How to Build Customer Rapport in Virtual Sales

Article

How to Build Customer Rapport in Virtual/Remote Environments

1 September 2021

Ricky Cookson

“Since the move to virtual selling, sales hasn’t changed that much.” Quite the statement, right?

Think about it. Sellers still prospect the same way and need to keep the pipeline full, the sales process has remained moderately unchanged, and inside sales teams have been selling over “Zoom” for years.

However, when interviewing sales leaders, we found that the process of selling over Zoom was a chaotic transition for many and still an everyday challenge a year and a half into COVID.

But if sales hasn’t changed that much since moving to an almost entirely virtual sale, why are sellers having so much trouble?

What has changed and thrown many salespeople through a loop is the ability to keep customers engaged over Zoom, read the Zoom room, and build trusting relationships in an era when customer (and sellers) are tapped out when it comes to another virtual meeting.

Fortunately, closing deals over Zoom isn’t so much about reimagining the sales process or virtual interactions; it’s about resurfacing in-person habits to build customer rapport.

In this article, we’ll cover the four things you can start doing now to bring excitement back to your sales calls and close more virtual sales deals.

1. Bring the excitement back
2. How to read the Zoom room
3. Mute and listen
4. Prioritize the follow-up process

Bring the Excitement Back Salespeople

Salespeople need excitement, challenges, and a rallying team. Unfortunately, a lot of that energy was drained when we left the office environment and moved sales calls to our home offices (or living and dining rooms).

In the office, energy was fueled by our peers. It came from encouragement from managers and other reps or a customer that became a raving fan. The emotion and liveliness of that environment rebounded from desk to desk. But, this energy was lost when everything moved to remote environments.

Sales rep or sales leader, you need excitement. And now more than ever, YOU need to bring the energy into sales. You are responsible for prospecting, you’re responsible for reaching out to clients, and in a virtual selling environment, YOU are responsible for creating the energy that drives you.

Your performance and ability to get psyched about the opportunities you’re chasing will help drive that energy back to your day-to-day. As a result, your customers will feel that energy too.

When sellers bring unrivaled enthusiasm and energy to their day-to-day life, they’re more likely to influence their customers.

Here are some tips to help introduce that type of energy into your home office:

1. Visibility is key to reigniting energy home offices. Reach out to your team, see how they’re doing, and check in on what’s going well. Rebuilding that camaraderie will make a substantial impact, we promise.
2. This is a big one: SHARE YOUR WINS. In the office, there’s an almost palpable momentum when the team is crushing their quota. Recreate that by consistently sharing the team’s wins, customer feedback, and spark up a little competition. Doing this virtually isn’t quite the same, but more and more tools are coming out to help.
3. And lastly, create serendipity for your team. There are a couple of ways to do this, and we suggest trying a couple. You can put blocks on your calendar for “watercooler/coffee talks” if getting on a call and seeing where the conversation takes you works best for your team. Or, don’t wait for the meeting. Send a slack message and have people jump in while you’re thinking about it.

Here from Kevin Dorsey, VP of Inside Sales at PatientPop, as he joins Skaled CEO, Jake Dunlap, in talking about this very topic: How to bring the excitement of the pit to remote sales teams. (Fast forward to 5:15.)

Command the Zoom Room

Body language, tone, and grabbing Zoom-room attention aren’t all that different in a virtual environment. The transition to two-dimensional contact still requires a level of physical literacy, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.

You can see it in any meeting, sales meeting or not. If a customer is looking at a different screen or typing the whole time, it’s a tell-tale sign they aren’t engaged. If the salesperson is struggling to pull up the right webpage, examples, or demo environment, it’s a sign they aren’t prepared.

Your physical presence should be as much of a priority in the virtual atmosphere as it is during in-person meetings.

According to research, a virtual meeting takes 10% of the energy needed for an in-person meeting. As a seller, bring that 90% into your virtual calls. It will help you secure follow-up meetings, generate more interest, build rapport with your customer, and improve the likelihood of closing a deal.

