How To Sell An In-Person Sports Experience…Virtually

If hard work is the foundation for a good sales rep, meetings are the studs, beams and rafters.

Find me a successful seller, and I’ll show you one who is great at two things: setting and running meetings. This rings true for entry level sales, premium sales, sponsorship, and everything in between.

Seeing is believing, folks; and face-to-face meetings are where talented sales reps can engage deeper with their prospects, and make things happen.

There’s only one problem now: meetings, as we remember them, do not exist anymore. The face-to-face consultations of our past have been conditionally replaced with a virtual selling landscape. And while we are all hopeful things will change at some point, the reality is, it may be this way for a while.

In fact, even when things start to settle down, it’s likely that virtual meetings will remain a key part of our business for a long time to come.

Selling the Super Bowl to clients all across the globe has certainly given me a few years head start on the virtual selling phenomenon, but the learning process is still ongoing. Even though there are plenty of similarities between the two types of meetings, it’s a unique adjustment, and there are some key differences that are vital to pick up on if you want to be successful in this new landscape.

Here are a few tidbits I’ve picked up on over the years:

Prepare to be Stood Up

If you thought getting no-showed was part of the meeting game before – buckle up, folks.

We’ve all been there in the face-to-face arena. You do your best to line everything up: outlook invite, follow-up email, and even a quick call first thing in the morning to double confirm. You drive 45 minutes to their office. Then what?

“Sorry they are a bit tied up.”

*Commence internal rage*  “No worries, I’ll just hang out for a bit.”

30 minutes later, you’re Charlie-Brown-walking out of the lobby to take the commute of shame back to the office.

With virtual meetings, be ready for this likelihood to skyrocket.

Perhaps it’s the nature of the world we live in. Things are a bit hectic right now, and most folks are working from home with kids running around. As a result, there’s a certain amount of leeway you have to cut people for being late for virtual meetings, or straight up forgetting.

However, even pre-pandemic, a lot more virtual meetings wound up being voicemails than I initially expected.

The key here is not to take it personal, as with everything in sales. Live to fight another day. Do your best to confirm these meetings ahead of time, but also be patient. This is a learning experience for the rest of the world just as much as it is for you.

It also underscores the importance of presenting tangible value before a virtual meeting. The reality is, a CEO’s average day in 2020 is overflowing with ZOOMs: internal meetings, sales calls, virtuals with their children’s’ teachers…It’s up to you to make sure your meeting is the one they don’t skip today.

Often times, if we begin the sales process by setting hollow meetings that decision makers really aren’t that interested in, it shows. Conversely, if you’re intelligent in your outreach and offer real value from the get-go, your virtual sales process is much more likely to get to second base – instead of getting stood up on the first date.

Don’t Be Too Present-y

Even under normal circumstances, it’s important to be mindful of dialogue during a meeting. Always be sure it’s more of a conversation, and not a speech. You want to walk your client through your pitch by constantly asking questions, engaging them, and offering insight.

The last thing you want is to turn your meeting into a time-share presentation, droning on and on about benefits, and perks, and prices, and..…(yes those are snoring sounds you are hearing).

Now that we’re onto a more virtual meeting experience, this is even more important. Think of your own reality, when you’re sitting through one of your sales team’s 30-minute ZOOM calls. Even the finest employees among us can attest how easy it is to get distracted. Checking your phone. Tinkering with your Facebook – or your fantasy team. Heck you may even turn your video off and go for a stroll (we’ve all done it…)

Now put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. We all know how difficult it is to set a meeting in the first place. Many of them don’t even want to be talking to us.

If it’s easy for you to get distracted from your own colleagues…how easy will it be for your prospect to zone out and start checking their emails?

In order to prevent that, you must stay engaging. This means offering compelling content, meaningful insight, and involving your prospect as often as you can. These things are obviously important during any standard face-to-face meeting. The stakes are just higher now.

It sounds silly, but you almost have to handle your virtual pitches like you are teaching to a bunch of 5-year old’s; calling on them every so often to make sure they’re not spacing out and picking their nose.

Every prospect is different, so you may not need to lean into this with every single one, but it’s always a good idea to keep them engaged. Your messaging comes across that much more powerfully if they’re locked into your conversation. There are a few ways to do that, but my favorite is to just bake in constant questions every few lines.

They don’t have to be deep ones – just something to make sure there’s still a pulse on the other end. “What are your thoughts on that?” “Have you ever sat in that type of area before?” Make sure you’re not droning on for too long and break up your pitch with some interaction.

