Pop quiz: You’re a district sales manager with seven sales representatives who report to you. They’re scattered across five states and you want to meet face-to-face with them each week without putting anyone on the road. What do you do? The answer for a growing number of sales managers is videoconferencing, which has evolved dramatically from its early days of jerky, awkward images and cumbersome technology.
“The big challenge sales managers have is they don’t get enough time in the field with their reps. If you can’t be there in person, the next best thing is being there on video,” says Peter Moriarty, president of FaceToFaceMeeting LLC, a company that designed its Internet-based videoconferencing product specifically for the scenario above – a district sales manager holding regular meetings with his dispersed sales team. FaceToFaceMeeting enables up to 10 people to be seen live, Hollywood Squares-style on a single screen, as if they were sitting around a conference table meeting in person – with a picture quality so smooth and clear you might as well be watching TV.
Still, that improved picture quality makes it more challenging to be there on video than it does to be there in person because it lets us study our conversation partners far more closely than we would in a live meeting. Thus successful videoconferencing isn’t simply a matter of switching on a Webcam and presenting ourselves as we would in person. Instead it requires more preparation and awareness. Here are Moriarty’s tips for presenting yourself well.
For more information, visit www.facetofacemeeting.com.
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