The opportunities for sellers to relate their mood, interest, and energy via physical actions might not be as diverse, but they’re still there. Here are some tips for using physical gestures in Zoom:

1. Use your hands: Believe it or not, in addition to communicating enthusiasm and excitement, research shows that people are more willing to trust a presenter when they can see their hands. In your next sales meeting, use your hands a little more and keep them off the keyboard.
2. Be enthusiastic: In every call, act like it’s a customer’s first experience with you. No, we don’t mean introduce yourself every time. Rather, show them that each meeting with them is a priority to you and that you’re excited to be there. At that moment, there is nothing you’d rather be doing, and more than likely, customers will appreciate your attention to them and your commitment. Think about what they see as well as hear. Ask yourself, “What do I sound like, and what do they hear?” Think about your tone and how it resonates with the person on the other end.
3. Do the things you do face-to-face: The most straightforward actions deliver incredible results. Smiling, keeping eye contact, and actively engaging your clients are great ways to hold their attention. When we’re face-to-face with someone, these actions are instinctive, but in the relaxed setting of our homes, they aren’t always second nature. Be conscious of your eyes (looking into the camera helps) and what your facial expressions convey to your clients.
4. Limit Distractions: Distractions might be coming from Slack or some other program, but meeting over Zoom is no excuse not to give your customer your full attention. Turn notifications off and bring your entire self to the conversation at hand.

Don’t Say it With Me – Mute & Listen

We don’t have 3-4 tips on how to listen to customers better in this section. We have one tip: mute yourself.

There is nothing more annoying than someone talking over you. It can significantly impact how your customer perceives you, and in Zoom, it’s easier to do.

While the 1.2-second delay doesn’t help, not actively muting yourself is one of the more common faults salespeople make in virtual selling. The problem in Zoom or digital meetings is we don’t have those nonverbal cues that signify when someone is about to speak. Sometimes we can see it, but it’s mostly overlooked.

Muting yourself helps balance the listen-to-talk ratio. According to Saleshacker, the ratio for top-performing sales reps is 43% talking and 57% listening. Given the lack of social cues, you might be talking more than listening. As a result, your clients might be getting a negative interpretation of you as a seller.

So in your next sales call, ask more questions and mute yourself after each one.

Pre- and Post-Meeting Rapport

Pre-meeting preparation and follow-up have taken a backseat in recent years. Even before remote work became the norm, salespeople focused too heavily on getting the meeting scheduled and then doing a bit of research. In modern sales, customer research is a crucial part of the process before even setting a meeting and another chance to build customer rapport.

Taking the time to research your customer, their business, how they operate, and trends in their industry will help you set more meetings and be better prepared during sales calls.

Once you have that information, here’s how you make it actionable:

1. Pre – Apply what you’ve learned from your research to a video and send them a customized 2-3 minute demo. Or, think about other clients with similar needs and apply how your solution helped them achieve their goals and how it might apply to your current prospect’s goals.
2. Pre -Maybe a couple of days before the meeting, you send an article that’s relevant to their industry or correlates to a post they liked on LinkedIn. It shows how invested you are in their interests and that you’re proactively trying to engage them.
3. During – Before your current meeting is wrapped, make sure you have the next meeting scheduled so the calendar invite for the next meeting is in their inbox.
4. Post – Send them resources that touch on topics you discussed during the call. Anytime you can provide the information they wouldn’t typically come across in Google is an opportunity to bring them closer to your product.
5. Post – When’s the last time you sent a meeting recap including action items for both you and your customer? The recap email has become a lost art in man organizations.

Other Trends Affecting Sales Teams

Learning how to build customer rapport in a virtual/remote environment is one of the many trends influencing Sales initiatives in 2021 and 2022.

To find out what else is top of mind for sellers, check out Skaled’s Buyer Trends in Sales and download The Top Six Trends Shaping B2B Sales.