Selling with Video: How to Increase Deal Velocity & Win Rates in the Age of AI

Thank you, Gerhardt. It's always a pleasure to be here with Selling Power. And today our topic, Selling with Video. How to Increase Deal Velocity and Win Rate in the age of AI. Now, as of late 2024, somewhere around half of all new articles published online were generated by AI. But let me ask you this. When you hear the words artificial intelligence, what does artificial really mean? Well, if you pull it up in the dictionary, fake, bogus, not real, inauthentic. That means right now, the word AI has become shorthand for all of us sounding the same flooded inboxes, the same LinkedIn messages, marketing fluff. Now, we can ride that wave if we want, or we can do what real sellers and sales teams have always done. Build connection. And today that's through mixing authentic video with AI. So join me in my studio for Selling with Video, how to Increase Deal Velocity and Win in the Age of AI. And by the way, stay tuned at the end, we have some incredible bonuses just for you. Now, this all started a few years back. I live in Park City, Utah, and I was going on a hike one day up a mountain. That's really all there is to do in Park City, Utah. And so I'm hiking up a mountain, and one of my millennial salespeople was talking to me and he says, sherry, you gotta cool it with the boring videos. I said, what do you mean? He says, Your videos are totally boring. You're, like, turning off our generation. They're inauthentic. You're, like, all dudied up and, you know, you're made up in front of a bookshelf and you're just not connecting with our generation. Well, I didn't like that at all. Not one bit. And so he's kind of given me a rough time and. And I fought him a little bit. And then he says, no, really, Sherry, what you want to do is right now record a video, do a Facebook live or a LinkedIn live or something. I said, I'm not doing that. I don't have any makeup on. I look like hell. I would never do that. He said, exactly. That's what people want today. They want the real you. They want you to be authentic. I dare you. I double dare you. Well, I love a good challenge. So I said, okay, fine, I'll do it. So I took out my cell phone, I recorded a video, I put it up on Facebook, and I couldn't believe what happened. I got more views on a video than I had gotten in three years from a written blog and a whole lot more than Those fancy videos done with a production team in front of a bookshelf. And that's when I realized something. If a picture's worth a thousand words, what's a video worth? Turns out a lot. In fact, 90% of all of our business today comes inbound through social media channels. And so what starts happening is video is so engaging and so different today and that our people that see our videos, it's our people that come to us and say, yeah, we'd like to do business with them. We're not spraying and praying and cold calling our tribe. Our people find us and they feel like they know me, like they know us. Which is why selling with video has been transformative. And there's many ways you can use video throughout your sales process, not just to get your name out there on LinkedIn. That's what we're going to be talking about today. But I want to tell you, here's why I think it's so important now for you to incorporate video throughout your sales process, and that is this. It's novel, it's new, not everybody's doing it yet. And I have a feeling in three to five years, every seller is going to go, wow, this is my secret weapon. But you've got a chance right now to be first. I want you to think of all the technologies in your life that are novel and what happens when a. A new technology is new.

