Video Works
Ever since television found its way into our homes, video has been the next best thing to being there in person when it comes to how people prefer to learn, share ideas, and be entertained.
The opportunity in front of you right now is to capitalize on the power of video in your business to attract more prospects, earn their trust, and deliver an exceptional customer experience—whether you’re selling to millennials or boomers, business professionals or consumers.
The Power of Video Is as Easy as the 4 Es
Video is a fundamentally different medium than text and static content. It isn’t just a different way to tell the same story; it’s a richer way to tell a bigger story.
It’s the perfect medium for explaining complex ideas, the most effective way to connect on an emotional level, and the next best thing to being there in person when it comes to establishing trust.
The key characteristics of video—and what makes it so powerful—can be easily remembered with what I call the four Es of video:
- Video is Educational: It’s faster to process and easier to remember.
- Video is Engaging: It enables us to tell stories and hold audience attention.
- Video is Emotional: It can invoke joy, anticipation, trust and other emotions.
- Video shows Empathy: It helps us relate and connect on a human level.
Few will argue that these four Es are essential to attracting, converting, and retaining more buyers—and video is the ideal way to bring these to life.
Unless We Show It, It Doesn’t Exist
Think about that for a second.
How much of your business is stated but not shown?
Media companies recognize the more they show, the more buyers will appreciate their transparency and willingness to teach—and that ever-important trust we seek to earn from consumers will inevitably follow.
This mindset and philosophy should permeate every aspect of your business—especially sales, marketing, and the customer experience.
Let’s breakdown the fundamental elements of becoming a media company and show exactly how you can create a culture of video in-house. Yes, you read that correctly—in-house .
After all, you are a media company, aren’t you?
6 Videos That Will Immediately Impact Sales and Closing Rates
#1 The 80% (FAQ)
Ask any sales professional, “What are the questions you are commonly asked that tell you a prospect is clearly not ready to buy?”
They will recite an extensive catalog of those questions as an answer.
But what would happen if, every time you had a sales call, not only did your prospect already know the answer to those all-too-common questions, but they had seen it, heard it, and learned it from you?
Yep, the sales appointment would be dramatically more productive.
And not just more productive, but much shorter, too.
The 80% video process is simple:
- Brainstorm a list of the most important products and/or services your company offers. Eventually, you will create an 80% video for each.
- Have your sales team brainstorm the most common questions they get on a typical sales call regarding that particular product or service. At a minimum, you should be able to come up with 10 questions.
- Once you’ve completed your brainstorm, narrow your list down to the top seven questions. These will constitute your core 80%.
- Answer each question in an individual video. This video can—and generally should be—uploaded to your company’s YouTube page and utilized anywhere else that is potentially helpful to buyers on your website.
- Take these seven videos and combine them into one long video. This will be your 80% video.
- Immediately get this video in the hands of your sales team and integrate it into the sales process, with the core purpose being that of having prospects view it before the initial appointment.
#2 Employee Bio
A bio video accomplishes two goals: It explains what the person does for the company and why they chose this profession. It also gives a little bit of personal information about what they do when they’re not at work.
Although this video can be used in a variety of ways, such as on your “team” or “about us” pages of your company website, by far the most effective place for this video to be utilized is in your email signature.
If you were to look at a typical email signature, most people have the basics—name, company, contact information, social media profiles, and possibly an image of their face.
By also placing a bio video in this signature—with a clear thumbnail image denoting it’s a video—you’ve now given your email recipients a chance to get to know you on a much more visual, and therefore human, level.
#3 Product and Service Fit
When it comes to the traffic on most organization’s websites, “product” or “service” pages are (usually) the most trafficked.
The way these pages are designed, at least from a messaging standpoint, is often extremely flawed. Why? Because all these pages tend to espouse why their product or service is great, what it is, what it does, etc.
But for those businesses that understand the way buyers actually think, there is an essential second part to the type of information this page must include, and that is simply this:
Who is the product or service not for?
Yes, you read that correctly—not for.
Now, you may be wondering why.
