Virtual Events - Connecting Minds, Capturing Ideas!

My niece, a 2nd grader, who is not a keen schoolgoer wakes up fresh every Monday for her virtual classroom. We were surprised about what excited this kid when everybody else in the family had Monday blues. Her class advisor had this excellent segment called ‘Motivating Mondays’ where kids dressed up in non-uniforms and were asked to talk for a minute about the attire that they were wearing. This motivated kids to come online first and show what they are wearing and talk (read boast) about it! On Fridays, they also had ‘Friday Finish’ where their entire weekly activities are evaluated, and the top 5 students were given special remarks and appreciation.

This small yet powerful idea made kids kickstart their week in full excitement, keep it up throughout the week and finish it off with good results.

In the COVID era, where every work, school, celebration, wedding, and even funeral occur in the virtual space, direct selling businesses see them as a prospective tool to leverage the best results out of their distributors and customers. From choosing the right tool to winding up meetings, it is important to keep the participants engaged throughout the period.

Why Virtual Events?

Communicating with your field distributors and customers who are miles apart from you can be laborious especially if you have many verticals and departments to take care of. Bringing them together in the online space can be helpful in reducing your workload and at the same time improve the spirit of working together even in remote working scenarios.

Mini events, virtual get-togethers, periodic meetings, etc. can be helpful to increase customer retention and create engagement in the workplace. This will also help your team feel that they have enough support and backing from their sponsors. Having said that, it is important to keep a time limit for every meeting. Beating around the bush could lead to losing interest for participants and thus bring a negative impact to the meeting.

Compared to long hours of phone calls, chats and emails, virtual video meetings are found to be more powerful. It could enhance distributor engagement and customer retention where they get to put in their ideas or concerns easily and effectively. Just as how a long telephonic conversation can replace a simple tap on the shoulder, getting to see someone even virtually could help enhance a lot of factors like building a rapport with your distributors, understanding their issues better, giving them instantaneous support, helping them develop their skills and competency, encouraging healthy competition within the team, etc.

Smaller the Better!

Stanford researchers have recently found out that excess virtual meetings lead to a phenomenon called ‘Zoom Fatigue’. The term was coined and the study was conducted further to umpteen number of ‘Zoom’ meetings and virtual events happening each day in every industry. Virtual meetings are mentally taxing, there’s no debate on it. But it depends on the host to make it productive for the attendees and themselves. For this, there has to be a preset agenda and itinerary for the meeting to avoid boredom and find effective results from the event. Or, have engaging conversations, quizzes, or fun chats in between as a breather.

Many a time when the meeting takes longer than it is supposed to be, or, just one part of the attendees only actively participate which might sound Greek and Latin to others, we have seen many participants turning their videos off and mics on mute. In most cases, participants on the other side could be doing a different business or dozing off. In such cases, it is better to make attendance voluntary where their presence is helpful but not necessary. Otherwise, you are causing a hindrance to their work by making them part of a meeting that adds no value to their performance or productivity.

Making use of virtual meetings for training, overview, engagements, and announcements can give an impression to your distributors and customers as a trusted authority than sounding just business. Appreciating one among the team members for their achievements would make them feel acknowledged, encouraging them to perform better. Bringing network marketing leaders and trainers as guest speakers such as would be helpful for other distributors to take lessons and inspiration from them.

Long Time, No See!

Direct selling businesses, which are known for their face-to-face and in-person strategies, find virtual meetings to be the most beneficial and effective post-pandemic. The best thing about conducting small and frequent online meetings is that it fills the void that ‘working online’ has gotten us into. It bridges the gap between distributors and customers who work in different parts of the globe and in different time zones. Most importantly, it stops causing communication gaps and errors that could take place through emails or chat messages. Talking to someone directly can also diminish misunderstandings and frictions that are bound to happen in a workplace.

The world of direct selling has explored every possibility of virtual meetings to fuel their businesses and keep their distributors closer to the brand. No matter how much ever technology evolves and innovations take place, it is human nature to stay connected with their peers and depend on each other for something or the other. At a time when each of us is caged in different circumstances post-COVID, virtual events and meetings come as a blessing to stay connected with each other from any part of the world.