An investment banker, a lawyer, and a consultant walk into a bar.

What do they all have in common?

They’re all client-facing positions that depend on building long-term relationships with customers. And for the past few years, they’ve all been working over Zoom.

While no physical travel means that client-facing professionals can squeeze more meetings into their day, it’s also led to a massive drop-off in client connections. We all know the ROI on client relationships is huge. Better relationships lead to increased customer satisfaction scores, which means more loyal clients who continue to buy your company’s services.

The biggest issue facing client-facing team executives is enforcing standardization. How can you coach professionals under you in the company’s way of doing business, while maintaining the individuality that helps the agent bond with clients?

Digital transformation poses a challenge, but also an opportunity. Warmly is working on tools that help executives managing investment bankers, consultants, and lawyers leverage brand logos and taglines, while also allowing creativity and nuance in forming connections.

Building Trust With Prospects Over Zoom

Creating trust is something our company has painstakingly dissected over several years of engaging and talking to thousands of business professionals. We’ve found that a sense of trust is broken down into three main factors.

1. Finding Commonality

People are naturally predisposed to run away. That’s because until very recently in our evolution, human beings were often prey. Our natural sense of distrust is what kept us alive. Research also shows that why we do trust hinges on another evolutionary trait: we are much more likely to trust people who are similar to us in some way.

While coaching enterprise clients on how to use our software with clients, we stress that users should display their city, the local weather, and idiosyncratic things about themselves in their Zoom name tag. That increases the chance that they will immediately find something in common on which to build that initial bond.

Maybe the consultant is Zooming in from Colorado, and the client just got back from Vail. The rapport generated by this insight tells the client: Hey, we’ve had shared experiences. I’m not going to hurt you, and helps the client let their guard down.

2. Establishing Credibility

Buyers want to know the seller knows what they’re doing. A professional who logs onto a meeting with the prospect’s logo incorporated into their Zoom background is demonstrating that they came to the meeting prepared. Having the meeting agenda hanging over their shoulder is another way to look professional.

The impression can fail, however, if the usage varies wildly across the company. Warmly’s enterprise license includes brand standardization tools so clients always feel like they’re getting the same caliber of professionalism, even if they’re dealing with someone new.

A local credit union that Warmly helped set up had never done virtual meetings with customers prior to the pandemic, and didn’t realize how they were coming across. Their customer satisfaction scores dropped dramatically—not because they suddenly weren’t good at what to do. It’s scary to put your life savings into an institution, and the representatives were used to building these connections in person. By implementing Warmly’s Zoom add-on, every banker showed up to client meetings with a fun and unique business card that matched their coworkers, along with a personal bio that resonates with the local customer. The standardization also creates continuity, even if a client is dealing with a different banker on any given day.

New clients also want to feel assured that the professional has a track record of success in their field. Social proof is a powerful driver of emotion, and there are multiple options in the Warmly add-on for Zoom to engender that trust.

Consulting clients have found success adding a QR code over their shoulder linking to prior case studies. You can also have the codes link to corporate social handles that showcase prior or current companies you have worked with. Why not run a ticker tape with the logos of your biggest clients or all the five-star reviews your company has had across the bottom?

Dissemination of these assets should also be easy and error-proof to avoid unnecessary slip-ups. We’ve coached an insurance company executive at a company where business was booming. They had recently hired hundreds of representatives, but many were not aware of all the valuable collateral they were able to offer clients. During a demonstration, Warmly helped them upload and instantly distribute customer presentation material that their salesmen can simply hover over their shoulders during Zoom calls whenever a customer asks for it. ‍

3. Forge Authenticity

A common mistake service professionals make is that they immediately try to sell a service. Services are not sold, they’re bought. When you want to buy something, it’s because you have a sense of trust, you think they’re professional, that they have done this for other people. More importantly, it’s because they get you. People want to feel like others truly understands them and their problems.

As a client-facing professional, you are trying to identify their problems and whether you can help, not trying to force a solution down their throat that doesn’t fit. That means asking doing our pre-meeting prep on both the company and the individual you’re meeting. It also means asking questions with the intent of figuring out what problems the client has, and whether you can help—not forcing a solution down their throats if it doesn’t fit.

Spend time understanding the person you’re talking to, what they are working toward, and their goals for their business. Then see where you fit into helping them achieve those goals. Warmly also lets you take notes within Zoom, so you can stay focused on their needs.

Conclusion

We believe that a corporation should create a sense of uniformity, brand standardization, and professionalism across all their client-facing teams. Instantly matching backgrounds, coordinating release of company announcements at the same time, sharing tidbits and news about the company, creating a professional introductory experience shows the client that your company is a serious company worth working with.

We recently advised a law firm in Australia that had been struggling to create an air of professionalism in their meetings. They didn’t know who was calling in from where. They didn’t know what the right background or logo to use across the company. Everybody would use different things in all the wrong places. Warmly allowed them to instantly distribute the right business-branded collateral to ensure a consistent client-facing experience that led to increased customer satisfaction scores for all their legal teams and even the securing of new business because their clients enjoyed working with them virtually more so than competition.

Warmly is now working on a unique, branded in-meeting client experience to help companies recreate the professionalism of a physical board room during virtual meetings.

