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Host Your Virtual Executive Briefing Center (EBC) Using Zoom

Hosting a virtual executive briefing center over Zoom provides interactive experiences that can be tailored to make lasting partnerships. Here's how!

6 min read

Updated on September 29, 2022

Published on April 02, 2020

Host Your Virtual Executive Briefing Center (EBC) Using Zoom

In this blog

01 Know your audience - Jumplink to Know your audience
02 Choose your presenters based on the audience - Jumplink to Choose your presenters based on the audience
03 Brief your presenters - Jumplink to Brief your presenters
04 Step 1: Make sure you have the right setup - Jumplink to Step 1: Make sure you have the right setup
05 Step 2: Schedule your virtual meeting - Jumplink to Step 2: Schedule your virtual meeting
06 Step 3: Impress over Zoom - Jumplink to Step 3: Impress over Zoom
07 Host your executive briefing center on Zoom - Jumplink to Host your executive briefing center on Zoom

Jocelyn Horsager

Event Marketing Manager

An executive briefing center (EBC) is an extremely valuable resource for organizations looking to offer in-depth dialogue, bespoke presentations, and live demos for prospects. With social distancing and mandated working from home, many organizations can adapt their executive meetings to virtual experiences and continue to build lasting relationships with prospects. Whether remote or in-person, many executive briefing center best practices will stay the same. For example, you’ll still have to:

Understanding who will be in attendance is absolutely critical to not only your agenda, but the speakers you delegate discussion topics to. What industry is the prospect in? Where are they in their customer journey? What are the main challenges they’re looking to solve? How many people are coming? What are their titles? What are their specific motivations and challenges? And lastly, who is the key decision-maker?

EBCs are by nature designed to be a bespoke experience for your prospects. Make sure that speakers are selected based on the audience’s needs, questions, and level of expertise.

One of the most important elements of an EBC is preparation for the host and speakers. Always create a briefing doc, chat group, or better yet, jump on a quick Zoom call to make sure all presenters have a clear understanding of the goals of the EBC and their specific role. But these are just some of the basic preparations that will make any EBC a great experience. When executive meetings shift to virtual formats, however, you have additional capabilities for up-leveling your event, including added schedule flexibility, broader representation from the prospects, and scalable custom branding. Here are three steps for nailing your virtual executive briefings with Zoom.

Before you start your first virtual EBC, make sure you have:

A Zoom Meeting License: Hosts should have a Zoom Pro meeting license or above. This will allow you to have unlimited time on your scheduled EBC and the capacity to support up to 100 participants. Attendees and speakers can easily join with video with a free Zoom Basic license. View our plans and pricing to learn more about the different license options.
A comprehensive desktop setup: You can manage the virtual EBC event through your laptop. Although you can host and manage Zoom Meeting attendees via mobile or tablet, that’s not recommended for this use case. Also, a great headset, webcam, and webcam light go a long way in delivering quality video meetings.
Scheduling and calendar integrations: For the best scheduling experience, set up a Zoom calendar integration. If you are scheduling the meeting, learn how to do so here. You can also extend scheduling privileges if you have admins or assistants that manage and schedule your meetings.

Bonus tips for your setup

Encourage all presenters and attendees in advance to turn on their video. Being able to see faces, reactions, and body language creates a more engaging experience for everyone.
If it’s your first time using Zoom, do a test meeting with some colleagues to get familiar with the host controls.
Make sure any presenter that plans to share their screen mutes notifications and pop-ups.

Felt cute, definitely won’t delete later. ?‍ Follow these tips to look your best on your next videoconference. #videoconferencing #remotework pic.twitter.com/jrI34b7T2r
— Logitech VideoCollab (@LogitechVC) March 2, 2020

When it’s time to lock down details for your virtual EBC, make sure you:

Choose the host and co-host: Decide who’s going to host/co-host. They will be responsible for scheduling the event.
Schedule your EBC using a single Zoom Meeting ID for the entire block: This may or may not work depending on your needs, but for most cases, a single meeting ID for a continuous time block is much simpler for managing multiple presenters and attendees that may want to drop in and out of the Zoom Meeting.
Send instructions and invites ahead of time: This gives invitees a chance to get prepared and download the client beforehand.
TEST! Schedule a dry run with your presenters: Give yourself time to troubleshoot any issues before the real deal. We also suggest having the facilitator join 30 minutes before the call to make sure everything is ready to go.
Make sure your presenters and attendees have a clear and concise agenda. Whether in person or virtual, it is extremely important to look and stay organized with a meeting agenda. Make sure all parties agree on their speaking time so there is no room for error or confusion during the call.

When it’s showtime for your virtual executive briefing, wow your audience using some cool Zoom features:

Upload your prospect’s branding as your virtual background: Show that you put in the extra effort to provide a unique experience just for them. These special touches can go a long way, and can still be executed virtually!

Introduce your agenda: Use the share-screen feature and walk through the items you want to accomplish. You can also use the in-meeting chat to share a file with everyone on the call.
Keep your content interactive. You can do this by using Zoom’s shared content capabilities for slides, videos, application demos, and more. If you have a large group, you can also conduct a poll to get feedback. Share ideas and take notes via in-meeting chat and encourage participants to use side-by-side mode (pictured below) to split their screen between Gallery View and shared content.

Highlight your solutions in a video background: Upload short snippets of any features or demo videos you want to showcase and use them as your virtual background on the call.

Some other cool Zoom features to help create a more interactive briefing experience:

Whiteboarding: Collaborate together on a virtual whiteboard to take notes, draw diagrams, and co-annotate with participants.
Raise Hand & Reactions: Encourage participants to provide nonverbal feedback during the meeting to provide cues without disruption.

Breakout Rooms: Separate your meetings into smaller groups for quick topical discussions.

Virtual EBCs provide a great opportunity for you to connect and collaborate with strategic partners, customers, and prospects. Hosting executive briefings over Zoom provides interactive experiences that can be tailored to make lasting partnerships. Ready to take your executive briefing center virtual with Zoom? Contact a Zoom product specialist today to get started. For tips on hosting other virtual events, check out our blog, “Best Practices for Hosting a Digital Event.”