If your sales team’s pipeline is feeling stuck because of social distancing and shelter in place orders, it’s time to roll out a strategy for your team to use video for sales.

Your Sellers who previously relied on in-person meetings may not be able to get back to “normal” for quite some time. In fact, most experts predict that remote selling is here to stay.

That means the methods your sales reps use to sell and attract new business or take the buyers through the sales funnel, will be affected indefinitely. Now is the time for sales leaders to empower their team to use Personalized sales video messaging to keep their sales pipeline full.

Creating authentic video messages can help your sales team stay in touch with current customers, show that they care during this uncertain time, and reach new prospects.

Why Use Video in Sales?

Here are five reasons your sellers should use video for sales now.

1. Video Adoption Accelerated due to COVID-19

Without a doubt, these are unprecedented times. Sales reps can’t leave their homes so they’re forced to find new ways to keep their selling activity productive. Creating sales video messages to send to specific clients or put in your email signature allows your reps to virtually connect with prospects and customers, without physically meeting with them.

Most people are visual learners anyway. If they can see your reps while speaking about your product or service, how it works, and how it could benefit them, they are more likely to engage with your sellers in conversation.

Executives are more likely to take action on a video. A Forbes report: Video in the C-Suite indicates that 65% of senior executives have visited a vendor’s website after watching a video and 53% have conducted a search to locate more information.

Since executives are sheltering in place just like everyone else, the question a sales leader must consider is how to do sales training for their team to use video in their day-to-day selling activities.

2. Separate Your Sellers from Competitors

Using asynchronous video messages helps sellers differentiate from the competition by giving customers an inside look into them as a person. While a salesperson communicates their offerings, benefits, business practices, etc., their humanity is on full display.

Think of it as a behind-the-scenes look into their approach to social selling, if they allow themselves to be natural. People connect with people when they can relate to them as people. It’s hard to form a human connection via email or over the phone. When you create an authentic sales videos message and your customers can see your seller’s facial expressions and hear them speaking directly to them, there’s a human connection that forms without being there in-person.

3. Show Customers That You Care

Now, more than ever, we need each other. We’re all going through hardships, suffering anxiety at some level, and feeling uncertain about the future.

Video messaging allows sellers to show compassion, cut through the noise of today’s selling environment, and build trust with your prospects and customers. Showing your customers that you are there for them and care about their needs is extremely important right now. Your seller’s video messages can be a vessel to say hello or share an uplifting thought.

Employing an empathic attitude now can lead to more sales potential in the future.

4. Science Supports the Power of Video

At an unconscious level, your brain responds to what you see as if it were your own experience, no matter if it’s on TV, the internet, or even a stage.

Why? Because of what scientists call “mirror neurons”. These neurons cause us to do something when we observe someone else doing it, like smiling or laughing. If someone smiles at you on the street, mirror neurons cause you to smile back.

The brain does not differentiate between something that you observe on a screen and something that happens in person. That is why people get emotional watching a movie or they feel like they know famous people, because they have been in their personal space through the screen.

This is relevant for selling with video because your sellers can connect emotionally with their buyers thanks to mirror neurons.

5. Measure Contribution to Sales Results

Under normal circumstances, sales leaders strive to implement tools and sales processes that can measurably contribute to closed-won outcomes.

Personalized sales video messaging delivered through email is one practice that can be tracked and measured. Including a video in sales emails outreach can improve click rates by a staggering 96%.

Take a look at this example where I was able to track each time someone watched my video emails on a deal I eventually closed. In addition to knowing who clicked on my video message, the tracking data informs me how long each video was watched and which links I provided were clicked, which is very useful especially since one of the links was my proposal.

As my example shows, sending a personalized video message can be a measurable tactic.

Types of Sales Videos

The type of video discussed in this article is personalized video messages that sales professionals can create on their smartphones or computers. This method of video is also known as asynchronous video communication.

This is contrasted by synchronous video communication, the most common examples of which are online video meetings with one or more people using a platform such as Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, etc. Your sellers are already having synchronous video conferencing with prospects, customers, and associates.

Asynchronous video messaging is a one-way message created – in this context – by your sellers to communicate with your prospects and customers. In most cases, your sellers already have every sales tool they need to create one-way video messaging because all that is needed is a modern smartphone or a computer with a webcam.

