Internet Conferencing – video web meetings

David CJ Jones asked:




The advent of the Internet has caused many ripples in the sales world, one of the major ones being sales conferencing. This is a method of conducting a sales presentation or sales demo using the Internet for the visual portion of the presentation over the Internet and the audio over the phone or the Internet.

Benefits to Sales Conferencing

There are many advantages that companies have found in doing sales conferencing for their sales presentations. The major one is the cost savings that comes with replacing traveling for in person meetings with this video conferencing sales method. A typical sales trip can cost anywhere from $500 – $1,000 per day with airfare, car rental, hotel room and dining as well as any other additional costs like parking and other amenities. The cost savings can be very significant if sales reps are required to take multiple sales trips per month.

Another great benefit to web sales conferencing is being able to do more sales presentations in a short amount of time. A typical sales trip maybe able to get in 3-5 sales presentations per day if the sales rep is efficient and packs his day in. By using this video conferencing sales method, you can drastically increase the number of sales presentations that you can do. Some sales reps are able to do sales conferencing sessions every hour if there are able to get attendees on.

One of the great challenges to doing web sales conferencing is that you lose a bit of that personal touch that comes with seeing someone face to face in their office. But many companies have found that the increase quantity of sales presentations they can do, even with a lower conversion rate, still increases their sales and revenue. And because you’re saving considerably on the traveling costs, there is a much higher return on investment even if the conversion rate is lower.

In addition, many companies still incorporate traveling as part of their sales model, but they use the sales conferencing method to qualify their prospects and warm up their prospects. If you do a sales presentation over a web sales conferencing webinar first before you see them face to face, it will dramatically increase the effectiveness of that in person meeting. The propsects will already get a good sense of what the product or service is like. Now you can just focus on them and how your company can help your prospect.

If a prospect as agreed to a in person meeting after they’ve already attended a sales conferencing session, it is more likely that they really need the product. I can’t say how many times I’ve gone to see a propsect only to find that they don’t really need our company’s services. It’s usually something I couldn’t have known from a cold call, but could have discovered during a sales presentation on a sales conference call.

How to Overcome Challenges

One of the greatest challenges in using the sales conferencing method is that the attendance rate goes down drastically. When some schedules an in person meeting, it is almost 90% certain that the person will attend, mainly because you’re going to their office with an appointment. People are more likely to keep a face to face meeting.

Sales conferencing is a bit different as you can imagine. Prospects who schedule a webinar will be a lot less likely to remember the appointment and a lot less likely to show up. Most companies using this method has discovered this problem and have take steps to overcome them.

The best and most simple way to overcome the attendance rate problem is to merely do a reminder and confirmation call. When the prospect is scheduled for a morning sales conferencing webinar, the sales rep should call them the afternoon before. If the webinar is on an afternoon, the sales rep should call that morning to remind them. I’ve seen companies’ attendence rate increase from 30% to 70% using this method.

The other challenge of course is the lack of personal touch and interaction. Again, you’ll find that this loss will be made up for more than enough by your number of conversions. Additionally, you can always choose to go see them at any point. Studies have shown that most sales are closed with 7 sales calls. It’s a more effective if you use web sales conferencing for one of those calls than to go see them each time or merely give a phone call.

Sales Conferencing Services

There are many great companies that offer video conferencing sales services. Webex and Go To Meeting are two good companies that I’ve used before. I won’t say how much I paid because their rates probably change with new technologies and changes in the market. Needless to say, their services are relatively cheap if you compare them with travel costs to see a prospect in person.

Janice

Vickie Adair asked:




The benefits of video conferencing have been well-known for some time: reduced travel budget, facilitated collaboration, more cost-effective use of billable employee time, access to off-premise experts such as trainers or lawyers, access to employees in other locations, etc. However, until recently, the cost of the equipment, the special expertise needed to operate it, and low picture and sound quality have been major factors inhibiting the widespread use of video conferencing. For Houston and surrounding areas, those problems have disappeared. Video conferencing vendors everywhere have been scrambling to revamp their products in the past few years to make their systems better, more affordable, and easier to use and manage. But no one that I’ve researched has come close to the product that Houston’s Phonoscope offers in terms of price, quality, applications, and ease of use.

