If there’s one thing we can barely stop talking about this show, it’s the use of video in your outreach tactics. We rave about using video as a major part of your social media marketing. We have full, free webinars all about using video in the sales process. Heck, we use video every week to create our show in the first place!
We’ve gushed about Vidyard’s amazing technological advances with video on this show before. That’s why we were so excited to finally have Tyler Lessard, the VP of Marketing for Vidyard, join us for a chat about creating video for sales teams.
1. VIDEO IS THE NEXT LOGICAL EVOLUTION OF SALES TACTICS.
Up until recently, video was considered a nice-to-have for industrial marketers (let alone their sales reps). It’s always been assumed that production value needs to be very high to appeal to potential buyers. And if an organization is ‘fortunate enough’ to create marketing videos, then the account executives might use those videos. No one ever imagined the sales teams would have any desire – or need – to create their own videos!
But…why do we assume that?
Videos don’t actually require “artsy” producers. Just training and practice.
“We’re seeing more and more sales reps that are…of course they’re using video conferencing when they’re trying, instead of a traditional conference call. They can build that face-to-face rapport. But one thing when they’re doing asynchronous communications, when they’re sending emails or messages on social to either cold prospects or warm customers, is recording and sending video messages as a way to do that. Instead of, again, just hiding behind a keyboard.”
That’s right: more and more companies are creating video for sales teams, by sales teams, to include in their emails or social DMs. And there are clear reasons why.
Companies dragged their heels when powerpoint presentations came along. Yet now it’s standard practice to train your account managers to create their own slide decks.
You trained your account executives in cold-calling too, didn’t you? It may have taken a while. You were probably afraid to leave them totally alone at first (and they were probably afraid to be left alone without help). But that was the job. They got better with time and practice.
And now when they have conference calls, those calls might include a webcam or a computer screen. Creating their own videos is just the next logical step.
“You can write emails, you can create documents, you can create PowerPoints. You have to be able to create video too. It’s just the world that we’re in now.”
Just like video-conferencing builds more face-to-face rapport, creating video for sales usage is going to let your account managers use visuals to their advantage. Video messages are far more memorable than an email of text because they have tone and a human face. They’re conversational.
In fact, sales reps who create and send video messages tend to see three times the responses of reps who only cold-call or send emails.
2. DON’T OVERTHINK VIDEO IN SALES– YOU DON’T HAVE TO START FROM SCRATCH.
For anyone who isn’t using video very much, it can look pretty intimidating. Other companies have such sleek, high-value videos! How can you compete?
By taking a moment to relax and breathe out. Because high-production value can be helpful for top-of-funnel marketing, but it’s not required. More and more videos on social media and beyond are homemade, featuring regular people sitting in their living rooms or in their offices and talking to their phones. Those videos aren’t popular because they were expensive, or necessarily even professional. They’re just genuine.
Besides, your sales teams aren’t necessarily aiming to invite newcomers into the funnel– that’s marketing’s job. They’re reaching out to leads that are already in the funnel. At some point, those leads seemed at least somewhat interested in your product or service.
“Video is a great new way to communicate your message, to educate your audience, to build rapport, and you don’t have to overthink it. It’s about creating videos, not producing them. Using them in any channel that you would normally deliver a message but just being smart about, ‘Where does the power of visual help me tell a better story than just relying on the same old text content that I always have?’ ”
There are generally three areas where your marketing and sales teams can implement videos easily, because you’re already creating content there.
- Your Website
- Your Inbound Content
- Your Sales Outreach
You can go through your website and find pages where visitors go for information and education. Where do they learn about your product? You could create a short educational video with all that same content, and add it to the page.
Wherever you’re sending emails or creating blogs for thought leadership, consider creating videos about the same topics and adding those to YouTube, social media, and all the pages where your content already resides.
Despite what you might fear, that’s actually not redundant.
Offering the exact same content in multiple forms provides your visitors with choice and control. They can investigate as deeply or as briefly as they want. That video might give them the speedy answers or clarification they’re looking for.
As for creating video for sales outreach, video once again can simply take the place of what your account managers are already creating.
One of the most impactful uses of sales video that Tyler has seen was a B2B company that added a call-to-action on their website that said, “Watch a Demo.” Why is that such a big deal? Because we’ve all seen those buttons to “Request a Demo,” or “Book a Meeting,” but we rarely click on them. What if it’s four in the morning and I want answers right away? What if I don’t have the time or the desire to wait? What if I don’t want to put in all the extra energy that a one-on-one meeting requires?
“Now I can choose to watch different demos of the solution…and maybe it’s still a lead gen exercise so I still have to enter my information in a form to watch those demos, but now it’s a self-serve experience.”
The word “watch” is far more inviting to your prospects than “Request,” or “Schedule.” “Watch,” means they can sit back and let the information come to them. “Watch,” means the work is already done. Use it in more and more of your website’s calls to action and see if your conversion rates change!
3. IT’S OKAY TO START SMALL WHEN CREATING VIDEO FOR SALES TEAMS. IT’LL GROW.
Remember: you aren’t Hollywood. Nor do you have to be.
When it comes to adopting any new digital tactic successfully, like a CRM or marketing automation platform, how did you do it? How have other manufacturers done it?
By starting small.
When you’re looking for organizational buy-in or trying to implement new technology, you need to find young, hungry advocates who are excited about this opportunity.
Give them a little freedom to experiment. Trial and error, after all, is the best and most natural way we as human beings learn. And, before long, they just might start raking in more and more successes.
“You’ll learn as you go, but then those first few people will start getting responses from cold prospects, who would’ve never otherwise responded. Or there’s the deal gone dark and then they send them a video and all of a sudden they respond back within the hour, right? We hear those stories all the time… Get a few internal champions who start to learn what works, and they can help share the love across the sales team. Because once it works for one person, then you get believers across the team.”
A lot of sales technology gets adopted that way these days.
Prospects are proving more responsive to this because not only is creating video for sales personal and genuine; it’s also new and novel. At least…for now.
“Right now there’s a window of opportunity where most buyers aren’t seeing videos from sellers. So those who are doing it well are seeing two to three times higher response rates just by starting to infuse personal videos into that process.”
Will that novelty wear off sometime in the future? Probably. But that’s no reason not to start. Powerpoints, video conferences, emails, and even cold calls were once highly novel. They didn’t become obsolete– just foundational to your sales process.
“The importance of actually connecting in authentic ways with people is at an all-time high because, trust…is at an all-time low. Spam messages and digital noise is at an all time high, and in order for use to break through the noise and really earn trust, we need to start doing these things.
“So I think the real question is, what’s the risk of you not trying things of this nature?”
(Click here to watch the video this blog article is based on.)
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Author: Rica
Since the inception of IndustrialSage back in 2017, Rica has been one of the driving forces building IndustrialSage. As Marketing Manager, she's dedicated to producing amazing content on the site. There's little she loves more than storytelling: helping to explain new ideas in order to aid others in solving their problems. Fortunately, that's what IndustrialSage is all about.