However, in order for sales reps to conduct synchronous video calls, they must first find, engage, and gain acceptance by a potential customer for the sales calls. The asynchronous video sales messaging approach helps your sellers reach more prospects to start more sales conversations.

We have identified more than 16 use cases for personalized video messaging. The example above – delivering a sales video proposal – is a glimpse into one of the obvious use cases.

In another article in this series about video for sales, I describe three use cases for sales prospecting videos, leveraging LinkedIn and email.

Beyond prospecting, sellers can use personalized video messages to build relationships with vendors and partners and to send sales proposals.

Where to Use Video in the Sales Process

Video for sales can be used beginning with the outreach all the way to the close of a deal.

Prospecting

As discussed before, prospecting with video allows a sales rep to stand out from the crowd and grab the attention of the prospect. Here, the seller can introduce himself, provide his value proposition and have a call to action.

Nurturing

Once a conversation is started, sellers can nurture the relationship with personalized video messages that add value to the prospect or that simply help connect at a deeper level. For instance, the rep can send a video reminder for an upcoming meeting and then a video follow-up after the meeting.

Closing

Remote sellers can go beyond shooting off an email with an attached proposal and actually record a video explaining each point of the proposal and laying out the next steps. It can even be useful when going over any legal issues and contract details.

Finally, the seller can create a video thanking the client for their time and handing over the client to customer success, introducing the CS manager and other members of the team.

Tips on How to Personalize Videos

Create a personalized thumbnail. A popular way of personalizing video thumbnails nowadays is to hold a whiteboard and write a message with the prospect’s name. There’s even software like Hyperise that can do this for you without having to actually write on a physical whiteboard.

When creating a thumbnail, make sure that anything you want to be visible, such as the seller’s face and the whiteboard are over to one side and not the center. Otherwise, the play button in the center will cover the rep and the message. This will happen whether you upload the video

Add personalized content. Another popular personalization method is to include a screenshot of the prospect’s LinkedIn profile inside the video. This will indicate that the seller took the time to research the prospect on LinkedIn and learn more about him or her.

Should your team personalize every single video they send? As much as possible, yes, they should. Even if it’s not possible to personalize to an individual, the video should personalize the company or the buyer persona.

This is something that we actually teach in our PVC sales methodology, where we teach sellers to research their prospects and find specific elements they can mention in their sales messaging to make it more personal.

This video explains the PVC methodology and provides a practical example that your team can apply to both text and video messages.

Tools for Video for Sales

Hosting virtual sales meetings through Zoom is the new normal for remote sellers. But as a sales leader, how do you make sure your virtual sales teams look and sound professional? What are the best tools for remote teams working from home?

Check out this video where Viveka von Rosen, CVO at Vengreso and LinkedIn expert, shares some great tips and shows us the gear (mics, greenscreens, cameras, etc) that she uses to stay productive and professional.

What about tools for asynchronous video? Here are some of my favorites.

• Video sales engagement platforms. With these tools, sellers can create and send engaging videos to prospects and clients. They can add filters, create landing pages and receive reports on video views and engagement. The most popular platforms are OneMob, Hippo Video, BombBomb, Videolicious, CoVideo, and Vidyard.
• FlyMSG. Although not a video tool per se, FlyMSG allows sellers to quickly embed videos (and other media) from their saved templates. Unlike other text expanders that only support text, this Chrome extension will add rich media content to any sales message with just a few keystrokes.

How Can Your Remote Sales Team Create Personalized Video Messages?

If you’re thinking this is a no-brainer for your sales team, you’re right. It is. But, sellers need to master the art and science of creating and delivering video sales messages. They need to learn to be engaging, authentic, purposeful in their words, and concise – and doing it on camera. Skills they already possess such as smiling, being enthusiastic, and always offering a call to action need to be developed on camera.

This is why Vengreso offers the Selling with Video Teams. This training program is designed for all B2B sales teams who have previously relied on in-person events and conversations to sell. This program is 100% virtual and will teach you and your sales team all the viable use cases for selling with video content, how to be irresistible on camera, leverage verbal and non-verbal cues, how to write effective scripts and more.

Don’t sit on the sidelines. These are times to take action to improve your sales team’s results. Learn more about our Selling with Video Teams.

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