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Have you ever met someone entirely new over Zoom for the very first time? Of course you have. Now, have you ever had butterflies wondering what you’re going to say to break the ice with that new contact? Yup. It happens to the best of us.

Icebreakers aren’t just cheesy or silly, but rather, they can help you build interesting context around the person you’re meeting. For instance, if you ask them what they wish they’d studied in college, and they say psychology, you can follow up with that interesting new study you saw in Scientific American. If someone admits to being a night owl and not an early bird, you can schedule a late-night follow-up email as a reference to their preference.

Context leads to rapport, and rapport leads to stronger connections -- in both business, and life. So, please ask some (gently) probing questions, and use these 50 icebreakers in your next call. (And whatever they answer, don’t forget to jot a note down in Warmly, so you remember their secret skill!)

1. What’s your favorite dish that reminds you of childhood?
2. What’s your comfort food?
3. Are you a beach or a mountain person and why?
4. What is a hobby you've always wanted to pick up?
5. What was your first concert you went to?
6. Who’s a famous person you’ve met?
7. If you could write a book, what genre would you write it in? (ie mystery, thriller, romance, historical fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, etc?)
8. What’s a secret skill you have?
9. What’s the first thing you bought with your own money?
10. What’s your favorite place to go when you want to be alone?
11. What was your first job?
12. If you could spend an extra $100 on yourself each week, what would you do?
13. If you could get another degree in something now, what would you study?
14. What show or movie have you really enjoyed recently?
15. How do you like to relax?
16. Which actor would you want to play you in a movie?
17. What’s your beverage of choice?
18. What TV show or movie do you want to watch next?
19. What was the last place you traveled to?
20. Are you an early bird or a night owl?
21. What’s your best tip to not go crazy indoors?
22. What’s a funny corona meme or video you've seen?
23. What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when the quarantine is over?
24. What is something you got into trouble for in high school?
25. What’s the worst job you ever had?
26. What’s something you tried, but will never try again?
27. What’s one thing that’s happened to you that has made you a stronger person?
28. What’s one thing that’s happened to you in your life that made you feel weak?
29. Where is one place you feel most like yourself?
30. Where is your favorite place to escape to?
31. Who do you think has had the largest influence on the person you are today?
32. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
33. If you had one day left to live, what would you do first?
34. What decade do you feel you most belong in?
35. Who are you closest to in your family? Why?
36. Who is the one person in this world that knows you best?
37. What is your favorite quality about your best friend?
38. When you were younger what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
39. If you could identify with one fictional character (from a book, show, or movie) who would it be?
40. Do you easily accept compliments? Or do you hate compliments?
41. Is your favorite attribute about yourself physical or non-physical?
42. What is your favorite physical attribute about yourself?
43. What is your favorite non-physical attribute about yourself?
44. Do you believe in love at first sight?
45. Do you believe in soul mates?
46. How seriously do you take horoscopes?
47. Have you ever been in love? How many times?
48. What makes you fall in love with someone?
49. What does vulnerability mean to you? What has the ability to make you vulnerable?

What’s one thing you’re scared to ask a woman/man, but really want to?

Can we all agree that Zoom is awkward and time-consuming? “You’re on mute” was one of the most used phrases in corporate America during the pandemic, right behind “new normal” and “unprecedented times.”

Now that Zoom is the de-facto virtual workplace for most people, so much time is wasted on inefficiencies like mute/unmute, coordinating with your virtual sales team, and scrambling to find the link to your next meeting.

If you’re consistently running five minutes behind, try these 10 Zoom hacks for making your virtual meetings more productive.

Problem #1: It only gets good at the end.

Salespeople know to always schedule the next meeting before you get off the phone with the prospect, but you don’t get to that until the end of the first one. How many times have you found yourself running late to your next demo call? You know how rude it is to the second person, but don’t want to mess things up with this one either. What do you do?

If you have Warmly, use the Running Late feature to customize a template for what to say when this situation comes up. With one click, you can let your next meeting know you’re running a few minutes behind, while still focusing on next steps for your first meeting.

Whether you’re meeting a prospect, coworker, or a friend, you want people to feel like you respect their time, so be professional and always apologize when things come up.

Problem #2: You’re always late to your next meeting.

If you find yourself chronically late, the best thing to do is schedule a few minutes between virtual meetings. If that’s not possible, try using the Warmly Zoom App’s in-meeting countdown timer. It will pop up a huge warning when there’s a few minutes left in your meeting, so you know to wrap it up. The best part? It also shows a “Join Meeting” button, so you can hop onto your next meeting straight from the previous one without having to fumble for a link. 

Problem #3: Your conversation partner is missing.

Your teammate or a prospect is running behind. You don’t know if they’re even there. You could try pulling up their email, phone number, or Slack, but all those require multiple steps and the clock is ticking. How can you ping them quickly? With one click in the Warmly Zoom App, you can send them a Where r u? message that will notify the that the meeting is happening and even send them a Zoom link so they can get to the meeting really easily.

Problem #4: You forgot to take notes.

How often have you gotten off a string of calls and realized that you forgot to take notes for half of them? If you’re one of those people who always forgets to jot things down after a meeting, try using an app like Warmly that pops up a message after every meeting and prompts you to add a quick follow-up, action item, or reminder before moving on.

Problem #5: You always forget to unmute.

