In November, our experienced colleagues from different departments have hosted numerous online webinars. These digital events served an important purpose – they familiarized international development experts and companies with DevelopmentAid services, current conditions generated by COVID-19, and tips & tricks on how to overcome difficulties. In a time when business travel is almost non-existent, webinars offer a great way to interact with potential clients and maintain awareness of our business and its services. Internally, webinars are actually a great way for hosts to build on their confidence skills and get out of their comfort zone. After all, online webinars are not as easy as they seem – making sure all technical aspects work, discussing with participants through a screen, maintaining rapport, and conveying your message is a tough task! This is why they are a great exercise to master online oratory abilities and learn something new.
The past month, our colleagues from Career Center has conducted webinars on CV tailoring, CV formats, and support for individual experts, hosted by Irina Bondarenco. A regular guest of these webinars was Tatiana Bostan from DRS, who co-hosts and discusses topics like:
“the structure, purpose and specificity of the most used donor CV templates: EC (EuropeAid), WB, ADB, AfDB. We have also provided information on how the experts can better structure the Cover Letter in order to stand out from the crowd” amongst many others.
Natalia Gorbunova and Eugenia Botezatu, both Career Advisors, have also had the chance to conduct webinars. This experience opens up new perspectives and allows them to directly communicate with potential clients, which is why more online events with the participation of Career Advisors is planned for the following months.
Likewise, there were numerous webinars conducted in the Corporate Sales Department. Hosting online events proved to be a transparent and informative way of familiarizing potential companies with DevelopmentAid’s services. Sergiu Casu, director of the CSD, told us that webinars actually drove firms towards us, many of which subsequently became our clients. One thing that Sergiu believes is imperative in conducting his team’s webinars is having Business Development Managers host them. As a result, in the last weeks 13 BDMs have been hosts, with Sergiu for support! This is again done in order to help them get out of their comfort zone and explore new ways of communicating with potential clients. Sergiu noted that problems which can happen during the webinar (such as technical issues, awkward silences, miscommunication, etc.) actually showcase how well the BDMs handle such situations and how well they can connect with participants. When referring to future plans, the CSD team is currently working on bringing in successful clients to co-host webinars in order to share their experience of working with DevelopmentAid. A benefit of that is showing other potential clients the internal processes and steps of our collaboration, so that interested parties can gain such knowledge.
All of our teams have big plans for 2021, so keep an eye out on them 🙂 All in all, transitioning to webinars as a mean of communication is a great step along with current digitalisation. We admire our colleagues for employing this method and wish them lots of inspiration for upcoming webinars!
If reading this made you interested and willing to be a part of the team, check out our open vacancies. It might be useful to look out details on the Business Development Manager position HERE
