5/30/2024-Video meetings without slides

Video meetings do not present the optimal opportunity for you to influence decisions and enhance buying opinions. Be smart about how you manage these meets and chillax on the pitching. Just talk!

It’s Day 3 of a four-day week and already your attention is shot. But if you stay focused for just one minute here and now, you’ll learn what most sellers don’t know about running brilliant video pitch meetings.

Ready?

Don’t pitch…don’t sell.

This means your deck—your brilliantly produced and created slides—stays tucked away in your laptop.

Seriously, unless you can’t explain a concept with the words from your mouth, don’t use slides on Zoom calls. Use your video meetings to talk, establish trust…and set up an in-person meeting.

Do you think your prospects and customers want to sit through slides in video meetings?

Instead of putting time into PPT slides, concentrate on crafting strategic questions that stimulate your buyer’s thinking and encourage them to participate in a more meaningful conversation.

Don’t worry about getting your shot at inserting a few killer lines…you’ll get that chance without slides. Just focus your prep on getting ’em to talk.

You’ve undoubtedly mastered video pitch meeting best practices, such as framing your face 18" from the camera and ensuring your wonderful face is fully lit.

What about your eye contact? Above everything else, try to make your eyes seen throughout the meeting. This requires uncomfortable staring at the green dot for as long as possible. Challenge yourself to stare longer than how your favorite TV anchor stares into the camera (at least they have the teleprompter to read.)

Managing video meetings gets easier when you realize they’re not for pitching…they’re best when talking occurs. And the talking that has to happen is mostly by your customer. Shoot for an 80/20 balance of them versus you talking (…them 80%, you 20%).

So, of course, this means that your video meetings require you to come to the virtual table with a laundry list of questions to ask. These questions must be open-ended and hopefully strategic. Your buyers will get bored answering tactical questions like "When’s the money gonna be released?"

Here’s the kicker that’ll really blow your mind: you must keep these meetings to 15 minutes max. Your customer won’t like the feeling of being interrogated, and besides, the video meeting you’re hosting is just a set-up for the next meeting.

What would a discussion about video meetings be without a little hijinx?

The COVID years produced lots of ridiculously funny clips about video meetings. Few are as funny as this one featuring an attorney stuck on the video frame as a kitten. (It always slays!)