How often do you start talking, figure out you’re on mute, quickly jam the unmute button, but then have to wait for a 3-second lag until you can speak again? You can leave your audio on, but then you risk passing sirens, roommates, kids or pets disrupting the meeting. Try using Zoom’s built-in push-to-talk feature. You can keep yourself muted, and just hold down the spacebar to unmute whenever you want to speak. Just let go when you’re done and your audio will automatically turn off again. No more racing around your trackpad to hit the Mute/Unmute button.

Problem #6: It’s too hard to coordinate your virtual sales team.

When you’re selling as a squad, looking unified can make a great impression. Your sales team can wear matching t-shirts, or better yet, match your backgrounds. Try emailing a picture to everyone on the team and have them upload it themselves. If you don’t want to risk a coworker messing up or forgetting, Warmly also has a Matching Background feature where one person can upload a background and it will automatically populate for everyone else on the team.

Problem #7: Do we have a mutual connection?

In a survey we did of 1,000 business professionals, 74% have found themselves researching a person while speaking to them. If you’re looking someone up during a virtual meeting, you aren’t focused on building a relationship with them. Instead of pulling up a browser, use a tool like Warmly that automatically pulls up context on the person you’re speaking to, and even their LinkedIn page, all without leaving Zoom.

Problem #8: I can’t remember how I met this person.

Getting an introduction or having a professional “meet cute” is a great way to start off on a warm foot. Yet what if you can’t remember the mutual contact that brought you together, or what you talked about by email six months ago?

The Warmly Zoom App doubles as a personal CRM—or a superhero assistant—by automatically pulling up past email exchanges. It also makes people feel important when you remember little details about them.

Problem #9: You need a waiting room.

Too many meetings back-to-back? If you send everyone a different Zoom link, you’ll go crazy trying to track down the right meeting code for all of them. Try using the same link for all your virtual meetings with Zoom’s Waiting Room feature. You’ll stay in the same call, and everyone who meets with you can join at their scheduled time. If someone shows up early—or you’re running late—the next person will be put in a virtual waiting room until you let them in.

Problem #10: Who am I talking to again?

‍Do you ever wish you had an org chart in front of you when you’re talking to someone? Maybe you want to know who their boss is, so that you can ask for an introduction. Organizational charts are crucial for high-level sales.

You can look up someone’s LinkedIn page, but knowing their title won’t always tell you who they answer to. Try a resource like The Org to see where they stand in their organization. Warmly People Insights will also provide this information right in the Zoom App so you don’t have to pull up a browser on the sly.

How often does a prospect mispronounce your name and you bite your tongue? Maybe you’re on the other side, wondering how to address a customer without offending them. With virtual calls making the world smaller, it’s more important than ever than to be inclusive. That means saying people’s names, and hearing our own, with the right pronunciation.

You might think name pronunciation is a small thing. After all, nobody is hurt when Joey from Friends says “moo” instead of “moot.” Except our brains literally light up in MRIs when we hear our own name.

“When my wife and I chose names for our children, we intentionally thought about how it would be pronounced in the Western world,” says DeathtoFluff founder Belal Batrawy (that’s pronounced “bee-lal”). “We wanted to spare our children the same experience my wife and I had growing up. We picked names that would be easy for English speakers, carry importance in our religion and culture, and also can teach someone who’s never met a Muslim something about us just by hearing the name.”

"We wanted to spare our children the same experience my wife and I had growing up."

In a survey of 1,060 people by name pronunciation start-up NameCoach, 10% said they’ve messed up a sale because they mispronounced a customer’s name. The study also found that emotions from hearing your name mispronounced ranged from alienated, self-conscious, to discriminated against. Names are central to our identities just as much as pronouns. It isn’t just awkward when you get someone’s name wrong, it can be downright hurtful.

That’s why we added a feature to the Warmly Zoom App for people to enter how they want their name pronounced. It also pulls in a suggested pronunciation recording from NameCoach. Yet the best way to find out how a person wants their name said is still just to ask, “Hey, is your name pronounced X?” Warmly could have already told you what ‘X’ is, but asking anyway shows the prospect that you really care about getting it right.

Instead of brushing past their name, or saying it fast and hoping they don’t notice, make it a starting point of the conversation. If you have an unusual name, this might even make it less awkward for the customer to ask you how you say yours.

People with rare names are usually aware of it. They might have had it mispronounced by teachers, colleagues, and friends their entire lives. They’ve stopped looking in the “personalized” gift section. They’re probably used to having their names butchered, and maybe told themselves it doesn’t matter. But everyone, whether customers or salespeople, want to feel seen and heard.

Name pronunciation is a powerful sales tool when you get it right. Not only does it show respect, actually using names, and hearing them aloud, helps you form a deeper connection.

Being able to hear, “Thanks for the demo, Max” and saying, “Thank you, Jonahs” is an easy way to reinforce your connection at the end of the call. Having Warmly helps too, by making sure both your names, along with the pronunciations, are on-screen during virtual calls.

There’s no question that the pandemic has changed how companies sell. Presentations in boardrooms are now meetings in Zoom Rooms. Conferences are now Zoom Webinars. Schmoozing over dinner is now… well, another Zoom call, even as the world is opening back up.

One thing hasn’t changed. Even with so much communication moved virtually, building relationships is still foundational to landing new deals.

