Conference calls have been adopted by business as a great way to save money on travel, improve communications and shorten business life cycles. One of the areas where the technology has been widely adopted is in Sales and Marketing. While it is widely accepted that face time is important to the sale in many cases, getting in front of the customer with conferencing technology can help qualify prospects, perform product demonstrations and ultimately shorten the sales cycle.
Audio Conferencing
The same basic principles that assist all businesses when they use audio confernecing apply in Sales and Marketing. Why they have so widely adopted conferencing technology is understandable because in this area of business you will see an immediate impact to your bottom line. Travel costs to present the materials to the customer are eliminated. A conference call can be scheduled much quicker than a face to face meeting. Many prospects are much more willing to make time for a conference call because it takes less time out of their day than an in person meeting. Sales Managers can have daily calls with their entire sales force even when the people are located across the country.
Web Conferencing
Web conferencing has revolutionized the way companies sell their products and services. It is now commonplace to get an initial demonstration of a product or service over the internet using web conferencing. Especially for software and web services this is more the norm than not. Customers have now grown used to sitting comfortably at their desks and watching a webinar or demonstration. The web confernece eliminates the need to travel to a customer premise and set up the projector, get an internet connection and everything else that goes with getting an in-person sales demonstration in place. Instead sales demonstrations can happen ad hoc or scheduled using a web conference and a telephone. And beyond being more convenient for salesperson and customer, the statistics prove that using web conferencing services in the sales process is a very effective way to do business. You can do more presentations in less time for less money than anyone doing in-person sales.
For Sales and Marketing applications the path is clear. Audio conferencing and web conferencing provide a quicker more effective way to do business.