The pandemic has changed the way media professionals engage and sell to their customers. However, the biggest change is now the number of interactions that occur via video calls. When interviewing media sales professionals, they identified three channels that they get to present their response to brief.

1) Face 2 Face

The preferred channel for most people we interviewed – whether its back in a boardroom or at a café there is nothing stronger then being in the same room with your customer. It’s a lot easier to read their reactions, make yourself more personable and create positive conversation.

2) Email

The least preferred scenario – media agency and marketing customers are unfortunately very time poor due to a number of reasons. When they brief the publisher market they are asking for the media owners proposal to be created and sent via email. This makes it extremely difficult to get quality feedback or an opportunity to revise you. Your proposal has to be detailed – making sure it gives your customer all the reasons why your solution best answers their brief.

3) Video Call

whether it is ZOOM, TEAMS, Google Meet or Skype back in the day – this new channel of presenting has become the most popular in the new normal. Companies are giving you the opportunity to work more flexibly and from home so often the customer requests this avenue for meetings and presentations.

Before the pandemic many media publisher organisations would invest in their people and provide great training programmes to sharpen their sales skills. Presentation skills was always a well-liked course but back then it didn’t address the different variants that this new video channel presents. 

Market SHIFT Consultants has done a lot of research into tips on delivering best in market presentations across these three channels – Face 2 face; email & via video call. Below are some of our best tips for video call presentations.

• Test your equipment before the actual call – make sure your slides & videos work.
• Make a good first impression via professional background & appearance.
• Encourage all your team members on call to keep video on which will make your customers do the same.
• Only pitch what is absolutely essential.
• Make difficult concepts easy to understand.
• Talk & smile to the camera as much as you can – make it personable – Don’t read a script or reference from another screen – be yourself.
• Use visual storytelling – make slides simple.
• Use check in phrases & open-ended questions throughout to encourage interaction – Does that make sense? Are we on the right track? Does this excite you? 
• Pre prepare what questions you think the customer will ask and rehearse your answers.
• Set aside time for Q&A
• Stick to a time schedule
• Prepare for external distractions – make a joke & stick to your schedule.