A GLG survey in 2020 found that while 44% thought the “lack of face time with clients” was negative, most were neutral or even positive about it. That’s because sales folks are finding ways to connect differently, from using breakout rooms to showing vulnerability by sharing more of their home life.

Here are 4 ways that Zoom can make you virtually sell better.

1. Find your client’s pain points.

Sales teams used to be able to fly in-person to conferences and to meet with business leaders in order to figure out what pain points they have. Now these conversations have to happen over a video connection with (literally!) a limited window into the client’s life. How can you make the most of networking over Zoom?

The best way has always been through conversation. Ask smart questions that either demonstrate your expertise or explore the client’s day-to-day. Our Warmly add-on for Zoom can also help you represent your company (and generate valuable brand impressions!) whether you’re in a conference with one person or hundreds. You can share not only your company’s logo, but your title, credentials, certifications, or even fun facts about yourself.

2. Keep the relationship going.

After you receive a potential customer’s information at a networking event, how do you maintain the relationship? You’ve already made a great impression and secured the first call, but there will be another call after this one. That means the stakes are high to look professional and build relationships.

The key is building genuine connections over things that you and the client genuinely care about. Our Warmly add-on lets you add personal touches to your Zoom window, such as personal photos, ice breakers, or even company news that you can use as a jumping off point for conversation.

3. Team up fast.

If you work in a growing sales department, new teams are spun up all the time, which means you are always getting to know new teammates. On large sales pitches, the stakes are even higher. Connecting well with your teammates as you’re forming a new pitch is vital.

Maximize the time you spend in virtual meetings getting to know each other by using icebreakers. Having a tool like Warmly’s Zoom app lets you add background information about yourself to increase the chances of hitting it off. In an internal meeting, you can add hobbies, your recent projects, or even something weird about yourself that you’d like to share with your coworkers.

Make sure to have your own name pronunciation and pronouns on-screen to make it easy to reach out. You never know who might be nervous to speak up because they’re nervous about mispronouncing or misgendering someone.

4. Be on even when your video is off.

Sometimes the customer will meet you on Zoom but keep their cameras off. This is especially common in older, sleepier industries. You want to conform to the client’s level of comfort, but what’s the point of one person on video reading off slides when everyone else is a black box? You might as well be on a conference call. Try using Warmly’s add-on for Zoom to put up a Video-Off Nametag. Your clients will be able to see pictures and information about everyone on the call, and your whole team looks more professional in the process.

What’s the most embarrassing moment you’ve ever had as a virtual sales team? If it hasn’t happened yet, it will soon. Research by McKinsey recently found that 71% of revenue at the average B2B company is now driven by virtual activities, and it’s not going away. Buyers are increasingly choosing digital or remote purchasing options.

Here are five common #virtualsalesteamproblems—and how to prevent them:

1. Name (Mis)Pronunciation

Have you ever pulled in your VP of sales to help close the deal, but they made it worse by completely butchering the prospect’s name? Mispronouncing someone’s moniker can be as offensive as using the wrong pronoun. Virtual calls have opened up the sales pipeline globally in both directions. Your coworkers, prospects, and even other sellers may be coming from anywhere in the world. Nothing can turn a prospect from hot to cold faster than feeling disrespected. That’s why we added autogenerated name pronunciations from Namecoach to the Warmly Zoom App, so you can instantly learn how to say it right—before or during your meeting.

2. A Forever Silent Prospect

Your sales team logs into a meeting. You have 30 minutes to impress the buyer, but first you have to go through a round of introductions. Everyone says their name, title, how long they’ve worked at the company, and basically gives a one-minute diatribe to prove that they’re a professional. At this point, you’re six minutes into a 30-minute meeting, and the prospect hasn’t even said a word.

You’ve just wasted a third of the customer’s time on something that isn’t meaningful! With Warmly, you can start the meeting with a suggested icebreaker to help you immediately connect on a warm note. You can also just say “Hey, my name is so-and-so, and you can learn more about my teammates in their Zoom backgrounds.” Goal: save time and get down to business.

3. Sorry, Wrong Zoom Chat

Have you ever tried to send an in-meeting Zoom Chat to your coworker, then realize three seconds later that the message was sent to everyone? Maybe it was a funny joke, or even something you thought your coworker should know about the customer to help seal the deal. Don’t risk it - stick to text or Slack for internal communication to coworkers.

4. “Where r u?”

Picture this: Your teammate is running late to the virtual meeting. You need to ping them, but also want the prospect to think they have your undivided attention. Most of the time when you head to Slack to say “WTF,” you just end up seeming distracted. Not a great look for a sales call. Thankfully, Warmly has a fix for this, too. With one click in the Zoom app, you can send a “Where are you?” message to your teammate, freeing you to focus on the customer while your teammate gets it together.

5. Cat Behind Ya

Have you ever showed up to a call and realized your background is still the meme you put on to make your friends laugh? Maybe you’re trying to talk to a prospect, but your coworker’s cat is running around behind them. The last thing you want is what’s happening in the back to distract from what—or who—is in front of you. This problem is easily solved by Warmly’s matching background feature. One person can upload an image, and it will automatically populate the backgrounds of everyone on your team. Bonus: your crew instantly looks unified and more professional.

