An expert on meeting remotely, all the way from South Africa

Can you give a brief overview of yourself?

I live in South Africa. I grew up here. For my whole career, I’ve been in sales. My wife and I started working remotely at the beginning of 2020 - just before the pandemic actually hit.

I worked for Crossover for a while. Then, I started working at OneMob, and it was an immediate fit! We clicked really nicely. 

On a personal level, my wife and I like hiking and wine tasting. I lived in Cape Town for 17 years before moving back to Port Elizabeth. There, I got into wine tasting and took some wine tasting courses. It's more than just appreciation at this point! 

How did you find Warmly and what drew you to Warmly? 

I first got to learn about Warmly when I connected with Max Greenwald on LinkedIn. Warmly is effectively a video tool, and OneMob is a video sales enablement platform. The two kind of went together. 

I used Warmly to help me stand out – it was different. OneMob and Warmly worked very nicely together. Later on, I started using it on my Zoom calls. 

You can always create something in Google slides, but Warmly was just really easy to use. I created my virtual business cards on Warmly and downloaded them. I have a couple different versions. 

You're an account executive. How do your clients typically react to your virtual business card?

Oh, they love it! Half of the people I talk to ask me about it. Usually their responses are, “That's really cool! Did you make that yourself?”. 

It serves as an interesting talking point and ice breaker. My card shows that I'm from South Africa and that I like wine tasting. Since it gives you something to talk about, the first thirty seconds of the call feels so much smoother. 

What Zoom best practices can you share?

I want to be very present in my meetings. I have four monitors, but during my calls I only keep one or two on. 

I also record all of my Zoom meetings so I can really concentrate on the call rather than taking notes. I find this allows me to focus on understanding the client. I used to do the same trick with lectures in school. 

Another tip is to engage the person by looking them in the eyes. There’s an immediate disconnect when you’re looking at their image instead of looking into the camera. 

I also use Krisp. for noise cancellation. I make sure that my Krisp is on because then I know I can focus. I don't have to worry about dog barks or the neighbors mowing the lawn. No matter what is happening around me, I know that my customer can't hear the noise – only the sound of my voice.

How else have you gotten the most out of Warmly? How has it impacted your pre-meeting prep?

I do use [Calendar Signatures] quite a bit. If I go to my calendar, I can see a link or URL to their LinkedIn. I can just quickly pop in there, have a look at what the person has done, and get a little bit of background. It definitely saves on that preparation time. 

Sometimes I have back-to-back meetings, and I've only got three minutes before the next one. I don't have to worry because I know the info that I need will be there.

It’s been great chatting with you; Any final thoughts?

In the last two years, we had this huge push to all work from home, and we only used Zoom. And now, it’s kind of a hybrid where a lot of people are required to still go into the office some days and work from home other days. Remote work had a steep growth and may be slightly down now, but I think it will just start going up again from here on out. 

It is really important to be confident in your Zoom meetings, and Warmly just gives you that warmth – knowing that you are standing out and that you are a step ahead of the rest. That is a skill – not everybody can do Zoom meetings effectively.

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