Short excerpt from a YouTube reaction video (by Christian Polk) in which speakers — including David — mockingly tease a prospect for not turning on their camera. The exchange uses humour to probe whether a buyer should be required to show video, and suggests flexibility: the rep prefers putting a name to a face but acknowledges situations where video may remain off.
I. I'm looking at the photo here. Mic arm, boom stand. It feels like I'm talking to a podcaster.
Yeah. What's going on, man? Is it a nos?
Yep. It's an ass. You nailed it. Sounds coming out great. No video. Hopefully you're not still getting dressed or you're being camera shy.
Man, I didn't know I had to have my camera off of this call. If it's cool, just keep it off.
Of course. What if I told you it wasn't cool?
I don't know.
I'm teasing you, David. And if we're looking at doing business together, do you normally do business with a stranger you never seen?
No, not dog for sure.
But we're not in the Philippines calling each other. So we like to put a name to a face with the clients that we get to serve.
A couple of things. The soft call outs to using humor when somebody doesn't have their camera on. I do it all the time and 90% of the time it works. So, hey, I can hear you. Can't see you. Like, what's going on? It's all black over there. Are you in your PJs? It works 90% of the time, but in the 10% of the time that it doesn't work, it is so much not a big deal that I don't know why you would put so much pressure and potentially burn a sale just because somebody didn't turn their camera on. I've sold so many people with both cameras off on zoom over the phone, you can't see them that way anywhere. Phone sales has been a thing for decades. It's like them having their camera on is not necessary to close a deal. And if you are so rigid that you won't even take the call unless they have their camera on, you're just costing yourself money that you don't need to. That's all I'd say with this. It's just too rigid. Because if you do tell them, if I can't see you, we might as well not have the conversation. It's a hard frame that's not needed. And if it backfires, you lose a sale for no reason just because they don't have their camera on. Again, if you can't sell somebody when they don't have their camera on, like, how good at sales are you? What are we talking about here? Like, there's just no need to be that rigid.