Sales managers know that the best way to get a prospect to a ‘Yes’ is by building trust. Studies show that trustworthiness is essential to building strong relationships. There are three main ways that salespeople can build trust with prospects over Zoom:

1. Establish Credibility – That means not only the credibility of your company or your product, but also the credibility of the salesperson.
2. Forge Authenticity – Deeply understanding a person’s problems and reflecting it back to them is a powerful driver of an authentic connection. It also comes from a salesperson that is open, honest, and connects on a human-level with the prospect.
3. Finding Commonality – Your company may have worked with their competitors, and therefore understand their problems possibly better than they do. This principle is also about the people in the rooms finding commonalities around hobbies, location, weather, kids, and things of that nature.

In 2022, the sales email sequence is still the most effective way to generate leads and lay the foundation of trust for your brand. How effective is it? Even in 2019, before every corporate employee in the world was plugged in 24/7, the ROI on email marketing was 4,200%.

Your sales development representatives have worked hard to send the email sequences. Those email sequences work, whether it’s the fifth attempt or the 10th. At some point, one of your value propositions resonates with the prospect and brings them to the table.

Once the prospect is logged in, however, most sales team stop the slow drip of showing them all the different things your company can do. Instead, many sales teams word vomit everything the product can do in a hard-hitting sales pitch—to the point that it drives them away. Or they hyperfocus on the one thing the prospect responded to in the marketing process, ignoring all the other aspects that would actually help make the sale.

What if there was a way to keep up the automated email sequences—without the automated email sequences?

Top sellers today continue building trust beyond the email sequence and into the first meeting with a new concept we call “Automated Ambient Messaging.”

Automated Ambient Messaging

Say the company just completed its Series C. This is a huge vote of confidence from investors, and would tell prospective clients that your business has a track record of success. You could randomly throw it out during a sales meeting. Or you can have creative assets advertising this news automatically pop up in ordinary communication your sales team is already having with prospects in the buying cycle.

Warmly is a customer experience platform that helps VPs of Sales continue ambient messaging through previous touch points with prospects and clients: their email signatures, calendar invites, and Zoom backgrounds.

These messages will also appear alongside the individual touches of the salesperson like hobbies, location, and fun facts. All of a sudden, it’s not an ad, but a bonus of the relationship they’re building with the salesperson.

The outcome is that your sales team is building trust with prospects faster and more organically. That means shorter buying cycles, and increased sales because you are effectively conveying to prospects all the value that you can bring, one bite-sized chunk at a time.

Excited to see how? Here are just a few ideas to get you started.

1. Case Study – Do you know from experience that certain verticals respond strongly to case studies? An easy way to establish credibility with prospects is ending that follow-up email prospect with a QR code to the case study. Check out this QR code of a Case Study Gainsight did with Warmly!

2. Credentials – A great way to establish credibility is by sharing credentials on your Zoom background. Maybe your company has been rated great place to work, or your flagship software is rated highly on G2 Crowd. You can also use employee’s credentials, such as their school, degrees, years of experience in industry, or related certifications.

3. List Actual Benefits – For every industry you’re targeting, identify how you are solving problems for companies in those arenas. You can even have this information.

4. Title-based Value Props – Think about what value proposition would most resonate with the person you’re targeting. A Chief Data Officer would have different business priorities and pain points than, say, a Head of Digital.

5. Corporate Social Responsibility – If you’re meeting with a prospect or company known for being charitable, you can ambiently highlight things your own firm is doing. Maybe have the bio line in your Zoom background include that “We’re raising $8 million for Feeding America this year.”

6. Location – Having employees put their current location and local weather is an easy, no-effort way to both find commonality and forge authenticity. If you want to go even more granular, have employees list the places they have been and auto-match those with where the prospects are located. Now your entire sales team will have an immediate warm starting point for conversation.

7. Company Commonality – Imagine sticking an overlap of your company’s logo with the prospect company’s logo in every email, Calendar link, and Zoom meeting. Warmly is working on a ‘History of Partnership’ page that catalogues all the times your mutual companies have interacted including a log of meetings, and other shared similarities.

Over the last 20 years, software-as-a-service has all but eliminated companies buying software outright. No more slimy salesperson duping businesses into an expensive (and sticky!) installation, only to disappear when the check clears. These days, products have to complete a repeat sale cycle every time the customer is sent a bill for their subscription.

For a customer success manager at a SAAS company, relationships are currency. If a client is unhappy with the product, you want them to come to you early so you can fix it. The last thing you want is to hop on a regular business review with your boss and hear that the client is calling it quits. The more you get to know the stakeholders, and the deeper your relationship with them, the more likely they are to come to you with grievances in advance.

Before the pandemic, a customer success manager could ‘wine and dine’ clients to help build that bond. Now you have to build that relationship screen-to-screen instead of face-to-face. “Connecting to a Zoom call has never been easier, but connecting to a person has never been harder,” says Chief Customer Officer for AppsFlyer, Ziv Peled.

Some of the world’s best customer success managers have told us they’ve been using our Warmly Zoom app to turbocharge their meetings.

“Warmly is a superpower for CSMs on Zoom because it allows them to build deeper relationships,” says Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta. “Every customer success manager here uses it because we know it works.” Gainsight has currently partnered with Warmly to give all their subscribers free access to our enterprise software.

Here are a few ways top CSMs have told us how they use Warmly to build better relationships over Zoom.

Look omniscient.

