Motivate with Remote Whiteboard Collaboration

With the enormous advancement in technology of the past several years, especially in the field of telecommunications, the distance between people around the world has been significantly shortened. Working with team members who are located across the globe has became standard for most of us. While we use various devices, apps and services for communication within our teams, we often miss out on using the same effective approaches to communicate with our customers.

According to research by Corporate Visions, 61% of salespeople conduct at least half of their meetings over the phone or web. It’s necessary to adjust our means of communication to reach to the clients when we can’t rely on the benefits of face-to-face meetings, especially body language. Often our nonverbal communication has the most power in getting the message through. Having verbal-only communication is simply not engaging enough for modern client communication and reps stand in from of a new challenge, finding their own way of being memorable and convincing.

Remote whiteboard collaboration has become a good answer to the rising need for better visual communication. It can be used to eliminate limitations from a remote team, allowing you to work together regardless of the team member or client’s location.

Remote whiteboarding creates a great environment for active participation. People find drawing and sketching very natural, so seeing how someone draws explanations of concepts grabs attention. Visual storytelling is a great tactic to engage with the prospect and understand their needs better. Studies have shown that people are visual learners meaning that writing and drawing engage the brain in ways that typing and texting don’t. They can increase a person’s ability to think creatively, solve problems, and retain knowledge.

However, 87% of salespeople engage prospects or customers rarely or never with visuals, according to the survey conducted by Corporate Visions. Many companies have started to recognize the opportunity to differentiate in this area. They admit that interactive storytelling techniques would not only make a material difference and move deals forward, but also that it’s the most effective technique to move the prospective or current customer to action.

When trying to find a good solution that would allow remote attendees to participate in whiteboard sessions, it’s important to find a tool that is not only interactive, but allows multiple users to make changes in real time.

Since you’re all together on the same canvas, all your ideas and conclusions are visible in real-time. You can also save your projects for later and add to them if you come up with more ideas or examples. There’s no more need to keep meeting minutes or take photos of an office whiteboard to have successful remote collaboration.

Remote whiteboard collaboration platforms help companies to cut travel costs significantly. Business trips can be pretty expensive when adding up the cumulative costs, like accomodation and meals not to mention time. When you’re using a digital whiteboard you’re not only cutting the need to travel, but the travel costs too. Many solutions allow inviting participants for free, so even if you have a paid account and your customer doesn’t, you’re still able to fully collaborate together and they won’t face any discomfort even without an account.

Of course, most of the solutions are not free, although they may offer some free trials or plans which usually have some limitations. Using collaborative whiteboards for remote meetings is much friendlier for the budget than any conferencing solution. And more importantly, they are mobile just like you. You can conduct your meeting from the office, home or your favorite spot outdoors.