Well, the minute we are willing (as businesses) to say what we’re not is the precise moment we become dramatically more attractive to those for whom we are a good fit.
Therein lies the key to a product or service fit video. It explains who the product is—and is not—a good fit for in the most honest and transparent way possible.
The biggest issue with people implementing fit videos has to do with the tone in which the subject matter expert delivers the message. To help you understand what I mean by tone, let’s look at two examples—one good and one bad—referencing a fiberglass swimming pool.
Good: “You may be asking yourself, is a fiberglass pool a good fit for me?’ Great question, and it’s an important one too, as this is the type of decision you won’t be able to go back on once it’s in the ground. Like any type of swimming pool, fiberglass comes with a set of pros and cons.
For example, because the pool shells don’t get wider than 16 feet or longer than 40 feet, there are clear size restrictions. Also, because the manufacturing process includes pre-designed “molds” to build the pool off of, you can’t customize a pool’s shape, size, depth, etc., beyond what you see within our available models.
But, if you’re looking for a low-maintenance pool that’s smaller than 16-by-40 feet, less than 8 feet deep—and you are able to find a shape that fits your needs—fiberglass might be a great fit for you.”
Bad: “You may be asking, ‘Why should I consider a fiberglass pool.’ Well, the reasons are obvious. They are way less maintenance, you won’t have to replaster them or replace the liner, and they go in way faster than any other type of swimming pool.
But if you don’t care about cleaning your pool all day long and want the added burdens that come with other types of swimming pools, fiberglass may not be the best fit for you.”
#4 Cost and Pricing Videos
How many times a month does your sales team justify why something costs what it costs?
The thing is, consumers and buyers are researching this question of “cost” prolifically, and unless someone explains to them how to define “value” on the front end (before they talk to a salesperson), then ignorance will prevail. And when ignorance prevails, price wars and commoditization are the only results.
To combat this, we need to be willing to discuss cost, price, rates, etc. And to do this the right way, a video on cost and pricing should:
- Address all the factors that drive the cost of a product or service up or down.
- Discuss the marketplace—i.e., why are comparable products or services cheap, expensive, etc.?
- Talk about your product or service, and why it costs what it costs. (Although you don’t have to give your exact pricing here, you do need to explain your value proposition extremely well while giving the buyer at least a sense for what to expect.)
#5 Customer Journey Videos
We call it the customer journey video because the idea is that it’s designed to follow the principle of the “hero’s journey”—something that movie producers and storytellers (like Disney) have used since the beginning of time.
Now, the traditional hero’s journey has 12 parts. In the context of your customers, however, this journey can be simplified into three main stages:
- Your customer has a problem—a need, stress, worry, concern, or issue.
- The journey they take to fix their problem. (In most cases, this is the journey they go on with your company.)
- Where they are today and how they were able to fix the problem with your help. (And everyone lived happily ever after.)
At its core, the purpose of this video is that a viewer can watch it and literally say in their mind:
“They’re just like me. They had the exact problem I have right now, and look at how they were able to solve it.”
In other words, your viewer is literally “nodding along” in affirmation because of sympathy, empathy, and mutual understanding.
#6 “Claims We Make” Videos
Most industry “claims” are repeated over and over by the competing businesses therein. And if everyone is stating the same claims, what do they actually mean to the marketplace?
Yep, claims such as these are just noise… until someone shows them to be true. You do just that with a “claims we make” video.
Let’s look at a specific example.
One of the most popular claims businesses make around the world is, “It’s our people that make us different.”
Fine, fair enough. Your people are different.
But what makes that true? How am I supposed to know?
In other words, to truly prove such a claim, you must show your people—their stories, their background, how they got where they are, and so on. By doing so, others will inevitably say, “Wow, their people really are different.”
Ready, Set, Go
So, there you have it, six videos absolutely designed to be used by your sales team to close more deals.
If you have a full-time videographer, there’s a good chance these videos will require at least a year’s worth of work.
Don’t let this intimidate you.
They’re an amazing opportunity for the sales team when used properly. Just remember to stay away from the fluff. Address what buyers really want to know and trust will always follow.