What’s the best way to conduct “virtual meetings”?

Let’s say you have the following scenarios with your clients or prospects:

1. You want to review documents or proposals with a prospect who is not located nearby.
2. You want to host a meeting for your client’s employees, but they work in different locations and it’s not practical to bring them to the same location.
3. You want to show your client how to use a carrier’s online portal but can’t make it to their office.

What’s the most effective solution for these scenarios where you can’t arrange an in-person meeting? The ideal solution is a virtual meeting; a combination of screen-sharing and either a direct call or conference call.

Everyone knows how conference calling works, but you may be less familiar with screen-sharing. If you’ve ever attended a webinar, then you have seen screen-sharing at work. It is the ability to view, in real-time, what is on someone else’s computer screen and it is a powerful tool that can boost efficiency for you and your prospects and clients. Let’s see how this solution can work in each of the above scenarios:

1. Instead of driving long distances, set up a call and email your client a link that allows your prospect to connect to the screen-sharing web site. At the appointed time, you call them, they log in (at no cost) and you start sharing your screen. This allows you to talk to your prospect while you are both seeing the same documents at the same time and most importantly allows you to use your cursor to “point to” each section of the document on which you want to focus the conversation. You can even edit documents together in real-time.
2. Similar to #1, but instead of a direct call, you set up a conference call. Employees dial-in and then log in. You can show them a presentation or review documents with them (plan brochures, descriptions of services that carriers offer, etc.)
3. Similar to #1, you arrange a virtual meeting with your client, log into the carrier portal, share your screen and take them through a demo of how to use the portal.

There are numerous companies that offer conference calling and screen-sharing capabilities: GoToMeeting, Join.Me and Zoom are just a few. With most services, you can experiment with a free trial and with some, you can even use a basic version at no cost, indefinitely. The basic versions typically limit the number of participants and exclude more advanced capabilities.

One really useful feature, available with the advanced version of these services, is the ability to pass control of the presentation to someone and allow them to share their screen. For example, in scenario three above, if the client wants to show you a problem they are having in the carrier portal, you can set up a quick call and screen-share, pass the control to them and now you can look at what is on their screen to determine where they are having problems and help solve them.

There are many more capabilities offered by these services, but even using the most basic features can help you collaborate with clients and colleagues in real-time. Once you start using virtual meetings enabled by screen-sharing services, you will find them irreplaceable and well worth the cost. Here at Claremont, if we want to quickly review documents with a colleague, we’ll sometimes set up a virtual meeting even if they are just down the hall!