Say you’re in a Quarterly Business Review on Zoom and the director ropes in a VP that you’ve never met before. All of a sudden, you’re dealing with a different stakeholder who may not share the same values, objectives, or even veto power as the person you originally planned to meet. Warmly can make a Customer Success Manager seem all-knowing by pulling up information on everybody in the meeting without even leaving Zoom. You’ll never scramble to secretly Google someone while talking to them—and risk looking distracted or disengaged.

Take note.

When you’re in back-to-back meetings handling dozens of clients, it can be hard to keep track of what you know about every single person. Customer success managers love that Warmly lets you take notes on your contacts and pops that information back up every time you meet with that person. You can use it for account-based notes, like feature requests, or to help you remember details specific to the stakeholder—think beloved pets or a touchpoint you share.

Show you’re on their team.

In a survey of 1,000 business professionals in April 2021, 73% said they are more likely to skip a second meeting with someone who wasn’t prepared for the first one. Among C-suite executives, it was 90%. You want to make sure clients know you’ve done your homework. As a CSM, you can look extra professional by having the customer’s logo over your shoulder in every meeting. For extra credit, use their company’s headquarters as your virtual background. Your job as a Customer Success Manager is aligning the client’s outcomes with your company’s. What better way to show them that their success is your success than by visually repping their team?

Save time on introductions.

The customer has an issue, and you smartly rope in the Solutions Engineer to solve it for them. Next thing you know, there’s five people on the sales side, and another five on the customer side. Introducing ten people in a meeting easily eats up time you could instead spend fixing the customer’s problem. Our CSM users have told us that using a Warmly Nametag helped them eliminate formal introductions because everyone’s names, roles, experience, and even pronouns are right there in the Zoom window as they’re talking.

Write a biography.

CSMs that use Warmly to share personal information often tell us that it makes conversations go more fluidly.

“It ends the awkward beginning of every call,” one customer success manager told us. Warmly’s “Bio” section lets you add a few lines under your name.

You could list your hobbies (“Amateur surfer” or “Chipotle enthusiast”), professional credentials (“CCSM-certified”), or by sharing a fun fact about yourself.

Keep Things Fresh

Meetings can get stale when you’re seeing the same people, in the same office, on the same screen over and over. Many customer success managers have told us they use Warmly’s “Conversation Starters” to help keep things fresh. It’s extra important when it’s been a long day and they don’t have the energy to come up with that conversation spark themselves. A pre-written question to break the ice helps everyone get to know each other better, so you can focus on building a durable and more successful relationship.

Read our case study with Gainsights here.

Can you give a brief overview of yourself?

I live in South Africa. I grew up here. For my whole career, I’ve been in sales. My wife and I started working remotely at the beginning of 2020 - just before the pandemic actually hit.

I worked for Crossover for a while. Then, I started working at OneMob, and it was an immediate fit! We clicked really nicely.

On a personal level, my wife and I like hiking and wine tasting. I lived in Cape Town for 17 years before moving back to Port Elizabeth. There, I got into wine tasting and took some wine tasting courses. It's more than just appreciation at this point!

How did you find Warmly and what drew you to Warmly?

I first got to learn about Warmly when I connected with Max Greenwald on LinkedIn. Warmly is effectively a video tool, and OneMob is a video sales enablement platform. The two kind of went together.

I used Warmly to help me stand out – it was different. OneMob and Warmly worked very nicely together. Later on, I started using it on my Zoom calls.

You can always create something in Google slides, but Warmly was just really easy to use. I created my virtual business cards on Warmly and downloaded them. I have a couple different versions.

You're an account executive. How do your clients typically react to your virtual business card?

Oh, they love it! Half of the people I talk to ask me about it. Usually their responses are, “That's really cool! Did you make that yourself?”.

It serves as an interesting talking point and ice breaker. My card shows that I'm from South Africa and that I like wine tasting. Since it gives you something to talk about, the first thirty seconds of the call feels so much smoother.

What Zoom best practices can you share?

I want to be very present in my meetings. I have four monitors, but during my calls I only keep one or two on.

I also record all of my Zoom meetings so I can really concentrate on the call rather than taking notes. I find this allows me to focus on understanding the client. I used to do the same trick with lectures in school.

Another tip is to engage the person by looking them in the eyes. There’s an immediate disconnect when you’re looking at their image instead of looking into the camera.

I also use Krisp. for noise cancellation. I make sure that my Krisp is on because then I know I can focus. I don't have to worry about dog barks or the neighbors mowing the lawn. No matter what is happening around me, I know that my customer can't hear the noise – only the sound of my voice.

How else have you gotten the most out of Warmly? How has it impacted your pre-meeting prep?

I do use [Calendar Signatures] quite a bit. If I go to my calendar, I can see a link or URL to their LinkedIn. I can just quickly pop in there, have a look at what the person has done, and get a little bit of background. It definitely saves on that preparation time.

Sometimes I have back-to-back meetings, and I've only got three minutes before the next one. I don't have to worry because I know the info that I need will be there.

It’s been great chatting with you; Any final thoughts?

In the last two years, we had this huge push to all work from home, and we only used Zoom. And now, it’s kind of a hybrid where a lot of people are required to still go into the office some days and work from home other days. Remote work had a steep growth and may be slightly down now, but I think it will just start going up again from here on out.

