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Making the Most of Remote Meetings and Events with Sales Readiness Technology

Mar 16th, 2020

Many companies are experiencing this situation right now: you’ve planned an event for months, down to every last detail. But the COVID-19 crisis has derailed your plans, causing you to cancel the in-person event and consider other options.

The good thing is that with today’s technologies, it’s possible to put an on effective, engaging remote or virtual event that provides value to attendees. When it comes to sales meetings and events, such as sales kickoffs, quarterly business reviews (QBRs) or onsite training, sales readiness technology can enhance the events with content, training and coaching and support any on-demand components.

Here are 5 ways enablement teams can make the most of remote meetings and events with sales readiness technology.

#1. Break down content to the essentials

With an in-person event, you have a captive audience that’s in the room with you and listening to the content. The difference with a remote event is that you’ll need to be more mindful of how much content you want to present and in which formats. Some content will be best delivered ‘live’ (via a video conferencing solution, for example), while other content will be suited for on-demand consumption.

Prioritize your content and figure out which topics are mission critical. Distinguish which presentations will require attendees to join the event virtually in real time. Then use a sales readiness platform to create and send out complementary on-demand content to support what reps heard during the live sessions.

For example, you can ask certain speakers to condense their presentations into short videos that cover the high points and attach their slides or other materials for download. By prioritizing content and dividing up presentations between live and on-demand delivery, attendees will get the feel of an event, plus important follow up materials that they can refer back to at any time.

#2. Feature SMEs and executives

A big part of in-person events is the ability to meet, interact and hear from subject matter experts and company executives. You can mirror that experience remotely by asking your SMEs and executives to contribute to on-demand content.

A sales readiness platform makes this easy with guest authoring capabilities, where you can begin building your content and then request a voiceover from the appropriate contributor. You can also incorporate videos of executives sharing key messages or put a video alongside a presentation (with Brainshark’s VideoSync capabilities, for example) to provide the feel of a live event.

For instance, you could have an executive deliver a mini keynote via video or have an SME walk through a product presentation and include their email address for questions afterwards. All this content can be sent to attendees after the event as a follow up.

#3. Assess readiness

For an event like sales kickoff (or an onsite training), it’s important to assess the readiness of your reps and their ability to articulate key messages that were covered. But if your kickoff suddenly becomes remote, you need to make sure that reps were listening and consuming the message, since you won’t be able to track engagement like you would live.  

With sales readiness technology, you can use video coaching capabilities to request feedback from reps on the content. For example, if you’re running a multi-day kickoff, ask reps to record a video after each day where they answer a key question based on the material covered or share how they will apply what they learned to their selling motion. This will give you an idea of whether you hit the mark as a sales enablement team or if there are any knowledge gaps that should be addressed in the following days.  

After the event, you can use video coaching for reinforcement and feedback (i.e., what was the most impactful session and why?) and send on-demand recordings of the presentations to reps. From there, you can identify the best videos submitted by reps and share those across your sales team or incorporate them into learning paths.

#4. Ask for feedback

Since a remote event due to a crisis is not necessarily typical, you want to survey reps to get continuous feedback on the experience. (This is something you’ll want to do anyway even if the event is in-person!) 

Along with the video coaching assignments, you can send them a survey via your sales readiness tool to capture detailed feedback on each session, speaker, topic, format and more. Survey results give a clear indication if you hit the mark or need to make adjustments for the next day. Be sure to leave an open-ended question in the survey where reps can share whatever’s on their mind – you never know when you’ll come across a good tip! 

#5. Follow up

As with any event, you want to be sure that all the information reps received doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. Zip all the material and presentations into a learning path within your sales readiness platform – this will make it easy for reps to find everything all in one place. Include attachments that reps can download for future use as well as the best video coaching examples that were shared throughout the meeting. This will provide you and your reps with an entirely new library of on-demand content.