Your Camera Is Closing (or Killing) Deals

Audit Your Zoom/Teams/Meet Presence in 10 Minutes

Most of your sales calls, client reviews and discovery meetings happen in a little box on a screen.

Leadership coach Ken Golde (check out his podcast episode below) puts it like this, when you stop talking, you don’t stop communicating. Your face, eyes and posture keep going the whole time the other person is talking. Prospects notice, even if they can’t explain why the call felt off.

Here’s an exercise to try to see what they see and quickly audit how you really appear on the screen:

1. 🎬 Record a 10-minute practice call.
Grab a coworker to play the prospect. Ask them to spend 3-4 minutes describing a problem while you listen, then let you respond. Hit record in Zoom, Meet or Teams.

2. 🔇 Watch it on mute first.
No audio, just body language. Look for:

• Camera height: Is it at eye level or are they looking at you from a strange angle?

• Framing: Your eyes should sit about a third of the way down the screen.

• Eye contact: When they talked, were you looking at the lens, or at your notes, your phone, or yourself?

• Distractions: Count how many times you glanced away or typed.

3. 🎧 Listen without video.
Close your eyes and just listen to yourself. Do you sound excited? Are you talking really fast? Did you interrupt them? Would you want to keep talking to you?

4. 🔁 Count your reflections.
How many times did you play back what you heard before pitching? (“So the real issue is X, and you need it by Q2?”) Aim for at least two of those instances per call. If you didn’t have any, it means you were waiting to talk and not listening.

5. 📋 Score it and fix one thing.
Rate yourself 1-5 on each area: setup, eye contact, focus, tone and reflections. Fix your lowest score this week, then re-record next week and watch the improvements.

The prospect paid you before the call started. Not with money, with their time. Showing up fully is how you make it worth it. Hear more about this in Ken’s episode below.

Ken Golde, leadership coach, keynote speaker and former Hollywood film director, discusses why shifting your mindset changes how you sell, lead and show up under pressure. Ken explains why the real battle is how you choose to think instead of what happens to you, and shows why the best closers are calm, aware and able to turn rejection, pressure and bad moods into momentum. Tune in.

Yoodli

Yoodli is an AI communication coach that watches you talk and tells you what’s working and what isn’t. You can practice with AI roleplays or upload a recording of a real call and get feedback on things like filler words, pacing and eye contact.

It’s a good fit for sellers, account managers and marketers who spend a lot of their time on camera.

👉 Worth a look if you ran this week’s Zoom/Teams/Meet audit and want a second set of eyes. Start with the free plan and upload one recent call.

TRY IT NOW