I saw on the internet many articles focused on how to work remotly. Unfortunatelly there is not many informations on remote sales. We all (business owners) faced the challenge of selling during COVID-19. My customers often talks about problem with selling when they can’t provide in-person meeting. For me remote selling existed before pandemic, it has been a infuture.fashion strategy from the day one.

I have a few thoughts in mind so let’s get them all out.

Customers are more likely to speak negatively – when we are in front of the potential customer we make it hard to be straightforward. Even if this person disagree with us or is not interested in general – in 9 of 10 situations they will wait untill you will finish the sales conversation. And probably they will say something we all know aka “I will think about it”. Remotly people often ask you to speed up, they say no and even hung up on you with no warning. They don’t have problem with saying they know better solutions, they know someone else.

Hardly anyone turns on the webcam – don’t assume that because it is online meeting people will turn the camera on. You can gently ask for it but you must realize that people still treat online conversation more like phone call than face-to-face meeting.

They are more impatient – as I said already they may ask you to speed up, they may say they are not interested after few words. They won’t listen to your company story, something that is so popular in offline conversations. Remote conversation should focus on the most important points. And like in-person meeting takes time, include small talk and coffee making… in remote sell we go straight to the point.

You should also realise that more often people are no show or postpond the call. Without informing you. Why does it happen? I think it is because people don’t treat this as serious as in person meeting. They often do it in a rush, in car, they do different things in the same time. They treat this as additional task.

This all make it harder to build relations. Shorter meetings focused on the most important informations… you hardly can see any reaction. And people feel like they buy it blind so they will postpond the purchase.

How is your experience with remote sales?