Years ago, I remember I grew up in Northern California and my grandmother used to call every Sunday and I'd be out playing baseball or Frisbee or something in the cul de sac. And I remember my mom would call from the second story and say, sherry, it's Grandma on the phone. Long distance. What did we do? We, we ran as fast as we could. Why? I want you to guess for a moment. If you were alive back then, you may have an idea. But back then, guess how much one minute of a long distance phone call cost? $12. So you did not keep grandma waiting. That is the equivalent today of $101. It was novel, it was new, it was expensive. So when somebody called long distance, boy, you answered that darn phone. Now fast forward several years later, there was this new fangled thing after the telephone called the Internet. And I remember when I got my first AOL account, I was so excited. Remember, you've got mail. And AOL would go, eee, Eee. Kind of sounded like Rosie and the Jetsons. Anyway, when I got, when I got male, I was so excited, I dropped everything to see who emailed me And I'd respond right away. It was novel, it was new, it was exciting. Now I dare you take out your cell phone right now or look on your laptop. How many unread emails do you have? I'm embarrassed. I need to go to emails. Anonymous. I think I have 3426 right now. I have done this at conferences and talked to sales executives and sales leaders and that, yes, have over 10,000 unread emails. Here's the point, ladies and gentlemen. You want to break through inboxes. You want to differentiate. You want to break through the noise. Video is your secret weapon. See, today, customers are desensitized to older technologies. Phone, Internet. We've got to be different. We've got to think, how do we do this with video? And so, again, that's what we're going to be talking about today. Now, I want to go through some numbers that'll just justify why video is so important. The reason that it is so difficult, in addition to people being desensitized to technologies, is that neuroscientists tell us today we, our customers, are inundated with information. You're experiencing it right now. You've got information coming at you from every direction. From the Internet, from your phones, from ads, from news newspapers. In fact, neuroscientists tell us that we take in the equivalent of 175 newspapers worth of content every single day, or 74 gigabytes of information. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds like a whole lot, doesn't it? Now let's look at some other statistics why it's so hard to break through to customers today. Well, only 3% of buyers even open a damn email. Not so good. Here's another statistic. This is from Gartner. You may have seen this before. Customers are 62% through the buyer's journey before they even talk to a seller. That means they're making their own decisions, their own assumptions, their own journeys, their own ideas of who their vendors should be before they ever talk to us. Now, what if we got to them sooner before they had gotten all of this information, perhaps from a competitor? Here's another statistic from Gartner. Customers today only spend what percentage of their time even talking to a seller? Drum roll, please. 17% of their time. Now, that's all sellers. So if you're selling a solution and your Customer's looking at three or four competitors, you're lucky if you get 4% of their time. This is sounding pretty dire, isn't it? Now Add to that today, since the pandemic, 86% of buyers prefer buying virtually. They prefer not meeting face to face. Which means, again, what are all the channels that we need to use to grab hold and keep our customers attention? Understand the trend, right, wrong or indifferent. Increasingly, it's more difficult to get ahold of your customers to grab hold and keep their attention and and to at least have a conversation where you can make a sale and show them the value of your products and services. So what are we going to do today as we talk about video, your secret weapon? Well, we're actually going to look at four strategies today in four parts. We're going to look at why we should use video. Why is video so darn important? Then we're going to look at when we should use video, where and when. Then we're going to look at a sample use case. Now, there's many use cases, there's many places that you can use video. In fact, I would argue you can use it throughout your entire sales process. Then we're going to look at some quick do's and don'ts, some mistakes and pitfalls that I see sellers and leaders make all the time. So the acronym, what would sheri do? Oh, no, that's so conceited. What would superstar sellers do? Wwsd. So again today, why video? Where and when? We're going to look at a sample use case and then we're going to look at some do's and don'ts. So let's start with why video? Now, I've given you quite a few reasons, but I'm just going to go in order here and please feel free to take notes. But according to research, with video, you have three times the open rate. Now, I might argue it's greater than that. So if you've got a great subject line, if you've personalized a little bit, et cetera, all the rules of good prospecting, you're going to really escalate your open rate. And the more people that open your message, the more people you have to sell to. So definitely a huge increase there. Number two, increased trust. So I want you to think about it for a moment. We've all seen the statistics. Communication is 7%. The words you use, 38% your tonality and 55% your body language. Ladies and gentlemen, when your customers can see you and hear you, it is so much more powerful than an email or even a phone call. They feel like they know you, you've got eye contact, they start to trust you. And I will tell You a lot of people don't know this, but. But yes, building trust is more difficult over a video than it is face to face. But it's a whole lot better over video than it is over email or with emojis. I mean, have you ever sent a text to a friend and they're completely offended? And you are not trying to be offensive, but they are completely offended? I've got to get my emoji straight. There's a whole emoji dictionary and I have sent emojis that I shouldn't be sending, according to my son. But that's a different seminar for a different day. But