2.0 technology can leave the sales organization with little or no control over how the market perceives their brand. With Web 2.0, a customer can blog about their experience with a vendor and exaggerate discount information, which in turn can make life for the sales staff a lot more difficult. By contrast, Web conferencing is a sales enhancing “Web 2.0” tool that can help consultative sales reps strengthen account control and build stronger customer relationships. Many companies use WebEx throughout the sales cycle. It may begin with a one-hour marketing Webinar where a product manager talks about a specific use of the product while an existing customer
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How Web Conferencing Accelerates Your Sales Process
joins to speak about the benefits they have enjoyed with the product. The sales process may continue with an online conference where a salesperson shares details with a customer while an application specialist assists to answer customer questions. In many instances, application experts may be located in different parts of the country, and customers tend to be impressed with the salesperson’s ability to summon experts to help the customer make better decisions. This is a great way to enhance business relationships and increase the chances for closing a sale. A Webenabled sales process is even more critical with multiple decision makers. According to WebEx’s Stu Schmidt, “WebEx has customers in a wide variety of industries, ranging from large enterprise to small, high-tech startups,” he explains, “It’s becoming an increasingly common way for sales teams and buying teams to work together, before, during, and after the sales cycle.”
BETTER CUSTOMER COMMUNICATIONS
“YouTube and Reality TV have shown us that people don’t like ‘packaged,’ ‘staged,’ or ‘phony’ information. People are hungry for what’s authentic.”
Stu Schmidt, WebEx
Web conferencing strengthens customer relationships through expanding both the frequency and reach of customer communications. “Face-to-face meetings require travel logistics and typically need to be scheduled far in advance, usually with a predetermined agenda and predetermined list of attendees,” says Schmidt, “By contrast, Web conferencing can be ad hoc rather than scheduled. Or a core of participants may schedule the actual meeting, but then have additional attendees electronically join or leave the meeting as needed.” With Web conferencing, a sales rep can add resources to a meeting as necessary to achieve the next step in the sales cycle. For example, should a question emerge about product support, the sales rep could send out a message inviting the next available support engineer to join the meeting. Similarly, should a customer want to include an additional customer stakeholder in a discussion, the new person can be contacted by phone, email, or Instant Messaging (IM) and be asked to join the meeting, even if that resource is currently located halfway across the world. Web conferencing also strengthens customer relationship through creative collaboration, particularly the kind of brainstorming that’s often crucial at the beginning of a sales cycle. “Since B2B sales is largely a collaborative effort, the ability to interactively work on documents and issues from remote locations – inside the virtual environment that matches where the business is taking place (i.e., the Web) is highly attractive, particularly as more companies move into global distribution and partnerships,” explains Schmidt. Another way that Web conferencing strengthens customer relationships is by smoothing out knotty business roadblocks and conflicts. For example, in traditional B2B selling environments, it’s not unusual for a sales opportunity to be delayed as the lawyers of the prospect firms work the legal contract. Needless to say, such delays create tension in the customer relationship, especially when they result in missed deadlines and unfulfilled promises. However, when contract negotiations are conducted through Web conferencing, “changes can be made to the documents in real-time. They can be distributed immediately for review and approval, handling such discussions in a Web-conferencing environment that will be far more convenient (and involve far less elapsed time) than either face-to-face meetings or telephone conversations,” says Schmidt.
PERSONALIZED CONTACT
Customer relationships can also be strengthened through the judicious use of video, which “personalizes the interaction,” explains Schmidt, “We have a WebEx customer who mandates the use of video during sales contacts in order to provide a personal touch.” That personal touch is particularly important in today’s customer relationships because larger cultural trends have made authenticity the coin of the realm, according to Schmidt. “YouTube and Reality TV have shown us that people don’t like ‘packaged,’ ‘staged,’ or ‘phony’ information,” he explains, “People are hungry for what’s authentic.” Overall, Web conferencing strengthens customer relationships by making the sales process more flexible, more interactive, and more personalized. This is not to say that face-to-face meetings will become a thing of the past. However, there’s no question that the need to build stronger customer relationships is driving many sales organization to embrace Web conferencing as a crucial element of their sales toolkit.
