There are millions of apps available that promise the world to you, but how many apps are you really going to use, and how do you evaluate to determine which apps are best for you? As someone who is asked by his coaching and speaking clients to find the most relevant – and most profitable – apps, I wanted to help you wade through the noise and share my top 10 apps that you can use to make your virtual selling even more effective.
I use each of these apps at least once a day, and I don’t know what I would do without them in my work. Some have costs, and some are free, but all are valuable to me – and I predict, they will be to you as well!
Remove.bg – I use this tool whenever I want to remove the background of a picture with people in it so I can add it transparently to a graphic. This is a great way to personalize YouTube or other video thumbnails, or to add yourself to any photo.
Canva.com – speaking of graphics, Canva is a terrific tool to use on your desktop or mobile device for fast (or slow) image editing. I use the brand kit so I can make sure to use my exact blues, oranges and white colors in my work.
Otter.ai – When I have a conversation with a prospect, or even a conversation with a friend or referral source, I often will record it because we will share smart things that we want to refer to later. Instead of just sharing the video, I like to drop the audio into Otter and let it transcribe the text for me, and then I like to immediately share it with the person I spoke with. In my in-person meetings, I’ll ask permission to record and set my phone in the middle of the table so it picks up both halves of the conversation. And if I’m a guest on someone else’s podcast (something I recommend you do so you can share value with their audience), I’ll record what I say to have to refer back to later on. Zoom Enterprise has Otter built into it but I don’t always host every Zoom meeting I’m part of.
VTT to Word – A VTT file is a transcript file, and sometimes I get one of these from Zoom or somewhere else and they’re hard to manipulate. When I get one of them, I find that using this little tool makes it super simple to do. Otter can export to Word too, so I find myself using this less often, but when I do use it, it just works perfectly for me, and I recommend it to all my clients.
WaveApps.com – when you want to send an invoice that isn’t in Microsoft Word, and you want it to look professionally done, use WaveApps. There’s no monthly fee, they just take a small percentage for ACH and credit card payments – and no fee at all if you take a check from your clients.
Vidyard – I send a good amount of video messages. Vidyard is currently my favorite tool for doing this, because it has a browser extension, I can include a transcript, and it easily creates a graphic that goes into my email as well.
Streamyard – I do a lot of live video conversations every week with brilliant people (on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube if you want to take a look), and I need a tool that works without much effort. Streamyard allows me to connect to those three networks at the same time, and I can produce my show while it’s happening – or I could hire someone to do it for me – without much effort.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator – If I want to find and group companies and people, I would be lost without Sales Navigator. I have lists of Accounts (companies and organizations) and Leads (people) that I use every day to keep up with, to make comments on their LinkedIn posts, and to see what is happening in their world. It makes my nearly 14,000 person LinkedIn network WAY more manageable.
What app am I missing that you use every day? You can add it to my growing list of suggested apps.