How Enterprises Can Continue to Engage with Customers and Advance the Sales Pipeline
The world is experiencing unprecedented changes due to COVID-19 pandemic. The global economy has been affected in ways not seen before and the events industry is among the hardest hit. Enterprises are reeling from the impact of canceled user conferences, trade shows, summits, and the inability to engage with customers and partners as this has resulted in losses running up to billions of dollars.
Customer engagements at events are one of the biggest drivers of the sales pipeline as meetings between prospects, customers, SMEs and the enterprise help close deals, foster connections, and accelerate business. It is not clear when the pandemic will end and live events will be back in place, therefore, a number of enterprises are on the lookout for other options to engage with customers. A popular solution that is being implemented is to go virtual – with respect to meetings. But how do you manage to do this in large numbers to have a real impact on revenue?
What is a ‘Virtual Meeting Event’?
You may be familiar with a ‘Virtual Meeting’ which is essentially a forum where people representing different organizations regardless of their location, use video or audio conferencing technology to meet online. Virtual Meetings allow meeting attendees to share information and data in real-time without being physically located together, resulting in more convenience and less cost. While the impact of productive in-person meetings at events is immense, virtual meetings are the next best alternative.
However, a ‘Virtual Meeting Event’ on the other hand goes one step further and creates a campaign that facilitates the scheduling, management, and analysis of hundreds of B2B meetings by targeting specific industries, products, topics or geographies just like live events. This approach is being used by many businesses and takes place during a specific period of time involving executives, experts, and sales teams just like an in-person meeting at a live event.
Similar to an actual event, a certain period of time ranging from days to weeks and even months is blocked by SMEs and Executives and other critical resources who are then booked into meetings by a company’s internal requesters such as the sales team. A Virtual Meeting Event provides the same benefits as a Live Event, from delivering the company’s message and building loyalty and lifetime value, to advancing the sales pipeline and revenue. Meeting and event planners have been making the choice between live, virtual, and hybrid events for years as each type of event comes with its own benefits and features and depending on the goal to be achieved, the right type of event is selected. But in current circumstances where events are being canceled, a Virtual Meeting Event is the most suitable alternative.
How Enterprises Benefit from Virtual Meeting Events
There are a plethora of advantages that Virtual Meeting Events bring to continue to support business needs, some of which are listed below:
Accessibility
Virtual options provide the flexibility to accommodate attendees from any part of the world who are unable to attend in person due to various reasons.
Budget
Events are huge undertakings costing millions of dollars to organize and set up. Right from travel, location, accommodation, etc., every aspect of live events involves a large investment. With Virtual Meeting Events, this is reduced to a fraction of the cost of Live events, thus making it more economical.
Lack of other options
In cases of travel bans due to pandemics, disasters or other reasons that result in event cancelations, converting in-person meetings and events to virtual is an option that needs to be explored rather than being canceled outright.
Virtual Meeting Events Powered by Jifflenow
While B2B meetings drive business, the process of scheduling, managing, tracking, and analyzing in-person or virtual meetings with prospects and customers is a complicated process – sending out calendar invitations, schedules, and locations that need to be coordinated, while avoiding challenges like double-bookings, numerous back and forth emails, and time zone errors. These workflows cannot be conquered while depending on legacy tools such as emails, phone calls, and spreadsheets. The entire process is largely error-prone and not scalable which is the reason a number of enterprises have incorporated a Meeting Automation Platform (MAP) such as Jifflenow into their meeting management repertoire. With Jifflenow’s latest capabilities, one can also schedule and manage Virtual Meeting Events as well as Virtual Meetings.
MAP makes it easy to set up many Virtual Meeting Events. Once all the critical stakeholders’ commitment and availability including date and time have been decided, multiple Virtual Meeting Events can be set up and managed as campaigns with a focus on different industries, regions or topics to support the particular needs of your company. It allows your organization the ability to engage a large number of customers one-on-one, virtually. As with in-person meetings, all the opportunity, and other information needed to schedule business to business meeting is available on the platform for meeting managers, attendees, and requesters, enabling you to easily manage, measure, and report on the results.
It is unclear when the COVID-19 outbreak will end and live events will be back in place. With losses running up to a trillion dollars in the global economy, businesses are looking for ways to mitigate this impact. Instead of canceling a live event outright or postponing the same, ‘Virtual Meeting Events’ is a solution that can potentially help enterprises continue to engage a large number of customers and prospects to drive their sales pipeline and close deals. A Virtual Meeting Event capability enabled MAP such as Jifflenow helps enterprises shorten the sales cycle and achieve their business goals through impactful, high-quality meetings – both in-person as well as virtual.
If you wish to convert, schedule or reschedule your in-person meetings and virtual meetings or set up Virtual Meeting Events, schedule a demo with our experts today.
