How video conferencing technology begins with the human face in mind to harness adverse market trends and gives sales a leg up.

Though technology was originally intended to launch operational efficiency, it’s tied up people’s time at the expense of relationships – the real fuel in any sales engine. But thanks to new tech tools, best-in-class sales orgs can now improve efficiency and relationships at the same time.

In this post, I’ll discuss three challenging market trends that make striking this particular balance especially critical for today’s sales enterprise:

1. Selling has become faceless. As computing power accelerates and augments the virtual customer experience, buyer-seller conversations increasingly move online. Self-educating customers create their own buying preference. They’re comfortable – in fact, many prefer – not to engage with sales until much later on, sometimes even after they purchase. It’s no wonder, then, that Gartner predicts 85% of buyer-seller interactions will occur online by 2020.
2. Personalization acquires a new premium. An equal and opposite trend is the individualization of the personal customer experience. Amazon has pioneered the one-on-one selling model with its suggested selling recommendations: “customers who bought this also bought these items.” Brands vie to differentiate among myriads of competing sales messages every day, and buyers have come to expect exactly what they want, when they want it.
3. Competing products and services appear uniform. In a hyper-industrialized world, every product will eventually become a commodity. And it becomes harder and harder for companies to differentiate themselves from competitors who look and feel similar. Instead, price becomes the trump card in all negotiations, and brand loses its place at the buying table.

On one hand, customers require less face time; some even shun it. This would seem to implicate an increased demand for a robust inside sales team. Yet customers also demand highly personalized service that proactively caters to their every need, pointing towards active outside sales reps. In short, key decision makers want the best of both worlds: the ease and facility of communicating with an inside sales rep, coupled with the personalized attention of an outside sales rep.

Ultimately, commodities are faceless, as are online transactions. In contrast, sales people are trained to understand their prospects’ unique challenges and develop individualized solutions. The critical link is equipping them with the right technology.

With new video conferencing tools like iMeet, sellers can sit in a virtual room with any buyer around the world. Inside and outside sales reps alike can engage interested buyers in face-to-face conversations. They’ll collaboratively produce personalized solutions and deliver a customer experience superior to their competitors. This translates to account acquisition, repeat business, and a high-functioning referral machine.

iMeet has become the sales office in the cloud. It defends the brand against becoming a commodity. It restores the one-on-one sales model while delivering a richer customer experience.