there's no question that video will increase trust, likability. And we all know no trust, no sale. Number three, videos are much more memorable. Again, they're novel, they're new. I've had people say, wow, that was incredible. You sent me a video and so you're differentiating yourself. I love the expression. I heard this from a speaker and friend, Sally Hogshead. She says, you don't have to be better, but today you do have to be different. Video today is more memorable and it is the great differentiator. Number four, why video is so powerful. And this probably is my favorite reason. One of the hardest things for sellers to do today is to gain consensus. Now Gartner also tells us today in the average B2B sale, there are not five, not seven, but 11 average stakeholders that you need to convince to purchase your product or service. Now, I don't even care if you're selling B2C, if you're selling cars, if you're selling vacations, if you're selling home improvements, it doesn't matter. You still have to get consensus. You've got husband and husband, husband and wife, maybe you've got kids, maybe you've got in laws. The point is, people today, sellers need to get consensus. The great thing about video is, let's say they're looking at two or three different products, two or three different solutions, two or three different vendors. When you send video, very often you're not talking to all the stakeholders. So your champion or mobilizer can send your video to the other people that need to be part of the decision making process. And this is really important. I see a lot of sellers that, you know, they say, oh good, will you tell you know, the other people in your company about our products and services as if all of a sudden they got a sales cap on. Look, you've had sales training for years. If you're new, you still have probably had some sales training. You understand your products and services. Now you have a single conversation with a client and you expect them to sell it to 10 other people who are on their own buyer's journey. No. When you send a video, you are controlling your sales process and you are ensuring that your message gets out to all of the stakeholders that are gonna be deciding whether to go with you or go with a competitor. Next, CPR for dead deals. I love using video this way. You've had it happen. You have a great introductory call, you have a great discovery call. The customer's interested. Maybe you even had all the stakeholders on the phone. They want a proposal. You talk about pricing, you're doing everything right, you send it to them. Crickets. They don't call, they don't write. It's like they fell off the face of the earth. You're worried that they, like, actually fell off the earth because the rapport was so good. What happened? Well, I always say our customers priority isn't our priority until we make it so. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, it's probably not about you. They're probably busy. They have fires to put out. They have hiring challenges, all kinds of challenges. And the deal's sort of dead. And what you don't want to do is send emails. Hi. You still interested? Just following up. No, I want to send a video and I want to say. And I want to give them value. This is also important. So a lot of these video platforms, and I know Vidyard has this, when you send a video, you actually, it's like its own landing page. And so what ends up happening is you can send new information, you can send an article, you're going to give them value to resurrect that dead deal. So again, regardless of what video platform you use, and again, I am talking about asynchronous video here. I am not talking about a zoom call or a teams meeting. I am talking about leveraging asynchronous video throughout the entire buyer's journey. So it is great for dead deals. And then finally, I believe video saves time. I don't know about you, but writing a good email and then having to do a grammar check and having to make sure the spacing's good. I don't know, once you get used to it, video can save you a lot of time. Now the other way that it really saves you time is that on a lot of these, most of these video platforms, you can actually see who has opened your video message. Now think about that. You can track, measure and monitor Interest. So what am I going to have my sales team do on a Monday? Let's say they sent out 50 videos over the course of the last week. And let's say 15 of the clients not only opened those videos, but opened them several times, perhaps sent them to other people in the organization. Guess who I'm calling first? Again, I think one of the biggest challenges for sellers today is prioritizing their time, especially if they're working remotely. How do they know where to put their efforts? This gives them a real laser look at who's interested, who's engaged, who should I target first? So in addition to saving time, I might argue video really gives the customer a better overall experience. They're going to feel better when they get a video. Quick story. A couple of months back, I had an appointment booked in Salt Lake City. I live in Park City. And it was an appointment that I was not looking forward to. At 11 o' clock and about three days before, I received a video from the place that I was going. And it said, hi, we're expecting you, we're looking forward to seeing you. Here's some of the things you can expect at your appointment. I thought, oh, feeling a little better about this now. And then one day before, I get another video sent to me via text and it says, by the way, there's a little bit of construction. Here's where you might want to park. And there's a really nice coffee shop right next to our office and they have the best blueberry muffins around. Get a latte, too. So now I. I'm actually looking forward to this appointment that I was absolutely dreading. Well, I get there, I have my blueberry muffin, I get the latte, I park, I walk in, and then there's a plaque and it says, welcome Sheri Leviton as I walk into the front. So now I'm having this overall great customer experience. They tell me to sit down in a chair, they put little hand warmers on me, little booties. They. Then they asked me if I'd like to watch a video up on the TV screen. I said, why, surely. So I relax, the doctor comes in and my root canal begins.