Reason #3. Web Conferencing Increases
REVENUES AND PROFITS
Web conferencing increases revenue primarily by expanding the number of sales opportunities that each sales rep can handle. One reason behind this productivity gain is that, even though Web conferencing consumes far less time than face-to-face meetings, it is often more effective as a com-
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How Web Conferencing Accelerates Your Sales Process
munications medium when it comes to accelerating the customer’s decision making process. A 2003 study conducted at the Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois compared the behavior of knowledge workers working face-to-face with those working through Web conferencing. Somewhat to the surprise of the researchers, the study revealed online meetings were fully as effective as traditional face-to-face meetings when it came to important elements of a B2B sales process: achieving accuracy, avoiding overconfidence, commitment to the group decision, and the number of beliefs discussed or learned during the meeting. In other words, sales reps using Web conferencing can cover more territory and handle more customers without a significant reduction in their ability to sell consultatively or build strong customer relationships. “There is no way that we could sell to, and support, so many customers without Web conferencing,” explains LongJump’s Malviya. Web conferencing also reduces the cost of sales. The telecommunications firm MCI recently sponsored a study comparing the total cost of a face-to-face sales meeting compared with the same meeting conducted remotely. The difference was considerable: a oneon-one face-to-face meeting between two mid-level managers located in different cities cost an average of $3,700. By contrast, having the meeting remotely cost only $750, with the bulk of the expense tied to the average hourly rate of the executives rather than the cost of the meeting itself. Higher revenue (through higher productivity in the sales staff) and a lower cost of sales (through the elimination of unnecessary travel expenses) is a textbook recipe for greater profitability. While neither LongJump nor Position2 have calculated the financial impact of incorporating Web conferencing more deeply into their sales cycle, executives at both firms are certain that they’re seeing substantial benefits and earning a real competitive advantage. “Time and time again we hear that leading companies are using WebEx to blow their competition out of the water,” says WebEx marketing manager Jeff Weinberger.
HELP AT EVERY STAGE OF THE PROCESS
“There is no way that we could sell to, and support, so many customers without Web conferencing.”
Pankaj Malviya, LongJump
The real potential of Web conferencing can best be envisioned through viewing the sales process as a funnel. At the top of the funnel is where the leads enter the sales process as prospects. At the bottom of the funnel are the prospects that actually turn into paying customers. The goal of marketing is to increase the number of qualified leads that enter the funnel. The goal of sales is to increase the number of qualified leads that actually become loyal customers. Web conferencing helps companies to qualify leads because it allows more interaction at an earlier phase of the sales cycle. At Position2, for example, Web conferencing allows them to hold more roundtables, reaching a greater number of potential customers. More important, this activity can take place without increasing the cost of acquiring a new lead, which studies have shown ranges from $100 to $300 for most B2B enterprises. Once the qualified leads enter the funnel, Web conferencing is a perfect tool for prospecting among those leads and winnowing out those that are not likely to buy. Because Web conferencing does not force sales reps to physically visit customer sites and interrupt the prospect’s workday, they can establish contact more easily and move more quickly into discussions of customer requirements.
EXPAND SALES EFFECTIVENESS ACROSS THE COMPANY
Web conferencing also increases sales effectiveness across the organization. Because Web conferencing makes it easier for large numbers of stakeholders to participate, events that would normally cause a sale to stall (like the unavailability of a key stakeholder) are less likely to take place. Similarly, because brainstorming and negotiation can be handled online, each stage of the sales process tends to move more rapidly. Even better, once a prospect has become a customer, Web conferencing helps the selling organization to remain in contact, thereby forging a stronger customer relationship which leads to higher repeat business. In addition, Web conferencing helps product managers launch new products faster, it helps sales trainers raise salespeople’s selling skills, it helps sales managers conduct quick win/loss reviews, and it helps VP’s of sales with rolling out a new incentive or recognition program. WebEx’s Weinberger believes that, over time, nearly every company worldwide will incorporate some form of Web conferencing to boost sales effectiveness. “It’s been clear for some time that the business community views Web conferencing as the wave of the future,” he says, “At WebEx, we’re determined to help companies make the transition to become more productive, more effective, and definitely more competitive.” •
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