Meet Our “Influencer of the Week,” Julie Hansen!

Julie Hansen, Founder of Performance Sales and Training

Julie Hansen is a keynote speaker, virtual selling expert, and award-winning author who helps sellers communicate with confidence and influence in a virtual and hybrid world. She is the creator of the Selling on Video Master Class and the author of “Look Me in the Eye,” named Top Sales Book of 2021 by Top Sales World. In addition to a successful career in sales and leadership, Julie worked as a professional actor appearing in over 50 commercials, films, and television shows, including HBO’s Sex & The City.

Connect with Julie on LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, or through her website.

Julie’s Insights

Trust is the foundation of any working relationship. Yet while your credibility is no different on virtual meetings than face-to-face meetings, many salespeople behave on camera in a way that undermines their efforts to build trust—and casts doubts on their credibility.

Studies show that humans decide many things about another person in the first few seconds of meeting them, including whether or not you are trustworthy. Much of that decision is influenced by the nonverbal signals you’re sending. On virtual calls, most people send a signal that says, “proceed with caution” as opposed to “you can trust me.” One of the ways we establish trust is through eye contact. Direct eye contact conveys not only trustworthiness but confidence, friendliness, and approachability as well. And averting your eyes is associated with guilt, lying, or a lack of confidence. Yet jump on any virtual meeting and what do you see? A bunch of people staring at their screens! Some sellers try to split the difference by shifting their gaze from camera to screen, screen to notes, then back to the camera. Instead of looking engaged, sellers now appear shifty-eyed and suspicious – another credibility killer!

Experts say we should aim for making direct eye contact two-thirds of the time in order to build a relationship. Most sellers fall well short of this on virtual calls, where eye contact is likely more important than when we are meeting in person. Here’s why:

If you were sitting across from your customer in person and broke eye contact with them, your customer would know you are still engaged. Not so on a virtual call. When you look down or away customers wonder: Are you checking your phone, your email, or reading from a script? There are also powerful negative associations with looking down, like submissiveness, guilt or uncertainty that can erode trust and keep relationships from forming.

The camera is the eyes of your customer. If you want to establish a connection with your customer and build trust, you must look at the camera. Not your screen. Not your slides. But your camera. So why aren’t you making better eye contact on video? There are a million excuses: As a human, you’re drawn to the human face. Your camera doesn’t line up with the images on your screen. You don’t want to miss any cues. Your mind can even trick you into thinking you are making eye contact when you’re looking at your customer’s image. But excuses and good intentions score you no points on video. To build trust, you must learn to make direct eye contact easily and naturally with the camera. This requires dedicated practice and feedback to counter this strong urge to look down, as well as the knowledge of how to read your customer if you are looking at the camera. Without these skills, sellers will continue to find their eyes repeatedly drawn downward – along with their credibility.