Recent Articles:
January: Bringing the Web to you PDA

December: Anthrax Changes Business Forever

November: 7 Tips for Successful eMarketing

October: Successful eMarketing, Internet Phase II.

September: How concerned should you be about Internet Privacy?

Subscribe:
Click here to join our mailing list

To unsubscribe, click the link at the end of this message.

Feedback:
Send your questions and comments to Brian Pitre.

Published in the February edition of 
Computer Link Magazine

Through the use of computers and the Internet, users have been empowered to accelerate the process of many day-to-day activities, specifically communication. New technologies on the Internet have dramatically increased the speed and efficiency of the way in which people communicate, to an almost blinding pace.

One of these new technologies are Virtual Meetings. Virtual Meetings are now being embraced more than ever by many organizations. Some recent adopters were motivated by the events of September 11th and were looking for a way to reduce travel. Virtual Meetings can certainly achieve this objective, but as a user of Virtual Meetings, I have come to appreciate the other key benefits as well. These benefits include ease of expanding a companies markets and significantly reducing the typical sales-cycle time that will have a direct bottom line result.

There are a number of products in the Virtual Meeting marketplace. I personally use WebEx. WebEx is an online subscription service that we link to from our companies Web site. This service enables us to video teleconference across the Internet, give PowerPoint presentations, and browse the Internet simultaneously. WebEx is enabled through a standard Web browser while using an accompanying telephone for the voice portion of the Virtual Meeting.

WebEx supports online meetings, online sales calls, online seminars, and offers an improved way to provide customer support and education. The audience is comfortably seated at their own desk and computer. Typically, asking a prospect for a few minutes of their time at their own desk is more likely to occur than a face-to-face meeting. We have found that many times we can engage a prospect in an in-prompt-to Virtual Meeting while just talking on the telephone.

After using Virtual Meeting products for the past two years we have learned that effective video teleconferencing does not necessarily require video cameras at each end of the connection. Many times when requesting a Virtual Meeting we find that the person at the other end doesn't have a video camera. We have discovered that it is far more important for the audience to see the presenter than vice versa.

The purpose of most initial sales meetings is to introduce your company and it's products and/or services many times through a PowerPoint presentation. The next step, is to understand how the prospect can use and benefit from your product. This classic first time meeting can be easily executed through an online Virtual Meeting where all types of physical products, software, and services can be presented with ease.

I recently had an experience that demonstrates how dramatically sales-cycle time can be reduced, through the use of a virtual sales meeting. Our company has a new Application Service Provider product that we are rolling out. An inquiry came through our Web site from a division of a large Fortune 50 company in Monterey, Mexico at 2:00 PM one afternoon. The prospect was interested in a Spanish localized version of our product that they could license and partner with us on. This appeared to be a large opportunity to say the least. The next day, I returned an email suggesting a Virtual Meeting and asked the prospect to provide a couple of dates and times that would work for them. They quickly responded that 5:30 PM that day would work and I readily agreed. We established via email an agenda for the Virtual Meeting and proceeded to meet on line at the scheduled time.

Introductions were provided, and objectives were discussed. From there we moved to a real-time demonstration of the product in WebEx and a discussion as to how our product could meet their needs. By 7:30 PM that evening we had an agreement to move forward and set up a second technical review meeting. In less that 29 hours we had gone from complete strangers to a well qualified prospect with an in-depth understanding of our product and a desire to purchase.

Contrast that sales-cycle with a more classic non-Internet sales-cycle; telephone introductions, mailing brochures, additional follow-up telephone conversations to discuss the appropriateness of the technology, and finally confirming interest enough to plan a trip to Mexico. Eager to move ahead the trip still takes some weeks to plan. By the time the trip finally occurs there is a serious amount of time lost in traveling, finally arriving in Monterey Mexico, installing software on a computer and finally presenting a demonstration of the product. On average, I would estimate the elapsed time to be somewhere between 30 to 45 days.

If we compare the Virtual Sales Meeting of only 29 hours with the classic non-Internet sales-cycle of 45 days we gain over a 3,000 % improvement in time. Learning to communicate through Virtual Meetings can have a profound effect on your selling efficiency by expanding your markets through reduced travel, shortening sales-cycles, and qualifying prospects quickly and easily.

Learning and gaining core competence with Virtual Meetings and online sales methods can substantially improve your competitive advantage in your business. Today's Virtual Meetings are equivalent to having a telephone in the 1800's while your competition is doing business using only telegraph and postal mail. Worldwide markets are easy to reach over the Internet, and can be accomplished quickly and efficiently through the use of Virtual Meetings.