Not only are you actually uncovering useful information that can help steer your pitch, but you’re also keeping your prospect engaged, active, and hopefully off Facebook…

Don’t Forget About Discovery

Just because we are doing this virtually doesn’t mean we throw the entire sales process book out the window. Sure, you might have a fancy new PDF that marketing created to help you sell over ZOOM. But that doesn’t mean you should dive head-first into it.

I have always subscribed to the idea that your “pitch” meeting comes very late in the process, after you have a great idea of your client’s needs, interests, preferences, and goals. Then, and only then, can you make an educated recommendation on which product works for them.

In many cases, that might be the first and only time you even go over product in depth. It really just depends on what you’re selling, and how your process has gone thus far.

Regardless, you cannot and should not be hosting a virtual pitch meeting without doing some serious discovery first. Trust me – it can make for a very awkward video call if you show up unprepared, and before you know it, you’re droning on and on about benefits and seat locations because you have nothing tangible to speak to.

This doesn’t mean you need to slam on the brakes if things are going well. I’ve actually seen folks successfully combine a virtual discovery meeting with a virtual pitch meeting if things are heading in the right direction.

I’m just saying to be mindful of your sales process. Just because things are virtual now doesn’t mean you want to get lazy and jump right into screen sharing fancy PDF’s with everyone and anyone. The principles stay the exact same as they would if it were 2018. Talk to them as a business expert, learn more about their company/needs, and don’t show your hand too early. It can be a great way to chase off a good prospect and bore them with information they don’t care about.

Use The Technology to your Advantage

In some ways, we’ve been training for this our whole lives. Many of us grew up in the technology age. We are the masters of the PlayStation. The MacBook wizards. The Dukes of the Desktop. We have been playing around on technology since we were born.

And now, the sales game is moving to our turf. Yes; we are being pushed outside our comfort zone right now, but we also have some advantages in the current landscape.

Think of the tools we have. We are armed with virtual seating technology that wasn’t even a thought 10-years ago. We have 360-degree views and 3-D walkthroughs of high-end club spaces that if used correctly, can actually make our job easier than it used to be. Explaining seat locations and club layouts is so 2019. Now you can literally put them inside the stadium, let them touch and feel their investment, and use a sweeping CGI video of the upcoming renovations to close the deal.

Plus, as you get more and more comfortable with screen-sharing tools, there are some really unique things you can do to help push your sales process along.

For instance, when you’re pitching seat locations, be mindful of your screen as you’re searching through inventory. The urgency you’ve been pushing all meeting long can really be undermined when they see that 256 seats are currently available in their section…

Conversely, if there’s only 8 seats left in a certain area, maybe it makes sense to show them “behind the curtain” as you’re pulling up locations. “Wow, as you can see, there’s just not much available in there…”

That’s just one example, but as you get more comfortable with the tools you now have, you can really put them to work. You’re the puppet master here. You are the magician who controls everything your audience sees. Use that to your advantage.

Make Sure Your Desktop is Prepared

All that fun technology does come with some drawbacks. Certain windows don’t always load. PDF’s won’t show up correctly. This is why it’s not only important to continually train yourself on your platform, but also make sure your desktop is set up properly before each meeting.

This is probably the most basic of all these bullet points, but it is exceptionally important to keep in mind when you’re dealing with virtual software. At the end of the day, while you can’t make everything run perfectly all the time, you can at least do your due diligence to make sure you’re in a good spot from the start. I can’t tell you how many crucial meetings I’ve hosted that wound up being more challenging then they should have been because of software glitches.

Be sure to have all the pertinent tabs open before you start your call. Be logged on and have your seat inventory pulled up in another window. Have your PDF and other collateral open already as well. Conversely, be careful not to have anything open you don’t want to show the client. Hint: stop switching over to Chrome mid-meeting and letting them see all your Salesforce tabs!

The more prepared your desktop is, the better. Plus, you can really get into a rhythm with switching windows as you get more and more comfortable.

We already talked about how easy it is to lose your prospects attention. On the other hand, as you become really good with virtual pitching, you start to realize how much control you really have.

It sounds weird to say, but you control your prospects’ eyeballs. Take advantage of that…and if you’re well prepared, engaging, and use all your fancy new tools correctly, in some cases, you can build a more compelling pitch than you would have been able to in person.

Virtual selling is strange – but the sooner we accept the reality of the situation, the sooner we can focus on learning how to capitalize on it…and close more business.