Skip to main content

Moving to a Virtual World

I was originally going to title this post "This Is How Skynet Got Started" but I wasn't sure if people would see it and reasonably think that the blog had something to do with the "Terminator" films, only to be very disappointed. But as dystopian fiction is slowly morphing into reality, we should take the Arnold Schwarzenegger films to heart.

With the onset of the Coronavirus changing the ways we relate and communicate with each other, some are thinking that this is going to be the new normal. Geez, I really hope not. I want to live in a world where I can hug my friends and clients, share a pen with a neighbor, and not have to see a press conference every afternoon. I enjoy playing basketball and watching MMA. I don't want to give these up. This cannot be the new normal.



And this goes for our careers. We, as business owners, sales professional and other self-employeds have to be able to meet face to face with our clients. Our success comes from our enthusiasm and that enthusiasm has to be transferred by seeing a client or prospect in person. And it isn't nearly as effective over a virtual meeting.

So we do what we have to do in these circumstances. I'm going to take the time to brush up on my video conferencing, but under the understanding that this is temporary.l I fully expect to be doing my normal interacting with people in a few weeks, not months or years. Maybe I'm too optimistic and time will tell. But most importantly, this cannot be the new normal.

Chris Castanes is a professional speaker who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. For booking information, click here. He's also the president of Surf Financial Brokers selling life and disability insurance in several states.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Telemarketer's Leads - A Dumb Story

For a brief few months I worked as a telemarketer for a small firm owned by a young married couple. The husband was a bit of a hot head and kind of a jerk on occasion, but his wife was nice and had to put up with the guy.  One of their clients was a mobile home company that wanted people to come to the lot and see how awesome their singlewides and doublewides were. As telemarketers we offered incentives like a cooler and camera (back when they weren’t part of your phone) and other assorted giveaways. We got a small commission if we could book the client. My coworkers and I would call from a list of leads that our employers had purchased from someone. These leads were supposedly “qualified” ahead of time, meaning that they had been vetted to meet the needs of the client, the mobile home company. Unfortunately, most of the leads were useless. The people we spoke to didn’t live in the right geographical areas or their incomes were too low.  “Why aren’t you guys closing anyone?” t...

How To Prevent (Or Lessen) Momentum Killers

Have you had a great sales run, with the wind at your back as you continue to sell and make money, only to have some event or holiday slow down your momentum? It's happened to all of us. I compare it to running at full speed down a field, and out of nowhere comes a patch of mud and tar, designed specifically to slow you down and make you work harder.  An example of this is the holiday season. For some industries, the end of the year is a great time to make those last minute sales and thin out inventories. But for others, it can be horrible. Let's face it, the holidays are about spending money on fun stuff, like electronics and clothes. No one is even thinking about buying insurance, unless they have to.  "I can't spend any money on life insurance because I have to buy Christmas gifts," is what I hear each year. (Nice priorities, by the way!) Having been through this for a few years I now plan ahead. Instead of beating my head against a wall trying to get people to...

My Short Post On Social Media

Are you leveraging social media to help your business? Are you posting daily and creating content like the "experts" say to do? Most importantly, are you getting results? I've tried using most of the more popular platforms for my insurance business, as well as my writing and speaking business. To say the results are "mixed" would be generous. This may be because I really haven't invested much into advertising on these platforms.  The way I see it, when Facebook, for example, allows me to set up a free page for my business, that is like a "free trial" to see if I can get any interest in my product or service. After nearly 15 years of this trial period, I have garnered little to no business.  One can come up with two arguments here. The first is why would you throw money at advertising when you haven't seen any returns. The other side is that "you could have done better if you had quit being a tight ass penny pincher." Fair enough. But ...