When you start to consider all of the different businesses that are out there from a sales point of view, you know any organization needs to get sales people on the ground to drum up business. And, even though there are still uncharted areas in faraway locations, for the most part you can have your employees hop into an airport and then be off to any location around the globe in a matter of hours. However, with costs rising constantly and the challenges of flying becoming more difficult all of the time, doesn’t it make sense to think about an alternative option such as with video conferencing?
Why wait?
As CNN discusses in a piece regarding waiting around in airports, the fact of the matter is TSA and other security requirements are improving all of the time. However, just because they are improving from where they once were does not mean that they are the most efficient from a business point of view. Rather than dealing with the average anticipated wait times, you could be spending that time on actual work, networking, organizing and planning, and etc.
When an average time to arrive before your flight is still recommended at two hours, and the international time is at a staggering three hours, you need to rethink your travel day. This is before you even account for the time to commute and park as well as the time it will take you to get out of the airport at your destination and get to a hotel. The fact of the matter is you have far too many things to do as a sales person than to just burn a day (or multiple days) stuck around in airports waiting to travel. By having the opportunity to jump into a conference with your clients in only a few seconds then you should absolutely save countless hours and you could be making considerable progress doing other more important tasks.
Managing more than one client
If you happen to live in a world where you can keep all of your clients lined up on different days, then you have a fairly nice position and should be thankful. However, if you are in a position where you have multiple contacts and clients always trying to get a hold of you, then you should feel comfortable with being able to service them all. In a video conference based operation you can absolutely ensure that everyone who needs to get a hold of you has the ability to do so in a short period of time. And, instead of being caught on end for hours as work piles up at your desk, you could be on the conference call and see the other person face to face with a video conferencing Solution like BlueJeans in less time than it would take you to find parking at an airport.
Costs are becoming uncontrollable
The costs of traveling may or may not be growing too high when you consider things like inflation. However, they are becoming very large items nonetheless. Even though you might not be able to save tremendous amounts of money by making certain cutbacks, when you consider the costs of staying at hotels, putting your sales people inside of airplanes or other modes of travel, and even paying all of their meals (plus the clients’) then you can see significant savings in a short period of time. When it is all said and done, the point of a business is to generate revenue and create wealth for the owners and the shareholders. That is why you need to be comfortable when it comes to looking at the expenses column from an accounting statement and cutting out some of the most exorbitant costs.
In order to truly tap into the power of competing in the current century, you can’t just continue to pay the costs of travel. According to Certify, however, you have to be aware of the costs of time being stolen from the operation and not just the monetary amount that is being taken away due to travel as well. Just because you may or may not be able to afford the costs of traveling from a dollars and cents point of view, it doesn’t mean you should be wasting your time gallivanting back and forth just to touch base with others.
Organizations cannot continue to do what they have always done and then assume they will be able to get ahead. Instead of dealing with the same way of doing business and expecting to see results that will get your company ahead, perhaps it is actually the time to start considering video conferencing as one of your top options to continue competing in a global world. Provide top of the line service to your clients and do it in a way that will allow your employees to have time savings as well.
Photograph by Maarten Visser