The Online Sales Presentation: Best Practices for Selling Via an Online Meeting

Call it an online presentation, doing remote sales, or making a digital presentation, selling through an online meeting is not easy. All the usual sales presentation best practices still apply, but so do a few new ones:

1. Keep Your Online Presentation Shorter than Short

If you are talking more than 3 minutes during your online meeting without stopping, you are talking too much. Your audience will be checking their email, getting other work done, anything other than listen to you. Break up your remote sales presentation by asking questions, taking a poll, offering up a quiz. Now more than ever, you need a clear presentation strategy.

2. Make Your Digital Presentation Visually Exciting and Verbally Simple

You want to get and maintain attention with something that catches the eyes. Too many words on the screen sap the energy from your story. Think of ways to get the information across visually as much as possible. Add multimedia, including video and interactive slides.

3. Use Your PowerPoint (or PowerPoint Alternative) to Set up a Conversation

You will lose attention—and likely the sale—if your presentation is all about features and benefits. Instead, use your PowerPoint deck to set up questions and ways to open conversation. Encourage the use of chat. If you see questions pop up in the chat stream, read them out loud and start a discussion. Have someone nearby, but off camera help, taking note of how the audience is reacting and helping you sort through chat questions.

3. You Are on TV: Are You Ready for Your Close-Up

Doing remote sales through an online meeting puts your face and your environment on the screen, up close and personal. Take a moment to look at what is in the background when you are talking. Tidy it up, make it look professional, and, ideally, make it relevant to your sales presentation. Dress for your online presentation—even consider wearing a little powder so that your face doesn’t shine. Check the lighting. And make sure your face is centered on the screen, neither to far or too close. When talking, look into the camera—not on your screen—so that people feel you are talking right to them.

4. Practice More than You Think You Need

Presenting online add complications, like technology and connectivity challenges that can throw off your presentation. You’ve got to worry about sound, lighting, online meeting software, your internet connection and more. Practicing helps smooth out the glitches in what you are saying, what you are showing, and the technology you are using. Practice delivery skills like breathing, vocal variety, when to pause for emphasis—all things that have a bigger impact in online presenting. Be sure to show up early and work out all the kinks before your audience arrives.

5. Evaluate and Enhance

However well your online sales presentation went, you can always do better. Record the whole online meeting and then play it back to yourself. Pay attention to what you said, how you said it, how you looked, and how people reacted. Are you saying “um,” “ya know,” “right,” or adding some other verbal or visual tick? Be critical of your performance, and note when audience members sat up and took notice and where they drifted. Work on those sections to make “the next time” even better. Adding these tips to your collection of best practices will make every online sales presentation more successful, helping remote sales really work for you.