Phonoscope has been a technology leader in Houston since opening in 1953 and holds the nation’s largest privately owned fiber optic Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). Phonoscope provided Houston’s first cable television company, and in 1958, began the installation of the world’s first large scale “talk and see” two-way audio/video television network for the Galveston School District—the original video conferencing system. Today, Phonoscope supplies customers with the most innovative video conferencing available at a reasonable price without huge upfront equipment expense. With its massive fiber optic coverage in Houston, Phonoscope is near most business locations throughout the Greater Houston Area, spanning five counties to reach locations such as Baytown, Freeport, Magnolia, Richmond-Rosenberg, Splendora, Texas City and Willis, Texas.

Ten years ago, companies were paying on an average of $75,000 or more for a standard video conferencing system with only enough equipment for a couple of conference rooms. Now you can find room-based systems for as little as $5,000 to $20,000 and then you pay monthly for your broadband service–still fairly pricey for many small to mid-size companies. Enter Phonoscope with no equipment purchase costs. The Phonoscope high definition Video Conferencing System is supplied through the company’s utility services, and the equipment is provided and maintained as part of the monthly service. Phonoscope offers T3 Internet services, allowing video conferencing to transfer through fiber optics, putting their competition at the end of the line in regard to reliability, latency and speed. However, the true value of the Phonoscope’s system is found in the video conferencing applications the company offers: health services, legal services, corporate training, education, and more.

Medical professionals are available by simply dialing a four-digit number to Phonoscope’s Health Service through the video conferencing system. The benefits of this service to companies include employee benefit solutions, such as onsite medical assistance, immediate access to a physician, prescriptions and refills, health profiles, preventative screening, and chronic disease management. The service also provides employees with wellness training, smoking cessation programs, stress management, nutritional counseling and therapy, and a 24 hour TeleNurse. HR departments are aided with healthcare reporting, assistance in obtaining carrier credit for reduced health insurance costs, individualized healthcare plans and tracking of patient compliance, OSHA training/compliance, pre-employment screening, support with integrated data merge in records, and data capture that meets HIPPA guidelines.

Phonoscope has affiliated with a local law firm, Marc J. Krasney, P.C., to offer corporate In-House counsel services, via their Phonoscope units on a flat fee monthly basis. This service is for any company requiring dedicated in-house legal management without the need or resources for an in-house legal department or outside law firm. Gone are the days where you must drive across town and face traffic to meet with your counsel to discuss questions arising out of normal day-to-day operations such as contracting, leasing, corporate law and procedure, and employment law. By simply dialing a four-digit number, companies can visit face-to-face with a lawyer and at the same time review any documents. This law firm also assists with negotiating and signing agreements with customers, suppliers, employees, subcontractors, distributors, and regulatory agencies, and perform Corporate Secretarial Functions. Marc J. Krasney, P.C. can help you prepare materials for director and shareholder meetings, attend the meetings via Phonoscope, give advice on corporate procedures, store your corporate books, and produce minutes.

For lawyers, Phonoscope Video Conferencing System will soon connect their law firm to the Harris County Courthouse so the lawyer can appear via video rather than in person for motion hearings. Phonoscope Legal Service is partnering with key mediators through the Greater Houston area market to allow lawyers the ability to participate in mediation without leaving the office and offers a full service court reporting company with knowledgeable court reporters that will allow the firm to conduct depositions over the Phonoscope network. The deposition is conducted just as if the lawyer were actually in the room with the witness without needless delay typically associated with video conferencing, and the deposition is recorded in real time. Both the video and the transcript will be available immediately following the deposition (in a rough draft form) on a dedicated server accessed through password protected software from anyplace at anytime.

Phonoscope Corporate Training is another valuable application on the Phonoscope Video Conferencing System. Considering that the latest figures show that dealing with poorly performing employees cost businesses in the United States $105 billion last year, employee training may be one of the most important expenditures a company can make in terms of getting a serious return on their investments. The right training can improve employee performance and production, decrease management’s problem-solving time, and improve customer satisfaction. But, that training has in the past been expensive and frequently required that employees be off-site for a number of days. With Phonoscope Corporate Training, companies can reduce the time and money spent on training while receiving quality that offers high ROI.

All Phonoscope services, from cable to internet to High Definition video conferencing and applications, are provided over fiber optics — at the speed of light!

Timothy