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The rise of remote work and virtual meetings has brought forth a new set of challenges for salespeople. One significant obstacle is building trust with clients and partners in an online setting. This post explores the missing non-verbal cues in virtual sales meetings and how redesigning the user experience can help reintroduce these cues to build trust more effectively.
The Trust-Building Process:
Trust is the cornerstone of any successful business relationship. In face-to-face meetings, trust develops gradually through a series of intentional interactions that reveal the salesperson’s authenticity and vulnerability. However, in virtual meetings, this process is not as straightforward, largely due to the absence of non-verbal cues.
Non-Verbal Cues: The Missing Link
Non-verbal cues play a vital role in building trust during in-person meetings. Three types of non-verbal cues that contribute to trust-building include:
Designing Solutions for Virtual Trust-Building:
To overcome these challenges and enhance trust-building in virtual sales meetings, the following design solutions have been proposed:
While these design concepts show promise, there are limitations to the study. The main limitation is the lack of user involvement in the ideation and design process. Future research should involve users in the development of prototypes to gather valuable feedback and validate the effectiveness of the proposed designs.
The shift to virtual sales meetings has highlighted the importance of non-verbal cues in trust-building. By thoughtfully redesigning the user experience and interface, we can reintroduce these cues into the online meeting context, helping salespeople foster trust and improve their success rates in a virtual environment.