One rep books a last-minute flight to Chicago, spends $800, and sits through a 45-minute meeting that wraps with "we'll circle back." Another skips the flight, hosts a Zoom meeting, and watches a $200K deal go cold because the champion couldn't get buy-in from three executives who never felt invested. Both scenarios happen every week. Both are missteps.
So, is in-person still worth it? Or should we leave them in the Stone Age? The honest answer is that neither format wins universally.
The Case for In-Person: What the Data Actually Shows
In-person meetings carry a valuable edge in complex, high-value deals. RAIN Group research found that 64% of buyers say in-person meetings are more persuasive than video calls for deals with multiple decision-makers.
There's real science behind this. In-person interactions activate mirroring behaviors, like the subtle, subconscious alignment of posture, gesture, and speech rhythm that builds rapport. Video calls flatten most of these signals. You can read a room when you're in it. On a grid of thumbnails, you're mostly guessing.
The Case for Online: Efficiency, Scale, and the Modern Buyer
None of that means you should book flights for every lead in your pipeline.
The glaring benefit of online meetings is time and cost efficiency. Especially for mid-market, SMB deals, and early-stage discovery at any deal size, online meetings are faster, cheaper, and increasingly preferred by buyers.
62% of B2B buyers prefer to self-serve or engage remotely during early pipeline stages, particularly in tech, SaaS, and professional services.
— Forrester Research, The State of Digital Selling
The math is hard to argue with. Removing travel from a rep's calendar can add 20–30% more selling hours per week. Compressed discovery timelines, faster scheduling, and the ability to run back-to-back demos across time zones all favor the video-first approach for top-of-the-funnel sales activities.
Where Each Format Wins: A Practical Breakdown
Rather than picking a side, treat meeting format as a variable (like pricing or persona) that should flex with the deal.
Choose in-person when:
Deal value is high
You're late into your sales cycle (business-case, multi-stakeholder alignment, or negotiation stage)
Flight and accommodations are reasonable relative to the deal size
Choose online when:
It's discovery, qualification, or early demo stage
The buyer is digital-native (SaaS, tech, startup)
The deal is SMB or mid-market with a single champion
The wrong format at the wrong stage is its own kind of deal killer. Showing up in person for a first discovery call with a solo SaaS buyer feels heavy-handed. Running a multi-executive business review over a crowded Zoom feels disrespectful of the decision being made.
What This Means for How You Prep
Regardless of which method you choose, what matters most is how you prep.
An in-person business review needs a leave-behind deck, a clear agenda sent 48 hours ahead, and a post-meeting follow-up sequence that lands the same day. A video discovery call needs a crisp checklist of qualification questions, a screen-share-ready demo environment, and an automated follow-up email that hits within the hour.
The problem is that most reps use the same prep for both, which is a bit like jamming a square peg into a round hole. The content of your preparation needs to match the context of the meeting.
The Bottom Line
Stop asking which format closes more deals. Start asking which format fits this deal, this stage, this buyer. The key isn’t mindlessly defaulting to online, nor should you always fly across the globe to surprise prospects with a visit. The next time you’re booking an appointment, just take a second or two and consider which format fits the meeting best. It might just land you some extra commission.
References
Dixon, M., & Adamson, B. (2011). The Challenger Sale: Taking control of the customer conversation. Portfolio/Penguin.
Forrester Research. (2023). The state of digital selling. https://www.forrester.com
Gartner. (2023). B2B buying trends: The new buying journey. https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
HubSpot. (2024). Enterprise sales playbook: Hybrid engagement model. https://blog.hubspot.com/sales
RAIN Group. (2023). What sales winners do differently: In-person vs. virtual selling. https://www.raingroup.com/research