By Ellen Barnes Pfiffner, EBP Business Consulting
Experience has shown that customers who felt encouraged and important during challenging times are retained, and express their loyalty with purchases after the crisis period. We believe virtual briefings can be delivered effectively because they are highly customized, personalized and relatively small events. While many other customer events are cancelled or postponed, the briefing program has a key role in supporting customers and account teams during the pandemic.
In this article, the fourth of the series, we are going to discuss best practices for effectively facilitating virtual briefings that build relationships, keep your company top of mind, and fulfill your customers’ expectations.
In my experience, virtual media has a way of magnifying our performance. If we have an agenda that has been approved by both internal and external participants and everyone gets to participate and feel heard, the attendees will feel good about the virtual briefing. If not, the faux pas and glitches will be glaring. To add to the complexity, many of the same facilitation challenges found in face-to-face briefings are also heightened in virtual briefings because you are not getting the level of feedback you would if participants were all in your center. Issues such as optimizing engagement, managing expectations, and surfacing issues in the midst of potential technology snafus requires facilitators to refine their skills.
EBP Tips
The facilitator’s role starts with supporting the development of a stellar agenda. Virtual agendas are shorter and are specific to the customer’s needs. Note, the customer’s immediate needs and interest may be very different now than when the briefing was first booked. For example, the goal of the virtual briefing may now be to provide customers with information they need to mitigate the crisis they are having in their business, or to use your products and solutions for disaster recovery.
A technical partner
In addition to the content, managing technology snafus is critical. I recommend the facilitator partner with a technical support person. The technical person’s contact information – cell and email address - should be shared on all pre-briefing materials. If anyone – internal or customer - has trouble connecting, the technical partner can work with them to resolve the issues. This process ensures the facilitator is not distracted with troubleshooting. The technical partner can alert the facilitator that a technical issue is resolved and cue the facilitator to welcome someone to the meeting when they dial in. For high-stakes briefings, a best practice is to have the technical partner offer a test call the day before the event.
Making a connection and monitoring engagement
Launch the virtual tool thirty minutes before the start of the briefing. It will give people time to make the connection and become comfortable with the platform. Plus, it allows people to chit-chat and communicate the same way they would when entering your center.
Open the virtual briefing with a general welcome to everyone. To reinforce engagement, the first agenda item should be an orientation to the platform. Next make introductions. Be sure to ask for, capture, and record the customers’ expectations for the briefing. Review the agenda and seek a consensus on the topics.
Welcome and Introductions
Introduce yourself as the Briefing Manager/facilitator. Here is a tool I use for virtual training that is transferable to briefings:
People have a greater opportunity to multi-task when they are participating virtually. Making a personal connection and monitoring the engagement of the participants is important.
A tip, I learned from Mandel Communications, is to develop a chart to track people’s participation. The document is for my use only and is not shared. It may be one page or several pages depending on the number of customers participating in the briefing. Here is an example of my tracking document, you may design one that meets your needs.
Reading their LinkedIn profile before the briefing tells me more about the participants. I find it helpful to see a photo of the person and to have their title, company and location in front of me. I also note any special interests or sensitivities on my chart. I make a checkmark when I see they have arrived on the call. I also add a checkmark after I have asked them to introduce themselves. I add a tally stroke each time they participate. Plus, I note their specific questions. If I notice someone has not participated, I will ask them a question or solicit their feedback or opinion. When calling on someone, it is always important to say their name FIRST, then ask the question. In summary, do everything virtually more purposefully to establish trust. To foster focus, avoid long presentations and instead use the time for exchange of ideas. Keep participants engaged with questions and interactive technology tools, such as polls, word clouds, marking up a graphic with our virtual pens, short videos, whiteboarding, etc. Keep conversations concise and quick, and ask smart questions. Don’t be afraid to use humor, but realize that people may not know your personal style or detect the arch of an eyebrow or wink to indicate a joke.
Customer Insight
The next topic on the agenda is customer insight, sometimes referred to as Voice of the Customer. In advance, be sure to invite the customer to give an overview of their company, situation, or company’s status. In addition to gaining a better understanding of the customer and their challenges, it has the ancillary benefit of increasing interactions.
An ABPM World Class Characteristic is “Voice of the Customer (VOC) is captured during briefings informs larger corporate VOC initiatives, which may shape solutions development and business strategy.” This is especially true now! With all the change occurring globally, listening and collecting customer feedback and insights is critical. Some tools, like BriefingEdge, have a field for communicating customer insights to those who need to know in your company. NetApp is using a tool called SendSteps to make the collection of Voice of the Customer interactive.
On topic and on time
Engagement increases when everyone’s objectives are understood, there is a consensus on the agenda, and timeframes are followed. In addition, the briefing is stronger when the facilitator introduces each presenter, summarizes key points frequently, and ties them back to the meeting objectives reinforcing the story.
Introduce discussion leaders and executives. Be sure to link sections of agenda with smooth, natural segues.
Reinforce logical agenda flow by bridging one speaker to the next.
Utilize transitions to navigate unexpected changes.
Drive to the objective with a balance of objective/subjective info.
When summarizing significant amounts of information, try to reference three key points. More than three points will not be remembered,
This is a time for authenticity. Leverage the 3 Hs - speak humbly, honestly and from the heart.
What to do if…?
When facilitating virtually, you need to be listening carefully for a drop in energy, noticeable delays in replies, half-hearted responses, and silence when conversation is called for. If you sense that people have become disengaged, you can do one of several things:
Suggest it is time for a 5-minute stretch break. During the break you can talk or message with the account team to get their input.
Ask the customer, ”What is the most productive use of the remaining time?”
If you feel the discussion is going off track, refer back to the meeting objectives and agenda and let participants know that they have a few options, which include:
“Parking” the item that has taken you off track for handling later.
Skipping another agenda item to have time to finish the discussion or planning a follow-on meeting with some or all participants.
Extending the length of the briefing is rarely a preferred option.
Closing
A strong closing is an important component of an effective briefing. Plan time at the end of the briefing to provide a summary, ensure customers’ objectives have been met, and review action items to reach clarity on next steps. Finally, share where additional materials (such as surveys, white papers, etc.) will be available - for example, in an app or customer portal.
Ellen Barnes Pfiffner, M.Ed., CMM – Ellen is the principal of EBP Business Consulting and offers benchmarking, tools, and consulting to executive briefing programs globally, on-site ABPM Competency courses, and customized training programs including Facilitation Skills. EBP Business Consulting offers on-site and virtual ABPM Core Competency courses, benchmarking and consulting to executive briefing programs.
Note: My mother named me Ellen, our family name is Barnes, and I married Tim Pfiffner. When I started consulting to Executive Briefing Programs 15 years ago, I just knew I had to name my company EBP Business Consulting. I welcome your questions and feedback. Contact me online or at 214.789.3571.