Is it just as effective to do NEW BUSINESS development virtually?

Covid has altered the dynamics of how we do business. As a leader in a decision making position, when you are tasked with making strategic decisions about new business development, building relationships with industry partners, customers, vendors, etc. can those initial contacts be made just as effectively virtually? In other words, are initial contacts that are virtual as effective as initial contacts that are face to face?

Kindly answer this briefly in long format and cite any sources. 

Yes, it is just as effective to do new business development virtually and yes, initial contacts that are virtual are just as effective as initial contacts that are face to face.

Some of the key reasons that to why it is just as effective to do new business development virtually may be due to the following reasons;

• It helps to significantly lower the cost and save time.
• Virtual meetings make it easier to say no, especially if the business requirements are not favourable.
• It allows for increased access to new potential clients much faster than face to face meetings.
• Virtual meetings tend to allow for better demonstrations of data and information.

Step-by-step explanation

Yes, it is just as effective to do new business development virtually and yes, initial contacts that are virtual are just as effective as initial contacts that are face to face.

Some of the key reasons that to why it is just as effective to do new business development virtually may be due to the following reasons;

• It helps to significantly lower the cost and save time. To do face to face contacts, both parties would need to travel back and forth each time they want to engage, this often tends to waste a lot of time and financial resources that could have otherwise been used for other essential activities in the organization. Note that the aim of most organizations is to ensure that costs and expenditures are reduced as much as possible and therefore if such initial contacts could have helped reduced cost and save time then it would be wise to do it virtually.
• Virtual meetings make it easier to say no, especially if the business requirements are not favourable. Note that it is not always that the conditions presented by both parties would be favourable, when this happens it is important to eliminate situations that may push you to accept conditions that would place you at a disadvantage. Virtual meetings tend to present this advantage over face to face meetings since it would be much easier to be swayed using face to face meetings. However, virtual meetings would help enhance objectivity.
• It allows for increased access to new potential clients much faster than face to face meetings. Note that meeting remotely through virtual means tends to enable an individual to tap into potentially new and diverse contacts from anywhere in the world that would significantly help to enhance business operations.
• Virtual meetings tend to allow for better demonstrations of data and information. For parties or stakeholders that tend to take a more technical approach to business operations having a face to face meeting would not be sufficient since most information would only be presented by word of mouth. Virtual meetings however tend to present multiple tools and features such as whiteboards, surveying features and many more that make it more convenient to express and capture ideas and information.