Now, here's the deal. If an endodontist can give me an amazing customer experience for a root canal, imagine what you can do with your customers that by thinking about all of the touch points involved and by incorporating video into your sales strategy. So that's why video. Now let's go ahead and take a look at when and where you want to use video. And I would argue that you can use video throughout your entire sales process. Prospecting I've seen some terrific prospecting videos that break through the noise. Maybe you've got a plaque with your customer's name on it. Perhaps you got a referral and something behind you says jim referred me. Or maybe you're just in a fun location and it's eye catching. As my friend Sally Hogshead, speaker and trainer, says, here's the deal. You don't have to be better, but you do have to be different. And that's one way to break through the noise. Confirming a meeting this is huge, ladies and gentlemen. We're in a hybrid virtual world. Particularly if you are having a virtual zoom meeting or a teams meeting. I would confirm that meeting using video. Hi George, John, Sally, we're looking forward to our meeting. We will be conducting a video meeting. So camera's on even if you have a bad hair day. Or I'd love to meet your dog, Ralph. Whatever the case may be, here's why. You are seven times more likely to close a deal with on a video meeting than on a non video meeting. Meaning even if you set up a video on Zoom or teams or whatever platform you're using, if the customer's camera is off, statistics show you have an 82% chance that they're multitasking and not listening to you. So they're doing their taxes, they're shampooing the dog. In fact, we were doing a seminar for a big Fortune 500 company and we couldn't believe it. We were doing we do virtual master classes on how to sell virtually and we did a poll and said what is the most embarrassing thing G rated that you've ever done with cameras off? I couldn't believe how many people are actually cleaning up cat puke. Weirdest thing. But the point is you want to confirm your video meetings via video to make sure cameras are on and attention is on you in your presentation. Next Discovery I love using video to follow up discovery. I call this step information confirmation. And that's the use case we're going to look at today. Ever so quickly is how to incorporate video after discovery. Next demo Perhaps you have complex information. Not everybody made it to the call. You may want to send a video and just go through the main points that are pertinent to the customer. I feel that most sellers demos are way too long and they should be constructed around the three major problems that you're going to be solving for that customer. So in the event that not all stakeholders were available for the demo. Again, instead of letting them sell your products or services, use video to highlight what the pertinent issues are and how your product is going to help your customer. Next, let's go ahead and talk about a sample use case. So one of my favorite places to use video, as I mentioned before, is right after discovery. So I want you to picture this for a moment. You've just done a great discovery with the client. You found out all of the information that you need to find out. You found out all of the facts. You, you found out their problems, you found out their aspirations and their motivators. What I love to do is to follow up with a video showing the customer what I learned, helping them to feel felt. Now we have a process that we teach in all of our seminars for doing discovery, and we talk about the four types of questions that every every seller needs to ask in every discovery. I'm going to review them really quick for you. If you haven't been through any of our courses. Number one question every seller needs to ask in discovery are skin questions. Skin questions are fact questions. How many users do you have now? How many sellers? How long have you been in the role? Skin questions are the facts. And you actually should be able to research skin questions online. And before you ever get on the phone with a customer, and I will tell you, 80% of sellers stop with skin questions. See, what better sellers do is they break past the skin into the bones. They ask bone questions, questions that reveal problems you all know, no problem, no sale. So these are questions like, if you could change anything about your current vendor, what would it be? What are some of the biggest challenges you've experienced in the last couple of years, et cetera. So bone questions are the framework for your entire demo presentation. Bone questions reveal problems. But the best sellers in the world break past the skin, through the bones, and into the heart. Because today that's the place sales are made, and I would argue, the only place sales are made. So what you want to do in those discovery calls is ask the customer not just what problems the company is having, but how would solving those programs, those problems, affect you personally? How would it change your life? And that's when you're going to get answers like, are