New business activity ‘Zoom pitches’ here to stay.

We’ve been noticing a change in the business world in the last couple of weeks from crisis mode into a more ‘ongoing’ mode for clients and their agencies. The first month or two of Covid was definitely ‘crisis management’ for clients who were making the shift to working remotely and delivering their products and services in different ways.

After the Easter period we’ve seen in recent weeks that this isn’t going to be a quick flip back to whatever normality was. Brands need to plan in this new sort of normal.

Online sales pitch meetings are here to stay for clients and agencies alike. Video based presentations are adding efficiencies and surprising benefits into the process that should be retained.

When brands are not focused on having to print pitch materials you’re saving trees, saving money and spending the time on the most important thing, which is thinking and answering new business challenges for your clients.

Sales pitches are now much shorter which is an added benefit! The average online pitch meeting is between 45 minutes and an hour but they do require more energy despite people sitting at home. 

That sense of feeling is missing when you can’t read the room. You have to overcompensate by leaning in and giving a lot of energy to the session and really listening harder than ever. It is exhausting, which is why shorter sessions are important.

Zoom has been the preferred video chat option for clients to run sales meetings, pitch meetings, and project briefings. The Zoom platform has a “breakout room” option which allows for more varied styles of meeting and for more people to take part.

A few tips for running successful sales meetings over video chat:

• You can’t look someone in the eye over Zoom, so referring to people by name is a really good way of maintaining attention.
• Use less information on slides… ensure they are well designed for important pitches (Plus Two can help you here!)
• Make sure slides come on and off the screen. Sessions where a slide stays up for the majority of the time means you can’t really engage with people and see their reactions particularly well.