Are you and your sales team taking full advantage of the video tools that are available today? Hi, I'm Jim Pancero, helping you become a stronger leader of our sales team. And because of COVID and the impact that lockdown had on everybody, our customers have learned to use Zoom. See, before Zoom, it was very rare that anybody did anything online with video. So customers weren't comfortable with the technology, so they didn't tend to use it. COVID changed all that. And because of all the pressures of us being remote and being to still stay connected with our teams, most organizations use some kind of Zoom or Skype or GoTo Meetings or Microsoft Teams are one of these tools to be able to have video communication to keep everybody more connected than just being over the phone.

Well, the same thing works in selling, but what's interesting is even though things have started to open up, most sales teams aren't using these great video tools. What can you do? We'll have a sales rep go out on the call and take their laptop with them. And then in the sales call, bring up and connect with you by Zoom and have you as a manager able to join the call, even if it's only for 10 minutes to tell the customer how important they are, to thank them for the business, to ask them questions and to listen to what they say. It'll come across a lot stronger if it's on video than just a phone call and it's something the sales rep can do right in the customer's office while they're meeting with them. What could you do to get more of your technical experts involved with customers by Zoom so that a sales rep can say, "I have a technical person standing by, would you let me bring them up on my computer? And we can get a lot of these questions and concerns you have answered."

It's a way for you to extend your team and to be selling with a total team approach to your customer, by having more people interact and interface with your buyers. Now, we really can't afford that today with travel and to have your technical people or your managers spending all their time on the road, going out and seeing every customer, but they could take an extra 10 minutes at their desk to join in a Zoom meeting with an important customer, to be able to affirm them, to thank them for the business, and to make sure they know how important they are. What can you do to take advantage of this new tool? Because I find the majority of customers I talked to, nobody's using Zoom or these tools in their sales team.

So it's just the sales rep going out and talking to the customer one on one, like it's been for decades. What can you do to change it up, make it more persuasive, bring in more of your entire team, of your managers, your senior executives, your technical experts to help contribute to the relationship, to show the customer how important they truly are to your business. The best way to do that is through some kind of video conferencing. I would love to know how you get your sales rep using these kind of tools. What kind of impact you've had. I would love to answer any of your questions. Thanks for checking out my podcast. I'm posting two new podcasts each week, all aimed at helping you and your team increase your selling competitive advantage.