you kidding me? If we hit our KPIs, I'd have more time with my children. I wouldn't have to be on the road so much. How does does it affect the buyer personally? Even if you're selling B2B, you are not selling to a company. You are selling to A person heart questions sound like, why would that be important to you? Why now? Why is that important to you personally? And finally, the last type of question we have to ask today are what I call connective tissue questions. Connective tissue questions show you how the organization makes decision decisions. Connective tissue questions are questions like what criteria do you use to bring in a new vendor? Who else needs to be involved? Because you see decisions are complex today. And like I said, there's a lot of people that are involved. So that is the framework that we teach for discovery. But what I love is repeating back their facts after discovery, repeating back their problems, repeating back why it's important to them personally, and then what next steps are to make sure everybody is on the next call that needs to be on the next call. And again, the big advantage of doing this through video is that if you don't have all the stakeholders on the phone now, they're going to get the presentation from you again instead of from the cfo, the CMO, or somebody who clearly isn't in sales and does not know as much about your products and services as you do. So also if you refer to the handout to the workbook, we go into this in a lot more detail. Feel free to use this with your teams. Very, very powerful and effective. So let's go ahead now and go through some quick do's and don'ts of video. And you know, this is a snapshot of a multi week seminar that we do. But I wanted to give you a quick idea so that you can start incorporating video, your secret weapon, into your sales process right away. So let's go ahead and look at some video do's. Number one, strategize your background. Okay, I thought about my background. You know, believe me, before I really understood selling with video, I'd have papers all over the back, I'd have a half drinking drink. And you know what, what you're saying to your customers is yeah, I'm sloppy and I'm not detail oriented. I can be sloppy and not detail oriented. But it is really important that you think what is my background? And as I said earlier, it doesn't have to be the proverbial bookshelf. Have some fun. I've done videos that are literally on a horse, hiking in a mountain. Be you, be authentic. And if it is different and it is fun, it's going to attract more attention. Maybe you have a beautiful yard, maybe you have a cute dog or cat. So again, be authentic, strategize your background. Subject line matters. So the Worst thing you can do when sending a video is to make it about you. Following up on our contract. No. Just checking in. No. Your subject line always needs to be about your customer or solving their problem. If they don't open it, if they don't open the video, then they're never going to see it. I like putting the word video in the subject line. Again, it's different. And your open rate will be quite a bit higher. Choose the right thumbnail. I've seen sellers send videos where they're kind of caught in a weird expression like this. That's not really great. So you want to have a flattering thumbnail. Keep it short. Your videos should be probably no longer than 90 seconds. I like trying to keep them 60 seconds or less. People today have less attention span than ever before. So you want to keep your videos short and to the point and then establish virtual presence. And what I mean by that is think of the colors you're wearing look good. You don't have to smell good, but you do have to look good. And you want to be looking into the camera. You don't want to be looking up over here or over there, which can be hard if you're doing it on a cell phone. And by the way, let me also tell you, I know a lot of people think, oh, I can't do video, I don't have the equipment. It's in your back pocket. Do you know that today's cell phones are more powerful than the video camera Steven Spielberg used when he filmed Jaws? So don't worry about it. I'll tell you, the biggest reason people don't use video is, is they're scared what they're going to look like on video. Take it from me, you can be sweaty and look like whatever the do is, just do it. Thank you for joining us. And as I promised, if you go ahead and click the QR code here, we're going to give you a complete workbook on selling with video, plus the do's and don'ts of selling with video. We'll give that to you via video and via OneMob video. My good friend Sethi, the founder of OneMob, is going to give anybody who clicks here and who goes ahead and fills out this form for the Selling with Video workbook, a free 60 day trial of his video platform. Now this is no ordinary video platform. It allows you to build video microsites so your sales team can track, track, measure and monitor activity and breakthrough inboxes, build consensus and get more deals faster. Thank you. So much for joining us. Thank you, Gearhard, and have a great holiday.