Mastering Virtual Communication - Part Two

But remember, in the virtual world, everything is compounded. It's compounded more difficult and the challenges that you're facing. So how do I counterbalance and find all that? Now those are just some principles that are the foundation to you being successful virtually. Now let me mention some communications statistics, I think, are always important to keep in front of you.

[00:01:24] Don't let go of these. In a face to face situation, you have 30 seconds to engage that audience. That's all you get is 30 seconds. Anything after that far more difficult in the virtual world. You have eight seconds, so if you have not said something in the first eight seconds in this virtual meeting that you're doing on your podcast, on your conference call, that engages the audience more difficult.

[00:01:52] So you don't have the time to say, good afternoon, guys. Let's give everybody a chance to settle in. You've already lost because now I'm doing my email. I'm trying to catch up on what I need to get done.

[00:02:02]The second statistic I want you to become aware of is what I call the four to six-minute kind of a rule. Every four to six minutes, you have got to change it up. Now in the face-to-face world, guys that could mean stand up, sit down. If you're doing something up on a big stage, move from the left to the right of the right to the left move forward or backward, depending on what you're trying to accomplish and our virtual world, it could mean stop and ask a question.

[00:02:30] It could mean change slides. Anything that you can do now, this principle is based on a typical 30-minute American sitcom. If you study one of those guys, you'll see that every four to six minutes, you typically get an advertisement. The producers are brilliant at keeping you involved in that 30-minute story.

[00:02:55] So I want you to have that same type of brilliance and say every 46 minutes, I change. I need to change it up. I'll get systems engineers who will come in and say to me, Bart; we are going to do a. Demo. It's a four-hour demo with a customer. My response is you're crazy. Who's going to be looking at a demo seated in front of a computer for four hours.

[00:03:20] This is just not going to happen. It's hard to keep a focus for an hour 30 minutes. You're pushing it. So if that's the case, how do I create that kind of interaction and banter? Keep them focused and change it up every four to six minutes.

[00:03:37] The other thing I want you to remember, and this goes across the board. I find this statistic fascinating. Our face to face communication really takes up. People will argue anywhere from 70 to about 95% of what you do on a day to day basis. A very small percentage is what you and I would call public speaking or presenting.

[00:04:01] That's not the number I want you to remember. The number I want you to remember is that all of that 78 to 95%, 40 to 60% of what you communicate, gets forgotten. So let's just take a look at this podcast, guys. Now, this is roughly going to be 30 minutes. I'm going to have to face the fact that 50% of what I tell you will forget.

[00:04:30] So the question for me is not, how do I slam dunk more information into this podcast for you? I could speak so fast that you could not keep up. That doesn't serve me. It doesn't serve you. So the question is, how do I communicate in this 30 minutes with you so that you walk out the door and share a principle or two with someone else?

[00:04:55] If you're driving in your car on your way to work and you got to work and say, I just listened to a podcast from Bart, and he talked about this one principle. I think we should try to integrate that into what we're doing. Then we both win. That's what I want for you.

[00:05:10]Now, I've laid out some challenges that we've got to overcome. And I laid out some statistics that give us a foundation to build from. So now, let's really take a look at the virtual meeting structure. Now, when I say that, most of you will think about the actual virtual meeting you're doing.

[00:05:31] We're doing this on Tuesday from 12 to one. That's all you're thinking about, but if you're going to communicate virtually if you're going to communicate successfully. In that communication in that medium, that channel, you have to have three aspects to your overall meeting structure. There's the pre-meeting setup.

[00:05:58] There's the actual meeting, and there's the post-meeting interaction. So if I'm doing a conference call, I would encourage you to have these three. If you're doing a webcast, Microsoft teams, a zoom type of a platform, you've got to have all three, the pre-meeting setup, the actual meeting, and the post-meeting interaction.

[00:06:22] Now let me break each one of those apart. I think these are critical to your success. The pre virtual meeting is, in essence, what most people are; salespeople will call it your discovery call. It's getting on with the person who's inviting you in. It's getting with the person who's driving this idea that they want you to speak to their teams.

[00:06:49] It understands their pain, their issues, and their concerns. Now, if you're not driving and just listening, you have a pen and paper. I want you to write this down. No pain, no value, no business, no pain, no value, no business. So during this discovery call, you've got to be able to bring forward, pull out, find out, discover what the three major issues, challenges, pains, concerns that you're trying to solve are.

[00:07:19] You've got to be able to connect your virtual meeting to some type of an issue. Otherwise, why should people listen to you? I love the guy that says, I want you to come in, demo your product, your solution for us and show us everything. And I will tell that person that's a failure, just looking for a place to happen.

[00:07:43] Cause they're not going to link it to anything, and you're not going to be successful. You've got to be able to link it to pain and issue a challenge or a problem. So that's the first piece. This pre virtual meeting is your discovery. The second is to confirm and layout what the meeting logistic ground rules are.

[00:08:08] Now. Some of those are pretty simple. You can make them as complex or as simple as you like for me, I always start on time, and I will tell that person, Mr. Smith, when I come in next week, I will most importantly, I will start at noon, and I will end by one in the afternoon. If that's the time slot you've given me because most people are going, Oh, it'll take him 10 minutes to get started.

[00:08:32] Nope. I start right on time. that's extremely important in this virtual world that you set that precedent that you become known for starting on time and ending on time. Now other ground rules could be at the bottom of the hour. I'm going to open it up for questions. I like to do that after 30 minutes.

[00:08:52] That's just one way of changing it up if the group is small. If I have less than 15 people, that I've got a list of names who are on there, and I will ask very specific questions, and I will call them by name. Cause I'm trying to drive interaction, whatever ground rules you decide to set up whatever those are, to make your meeting work, hold to them.

[00:09:19] There is. A tremendous book by Roger Schwartz called the skilled facilitator by Roger Schwartz. It's a pretty thick book. I think you may find value in that when he gets into some of the ideas around facilitating and organizing the structure of what your meeting looks like. It's a great reference.

[00:09:43] I use it often. The other thing that you want to ...