It is really important to be confident in your Zoom meetings, and Warmly just gives you that warmth – knowing that you are standing out and that you are a step ahead of the rest. That is a skill – not everybody can do Zoom meetings effectively.

Congrats! You’re a SDR that just landed a huge qualified lead for your AE. In fact, the Account Executive is so impressed that you have been invited to the closing table.

You know the turnover rate for your position is high—34% a year on average, and most people only last a few years. Do well in this meeting, and you could be on your way to an AE position of your own. No more endless days scrolling for outbound leads. The stakes are high.

So how can you prepare yourself to crush this first meeting?

1. Know the Company

Being prepared is an absolute no-brainer. You want to do your research on what the target company does, but also the area where your software can help. For example, if you’re selling an HR tool, you should know what the prospect company’s culture is like. Are they competitive or compassionate? Ping pong tables in the office, or company off-sites at Disney World?

Pick one or two nuggets to show that you’ve done your research and that you understand them. This is also crucial for identifying the specific problem your target company has and that your software solves. Nobody buys software just because. You want the client to believe you care about their company, their goals, and will work with them to figure out the solution.

2. Know the Person

Anything you can find in common with the person you’re meeting will help you start off on the right foot. If your sales meeting is over Zoom, our Warmly Zoom app will do the research for you automatically. One powerful thing you can do is open up the other person’s company org chart and figure out where the person is in the chain of command. If the person you’re meeting isn’t a decision maker, at the ready you’ll know who to ask for introductions to someone more senior. Instead of straight-up asking “Who is your boss?” you’ll be more successful—and look more professional— by asking, “Hey, do you know so-and-so? I was wondering if they might be a good person to talk to next.” Boom.

3. Make Yourself Known

Having shared reality is a powerful way to build relationships. When you find something in common with a new person, you start on a strong foundation on which to build a bond. Pre-meeting prep is a great way to find out things about the other person, but what if you also want them to know things about you?

A really great way to subtly share information about yourself is by using a Warmly Nametag. Add a few personal details in your bio to give you a few extra points to make a connection. Are you a NASCAR fan, or a competitive duck herder?

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Make your Nametag even more powerful by combining it with your pre-meeting prep. If your prospect just posted a picture of their new puppy on Twitter, drop a line in your bio about how you can talk for hours about Terriers, or your weekly volunteering gig at the ASPCA.

Using your Nametag to display your name pronunciation is another crucial trick to starting off on the right foot. Connections are made deeper by being able to say somebody’s name aloud. Even if you think your name is common, it may not be in the region where your customer is calling from. Putting your own name also helps the other person feel more comfortable both in pronouncing your name, and sharing their own.

4. Make an Agenda

We recently released a feature for the Warmly Zoom App called Video Widgets—which are beautiful one-click tools that you can hover over your shoulder during Zoom meetings. One of our most popular Video Widgets is Meeting Agendas.

A common mistake that junior SDRs make is blindly asking questions they were told to ask in a meeting with the prospect. You come off as a robot instead of a person—the opposite of what you want for building rapport. Instead, you can use a meeting agenda to ask the questions for you.

Having a schedule to reference also allows you to let the conversation flow more naturally. You know having the agenda will keep things on track and pull the conversation back if you get too distracted. Crossing items off over your shoulder as you go also helps everyone in the meeting feel like you are collectively making progress and trending toward success.

5. Social Proof Yourself and Your Company

Social proof has been shown over and over to be a powerful driver of buyer behavior for everything from e-books to million dollar enterprise deals. If you know somebody who works (or worked!) at the prospect’s company, try asking that mutual friend to send the prospect a quick note of support for you. Even a, “I’ve worked with so-and-so before and they’re great. Enjoy the meeting,” can make the person you’re meeting feel extra confident in speaking with you. If you don’t have someone in common then how about social proof of your company? Consider adding an image in the Images & Gifs Video Widget with logos of companies you’ve sold to in the past.

6. Pre-Meeting Confirmation

Lots of software buyers might agree to a sales meeting, but either don’t show up or cancel last minute because the problem your software solves is not as urgent as other things on their plate.

People get busy, it happens. To protect your time, make sure you send the prospect a quick text or email before the call to say you look forward to speaking with them. Confirming that they’re still interested will save you time waiting for a no-show, but it can also lower the chance that you’ll be stood up!

Reaching out reaffirms the social obligation. The buyer agreed to this meeting and you, the salesperson, have blocked out this time to talk to them. If you want to make interactions even warmer, use an app like OneMob to record a quick (just 30 seconds!) video of yourself saying hi and reiterating some of the reasons they agreed to take your call.

7. Show Partnership

Another Warmly for Zoom feature you want to consider using is the Company Partnerships widget. It’s a super fast one-click step to hang the prospect company’s logo in the upper corner of your own Zoom window. Now every meeting you have will feel personalized to the prospect. It also shows that you’re on top of your game and well-prepped for the call.

8. Take Better Notes

Taking notes in Salesforce is clunky and almost impossible to do efficiently during a live meeting. You could take notes on your phone or desktop, but you’ll still have to deal with transferring those details to Salesforce after the call. Try a speedier note-taking tool Dooly or Scratchpad during calls to jot down details about the client you want to remember. Both of those apps will also automatically sync your notes to Salesforce, saving you time, headache, and an extra step.

