Stepping Out of 1999: Presenting & Selling in the Present

Imagine you’ve just sat down at your desk and you’re preparing for the day. You have a minute or two to get a coffee from the drip coffee maker in the workroom as you wait for your dial-up to connect you to the internet. You may even have time to write out your bills and put them in envelopes that you’ve stamped with an actual stamp from the local post office so that you can drop them in the mailbox during lunch. You see that the internet is finally up and running (you did have time for one game of Snake on your Nokia) and you have research to do, so you insert your Encarta 99 CD into your tower and get to work. (Don’t forget to pop your Third Eye Blind CD into your portable walkman because you must have that music to keep you motivated!)

Still with me? Did that sound familiar? If you were around in 1999, that could have easily been the beginning of your day. (And I hope you really tried to imagine that, and, while you were trying, you got Semi-Charmed Life stuck in your head.)

Your Own Personal Bridge to Clients

The technological advances that have been made since 1999 have changed the world as many of us know it, so it is often unimaginable that so many B2B sales strategies still feel anchored in the 20th century. These strategies beg questions like, “why are we still simply using texted email to reach potential stakeholders?” or “why is there such a huge expanse of time between presentation and follow up?” If you consider that tech products like Bridge exist (we launched an online video platform specifically to meet these needs), there is simply no reason to work like you’re living in a different century.

Bring your business into the 21st century by using new software tools that are affordable and available to you. Stop playing phone tag again or waiting for a reply to a dry and impersonal email. The endless meetings that used to be necessary to personalize a presentation that catered to the individual needs of potential clients can be drastically reduced. We use our Bridge software to connect with prospects using video that we have personalized to meet their specific needs, answering questions before they can even be asked. We create the videos, or choose applicable ones from our video library (putting them in any order we like), and then shoot the custom link off in an email to a potential client. It’s almost like you’re face to face! In addition, we are notified when our videos have been accessed and viewed, as well as informed regarding who was doing the watching. This is invaluable when planning next steps (you also know who didn’t watch, allowing you to revisit your tactics for a second pitch). We recently decided to launch Bridge via a monthly subscription for $29.95 that anyone can purchase and use for their singular use. The support that comes with Bridge is second to none, offering batch uploading, unlimited video plays, content management, video player customization, user training, and much, much more.

More Than “Social” Media

In addition to working with products that offer cutting edge technology for client interaction, rather than the antiquated cold call/email route, it is important to utilize that benefits that social media has to offer businesses. When you consider the following statistics, it’s clear that including video in presentations, as well as utilizing social media for professional purposes, is on the upswing, and the results are astounding:

• Video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic search results than plain text. (Omnicore, 2018)
• Including a video in a post increases organic traffic from search results by 157%. (Search Engine People, 2017)
• Using video on landing pages will increase conversions by 86%. (Wordstream, 2018)
• 74% of people say they use Facebook for professional purposes. (HubSpot, 2017)
• Seven out of ten hashtags on Instagram are branded. (Sprout Social, 2018)
• Instagram mobile ad revenue is expected to hit nearly $7 billion this year. (Statista, 2018)

So, while 1999 was a good year for music and possibly fashion (bring on the bucket hats and track pants), it definitely isn’t the ideal year from which to pull your strategies and sales procedures. Modernize your methods with all that this ever-changing age of technology has to offer, and I assure you that the results will propel you far beyond the competition.