Being There

I'll bet you will agree with me that selling is much easier, and you are much more effective, when you are face to face with someone.  There are things that you just cannot do over the telephone like pick up non verbal cues, interact in a more casual way and pick up cues from the environment of a prospect's home or office.

What if you could be face to face with prospects and customers all the time?

Well you can now.  Video conferencing has been around for quite a while now and many people are familiar with, and use Skype.  But video conferencing has lots of issues and, while better than the telephone, just isn't as good as being there.

Soon Virtual Reality will make being there, at least in a virtual sense, very easy to do and I predict that it will dramatically increase your selling effectiveness.  It will reduce by a huge degree the time wasted in travel.  You will be able to spend much more time in front of customers.  But that is a few years away in a practical sense.

For now there is a dramatic way to invite prospects into your office from wherever they are that will really increase their sense of engagement.   A company called Immersive Media (www.immersivemedia.com) - the company that developed Google's Street View - has developed 360 degree camera systems that will allow your customers to interact with you and your staff in real time almost as if they were there.  All that will be required is a virtual reality headset like the ones developed by Google, Occulus Rift and Sony, or something as simple as an iPhone, iPad or Android device.

Rather than a remote, 2 dimensional view like you get in traditional video conferencing your customer will be able to look all around the office with this technology as if they were there.  How will this enhance communication and selling capability?  I think it's going to dramatically increase it.

Another tool is the Beam from Suitable Technologies (www.suitabletech.com) which allows your customer to "beam" in from anywhere and interact with you and your staff almost like they are there.

There is a LOT more coming as Moore's Law continues to work and computing power rises dramatically.  In the mean time clever agents are going to begin using this technology to increase productivity, improve customer interaction and develop unfair advantages over their competition.