Revenue Riser podcast: Training our brains to embrace virtual selling

I'm your host, Anna Britnor Guest and coming into this episode I was reflecting on my own personal experiences of virtual selling. 30 years ago the mantra was getting in front of the customer. But about 15 years ago, as I was working increasingly internationally, I saw a big shift to selling virtually. And in the last five years, I'd say that at least 80% of my clients I've not met in person before we start working together. And that's mainly been due to geography. As this episode went out in 2020, pretty much all tech B2B selling was happening virtually. Whatever the balance in the future, I think we're all agreed that virtual selling is here to stay. In fact, McKinsey has some interesting survey information on this, which I'll share with our newsletter subscribers (sign up below). So, how do we make sure that our sales teams are really adapted and optimised for this way of selling? There's a lot of practical advice out there on this subject. But I think there's a tendency to look at it from the perspective of a shift from face to face to virtual. And I wanted, in this episode, to take a slightly different perspective and think about it as a thing in its own right. So to that end, I'm joined by Ed Sant'Anna and Azzy Aslam. Ed is a technology strategy advisor and, having known Ed for quite a few years now, I really see Ed as somebody who has a talent for translating between business requirements and technology solutions, particularly around automation and AI. He has a long history of working with large tech companies like Vodafone, where I first met him, Fujitsu and Orange. And today he works with leaders of startups, NGOs and large organisations to help them to digitally transform and grow their own organisations. Azzy Aslam is a habits and change coach. And what I love about the way Azzy works is that he uses science and neuroscience to help professionals make changes to their own performance or life by creating new habits, routines and processes. Azzy also has a long history of sales leadership in the corporate, international and SME markets. In fact, I first met Azzy over 20 years ago now when he was a sales leader at BT. I started the conversation by asking Azzy how our brains make sense of the virtual experience and the challenges that creates. Join us for neuroscience insights and tips for you and your team.