Planes, Trains and…Zoom/WebEx Meetings – COVID-19 and Beyond (Part II)

As discussed in Part I, there are current issues with travel and questions on how to best address our clients and prospects to suit their needs. Specifically, this is regarding technical sales for LIMS, not widgets to the masses. I bring this up because relationship building has always been key to selling LIMS. As the LIMS, and therefor the LIMS provider, is integral throughout the laboratory, part of sales has always been getting a client comfortable with you, your team and your product – it is really not a case of the product sales itself no matter what the programmers say! So, what now? There are a host of questions many of us keep asking and trying to figure out, and in some cases, changing our minds on those answers repeatedly:

How do remote sales and demos affect the relationship building?

Is everyone moving to video conferencing and lab tours?

Will everyone stay with video conferencing and lab tours when/if onsite becomes available again?

Will conferences and exhibit halls ultimately change going forward?

How does everyone really feel about virtual meetings, conferences, exhibits, and so on?

I believe many of us in and around analytical sales would love to know the answers. We have many open discussions about questions with surprisingly few answers. And, the answers we do come up with often change over time. For example, in March, as conferences started going virtual, we were all for advertising and participating. Now, not so much. I noticed that even I pay little attention to online conferences outside of a handful of talks I want to hear and generally dismiss the rest. Does this mean one-hour talks every so often are really the way to go?

Unlike many things I’ve written where you just hope someone reads and likes what you’ve written, I’d, our team, would really like to know your opinions. As stated many times, we’re all in this together.