9. Get Your Sh!t Together

While you’re installing the fancy notetaking apps, don’t sleep on the basics of making sure you have a good meeting. Make sure you’re taking the meeting in a quiet place, not a local coffee shop during its daily 2 o’clock rush. Test your wi-fi connection and make sure the lighting isn’t jarring. Invest in a quality microphone to make sure you’re heard clearly. Remember that your prospect is likely in back-to-back meetings with salespeople all day. The best way to stand out at the end of the day is to be different and blow people away with a strong first impression.

Can you please introduce yourself and take me through your day-to-day?

Absolutely. I’m Daniel from Cience. My main role is the director of backlinks, SEO, and marketing.

My day-to-day at Cience is one of my most fun adventures: I just put my hands on a little bit of everything. We have a YouTube channel right now where we are creating some really good content. We have been focusing a lot, in the past few weeks, on blogs and SEO content optimization. I also manage the backlink team, which is in charge of all of the collaborations we have with great companies – we nurture those relationships daily.

One of the things I enjoy the most is having one-on-ones with my team members to see how they are doing, what they might need, and what's their emotional stage during the day. For example, sometimes the end of the month can be a little bit stressful. Some of them might be struggling with something in the outside world that you might not know about. Sometimes they just need to be heard. You have to take all of that into consideration to run a successful team career and company.

So, that's how I break down my daily agenda.

How do you typically manage your schedule with all those meetings remotely?

Nowadays, all these new tools, software, and systems make our lives a lot easier. At Cience, we are an international company, and some of my team members are in Ukraine, Brazil, and Mexico.

We have to be very organized when it comes to this western time schedule as most of our clients are US based. All of our planning is according to their time zones.

Has Warmly helped with your remote culture?

I met with Warmly’s CEO, Max, who showed backgrounds that can tell a little about yourself to break the ice.

It’s necessary because sometimes you have these interactions with clients where it is a little bit more intense. There is not much time for a quick chat. Warmly helps us have something on the Zoom background and be more personalized.

My team members add tags on their [virtual Warmly] background. Sometimes they can ask questions or leave something they might not [want to] forget about or how they feel. I can read it to understand and see what's going on. It helps take the conversation to a deeper level.

Many people might not feel as comfortable speaking in public. Warmly gives you another platform to express yourself and to let people know how you feel, whether you have any questions, or maybe something about you that others might not know.

That’s the personalized touch that Warmly brings to the table.

How have your external stakeholders and clients reacted to Warmly? How has Warmly changed building rapport with your clients?

It's really fun, to be honest with you!

I put general info in my bio, and clients say – “Oh, you have a marketing job. You like coffee! You enjoy jazz music.”

“Where are you located” is another great topic. That's a great icebreaker. You can start with a little bit of personalization.

We deal with many people from different backgrounds, but most of our clients are CEOs for medium and large corporations. It can be strange sometimes in a call because we might not have regular personal human interaction with each other, and everything might be business. When you have Warmly, you can take your mind off your KPIs, goals, day-to-day, and agenda, and you can have a great time talking. We can have those five minutes that make a huge impact.

We start finding more and more common subjects that we look forward to having another meeting. We might even have a whole meeting without even talking about business. And [it] takes you to the next level that creates loyalty with your customers.

This type of rapport just takes you to a different level they might not have before. I take advantage of all these other platforms and tools that can help make remote work easier.

Selling online is hard. You used to be able to walk into a meeting, plug in your laptop to show the presentation, and just hang out with the prospect. It’s hard to feel like you can be successful at selling virtually when you’re juggling a million things at once.

One thing we’ve heard over and over from users of our Warmly add-on for Zoom is that having a professional background makes them feel like a newscaster. Presentations become more like the salesperson’s personal “Weekend Update.” You’ve got the funny and charismatic lead anchor with great lighting and not a hair out of place. Instead of a boring software demo, prospects got to watch a movie with a lead character, intriguing plot points, twists, and value propositions that help the prospect realize how you will change the way they do business.

Our mission is giving salespeople the basic tools to get creative and display their own personal brand in every call. That means being able to fully customize and adjust your in-meeting experience. Let’s compare how screensharing looked like before and after Warmly:

Before Warmly:

• Lose the face-to-face connection when you have to screenshare in order to demo the software you’re selling.
• Triple and quadruple-checking to make sure you don’t show the wrong tab, like your Salesforce window showing all the other prospects you’re meeting that day.
• Kick yourself that you forgot to hide your Bookmarks Bar, and pray the client doesn’t notice the shortcut to Reddit on your work computer.

After Warmly:

• Hover your visuals over your shoulder like a newscaster. If the prospect wants to learn more about pricing, one click will toss up the pricing slide of your presentation.

• The Warmly app is now integrated with GIPHY so you can instantly throw a reaction GIF over your shoulder to sympathize with your prospect—or just make them laugh!

• Meet your prospect where they are with a dynamic presentation that you don’t have to scroll through in the chronological order. Skip straight to the slides your prospect is most interested in based on your questions.

Conclusion

When your prospect is in back-to-back meetings with other sellers, you want to dazzle them with professional polish. Be remembered as the sharp-looking newscaster who commands both screen and attention.

Interested in reducing screensharing mishaps and uplevel your sales team? Check out our Pricing page to get a sense of what Warmly can do for your business.