Don't let this happen to you

The Conference Group wants to be your audio conferencing company for affordable web and phone conferencing services. Imagine sitting down with the CEO of a large out-of-town corporation whose business you've been wooing for years. Despite your company's small size, the time and climate are right, and at last they are exploring the option of partnering with a growing, hungry young company just like yours. The budget is a bit tight and it doesn't seem practical or necessary to splurge on third-party audio conferencing services. Web meetings must certainly also be out of the question. A telephone conference will suffice, you tell yourself.

The phone meeting commences and you make your presentation to this exciting, potential new partner. You've come prepared with a slew of statistics and impressive numbers about your company's performance, customer satisfaction stats, financial growth and future projections. You explain in detail what these figures mean to his bottom line, and that your service offerings can merge seamlessly with his business plan. There are a lot of numbers for your fellow businessman to digest, but he seems genuinely interested. You hang up, positive that the contract is all but in the bag.

Later the same week, your competitor launches a meeting with the same CEO. She posts similar stats to yours and gives an almost identical presentation in her Internet-based videoconference with the CEO. Her confident appearance and demeanor and the eye-catching, illustrative graphs she uses to make her point impress her prospective partner. All else being pretty much equal, the CEO welcomes your competitor's business without hesitation.

It's hard to tell how often this scenario has played out in the corporate world. Audio conferencing services, web conferences and Internet-based meetings are the tools of big business, and no matter what your size, you can't afford not to meet potential clients on their terms.