Today’s buyers are desensitized to your email and phone outreach. Right now, 90% of all our revenue comes from inbound – because of video. Potential buyers are three times more likely to open and view a video than read an email. A Forbes report showed that 65% of senior executives had visited a vendor’s website after watching a video, and 53% had conducted a search to locate more information. The challenge is that most sellers don’t know how to create videos, what to say, or when to use them.
Leverage the Novel Approach (While It’s Still Novel)
I remember when I was a little girl growing up in Southern California, I looked forward all week to Sunday evening at 6:00. Like clockwork, mom shouted from downstairs, “It’s Grandma, long distance!” My brother and I raced down the stairs and talked to grandma for ten whole minutes. At that time, long-distance calls averaged $12 for the first few minutes (the equivalent of $101 today!). I didn’t know then that I’d feel the same excitement years later when I received an email on my dial-up AOL account. And when I did, I answered them instantly and enthusiastically.
Human beings gravitate toward the novel. We’re fascinated with fresh ways to communicate, connect and share our life stories. But like any new pleasure or purchase in life, we become desensitized over time. The novel becomes mundane. The good news is that selling with video is still novel and offers sellers the best chance to break through the noise.
The Benefits of Using Video in Sales
Increase Trust
Simply put, 93% of email communication is lost on your prospects. In an email, buyers cannot see or hear you — you can reach and sway them only with your words. Contrast this with video, where the sound of your voice, eye contact and body movements combined add up to 100 percent of what makes communication effective.
Save Time
A common misconception holds that creating decent video requires expensive hardware and software, professional editing skills and endless hours. In reality, you can accomplish a lot with a smartphone and a sunny day. Once you master video, you’ll recover the time you would otherwise have spent laboring over emails—valuable time you can refocus on revenue-producing activities. You can re-use videos the same way you can use email templates – they’re often evergreen.
Builds Consensus
Gartner tells us that, on average, the average B2B buying process involves 11 stakeholders. How do you gain consensus from all 11 parties, especially if you’re beyond lucky should you gain access to two or three? The answer? Video. Rather than relying on one or more stakeholders to do the selling for you, you can instead have video arm your advocate(s) with influential talking points that keep you much more involved in the sale. After watching a video, 50% of executives search for more information and 39% call the company.
Reduces Complexity
Customers who report receiving overwhelming amounts of information are 54% less likely than others to make a high-quality, low-regret purchase. Video helps you explain your offerings more clearly than long-winded emails or dense PDFs. They direct your buyers to the “need-to-knows” rather than cluttering their minds with the “nice-to-knows.”
People would rather make NO decision than a WRONG decision.
According to a Wyzowl study, when people were asked how they’d prefer to learn about a product or service, 66% responded that they’d prefer to watch a short video. By contrast, 2% said they’d prefer a sales call. This insight makes video more popular as a learning tool than text-based articles (15%), infographics (4%), presentations and pitches (4%), and eBooks (3%).
How to Sell with Video
Selling with video isn’t about synchronous Zoom calls or Teams Meetings to demo your product; I’m referring to asynchronous video to book meetings, follow up after discovery calls, explain complex issues, and service the customer post-sale. Adept sellers leverage video to:
- Clarify complex problems.
- Focus on specific aspects of products and services most meaningful to buyers.
- Transform abstract concepts into relevant, compelling insights.
- Offer buyers just enough information to meaningfully interpret important aspects of their buying decision.
- Create a consistent, coherent and convincing narrative that bolsters customer confidence.
To learn more about selling effectively on video, check out the Cracking the Code to Selling with Videos webinar with Shari Levitin, Global Sales Leader, Author, CEO of Levitin Group and Heidi Catherine Quaschnick, RVP of Sales, Hippo Video. They will explore what kind of videos work in different sales funnel stages. They’ll also talk about how you can create videos that build trust with prospects.
Key Highlights:
- How videos expedite the decision-making process among stakeholders
- Precisely where to use videos in your sales funnel for maximum impact
- What to talk about in your videos to earn your prospects’ trust
