It takes a lot to throw expert sales trainer Victor Antonio off his game.
As the founder of the Sellinger Group, a sales training organization, Antonio has spent the past 15 years traveling the world as a highly sought after public speaker and business consultant. He’s written 14 books, hosts live and virtual workshops, and offers webinars on a regular basis.
Antonio is accustomed to life on the go, so the events of 2020 had a huge impact on his full slate of international travel. Learn how Vibe helped Antonio pivot from his original plans to turn what could have been a year of uncertainty into a successful and lucrative leap forward.
The challenge
Having established himself as a leading sales trainer over the course of his career, Antonio’s primary job now consists of speaking engagements.
“I do a lot of public speaking around the world, and then I do workshops on the side,” he explained. “So anything having to do with a sales team that needs sales training, I’m the guy they call. They need their sales team to be motivated—I’m the guy to call.”
Antonio was wrapping up one of his engagements when he learned about the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My first quarter is my biggest run and I was just finishing up my run in Puerto Rico, so March 13 was my last gig,” he said. “March 20, locked down. And I remember telling my wife, ‘There goes 90% of our business,’ because 90% of my business is live sessions.” He said the cancelations began piling up soon after the entire country went into lockdown.
Despite the blow to his plans, Antonio (who describes himself as a “glass half-full type of guy”) began brainstorming ways to keep his business moving forward.
“A little background on me: my family is originally from Puerto Rico, but I was raised in inner city Chicago, and we always had the mindset, ‘You always find a way,’ you know what I mean? You always find a way,” he explained. “So I said to myself, ‘Okay, what do you do now?’ And I thought, ‘All right, let’s go virtual then.’”
How Antonio chose Vibe
Antonio started researching digital whiteboards in late 2018 – early 2019 but was ultimately never convinced to purchase what he saw. The options were either much more expensive than he wanted to pay (as he points out, “I didn’t know if I was going to utilize it as much [yet]”) or they required additional service fees, which he also wanted to avoid.
When he resumed his search in the early 2020, his wife suggested that he see if there were new interactive whiteboards on the market, which is how he found Vibe.
“I looked at the price and said, ‘That’s a more reasonable price as compared to the others,’” he said. “I went back to your website and I looked, and I watched a bunch of [training] videos because they were so simple.”
After that, Antonio was convinced: Vibe Board was the solution he’d been looking for, and he was ready to start his virtual ventures in May 2020.
Related: **What’s an Interactive Whiteboard, and What Does It Do?
Using the Vibe Board to establish virtual presence and know-how
Antonio said the biggest benefit of having the Vibe Board is the virtual presence it gives him with all of his events.
“In terms of business, the amount of webinars I’ve booked, the contracts I’ve closed—it’s just crazy,” he said. “In the two or three months [since first getting the Vibe Board], it’s got to be close to $80,000 or $90,000 worth of business.”
He has been using the board to apply two new business strategies: the first being to do free webinars to help him build up his contact list, the second being to sell more extensive webinars. In both cases, Antonio says that having the Vibe Board adds an extra level of legitimacy and professionalism to what he wants to do, saying, “The board has allowed me to be more creative with the presentation. You’re really limited by how you want to look at it. You can add second and third cameras and really have fun with this thing.”
And he has definitely been having fun. For his popular “Sales After Dark” series, Antonio outfitted his studio with new cameras, boom mics, and other tech devices with the Vibe Board as the centerpiece. Using a streaming platform like Ecamm Live and a switcher connected to the Vibe Board, he’s able to move content between his computer and the board with ease while creating an engaging experience for his audience.
While his goal with “Sales After Dark” was to create free live content a few nights a week, Antonio has found that using the Vibe Board during the livestream has generated even more business for him. He says that after people see it, they reach out to ask if he can make the board work for their team, too. As he puts it, “The board just sells you.”
Related: **How to Turn Your Home Office Into a Place You Love
Antonio’s favorite Vibe features
Antonio’s enthusiasm for finding new ways to use the board has given him plenty of opportunities to discover new favorite features. Vibe’s third-party app integration has worked out especially well for Antonio, particularly since he connected OneDrive.
“[W]ith One Drive I can download the PowerPoint and [other] apps there as well, and use it for Zoom,” he said. “And I’m telling you, the ability to [pull up a PowerPoint] and begin to write, and do this in front of a customer is awesome. They’re like, ‘How do you do that?’ It’s almost like magic to them. Everybody has asked me about this board.”
Another favorite feature? Being able to draw and annotate on any slide—and then immediately clear it all away using the clear strokes feature. He said, “Oh man, that right there is THE FEATURE. As soon as you guys allowed me to do this, that’s it. I can whiteboard this whole thing!”
From a big-picture perspective, what Antonio likes most is that the Vibe Board is, as he describes it, “the ultimate engagement tool” because he can find a ton of ways to maintain his audience’s interest during every presentation.
“I do a course on sales where I talk about presentation, and I talk about pattern interrupts,” he explained. “This board is like the ultimate pattern interrupt because I can talk and then [draw across a slide] and people are like, ‘Oh, he changed something.’ And so I plan that every three to five minutes I make a shift, and the attention and engagement just goes up.”
His plans going forward with Vibe
For a person who was accustomed to the grind of frequent work travel, Antonio said that having a Vibe Board has changed how he sees his work life in the future. He elaborated, “I was constantly on the road, for the last two or three years; I was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this.’ Taking 15-hour flights to South Korea, coming back, spending a couple of days here, and then you’re back to Turkey on the other side of the world…I’d rather make half the money and not travel, and this board—I couldn’t do it without the board. I couldn’t get the money I wanted without the board.”
Anybody who invests in new technology, whether for personal or professional use, wants to know they’ll get their money’s worth out of the product, and Antonio is no different. He said of making that initial investment, “I think the fear is, ‘Can I use it, will I use it, and will it work for me?’ Once you get over that hump, it’s not the price anymore. I know at least 10 people who have bought the board, only because they show it to me. They’re doing exceptionally well with it and they’re using it.”
Put more simply: “If you’re into the virtual game, just buy it. It’s the best return on investment you’re going to get.”
Vibe offers a collaborative solution combining an interactive digital whiteboard and innovative smart software. Increase engagement and efficiency at your brainstorming sessions, virtual training, and classroom sessions by integrating your favorite applications with video conferencing and an infinite, mess-free writing canvas! Collaborate today with Vibe.
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