11/4/20 - Sales Assembly Study Break featuring Dan Wardle

Right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Sales assembly study break. I am Christina Brady, president of Sales Assembly. Want to give a quick shout out to Vidyard, our sponsor, and I am lucky enough today to be here with Dan. Dan, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah. So I head up the sales team here at Vidyards. We've got the bdr, the sdr, the inside sales business, even our free and pro product. I have to manage all the revenue for that. I've actually been at Vidyard since the very beginning, seven years back when we were in a little house trying to figure out our product market fit. And you know what obviously I'm passionate about is just video in any form, whether it's over zoom or using something like Vidyard to power your sales conversations.

Well, I can definitely tell that you're passionate about what you do because one, sponsoring this content and allowing us to get in the hands of someone so many revenue producers, we're so grateful to you for that and for you specifically. Speaking about tips and topics, we've discussed a lot the fact that this is the new normal and that means a lot of different things and a lot of different areas. When you think in terms of what that means for sales process for frontline revenue producers, what thoughts come to mind for you?

I think the biggest thing we all have to think about is if we had a defined sales process previously, we need to think about which areas of that process can't be done anymore. My team as an example, the enterprise side of the business would travel to see the customer, typically at the demo phase, whereas other larger organizations, they do the demo remotely, but then they're doing the proposal in person. None of us are getting on a plane for a very long time to go see a customer, unless you're dealing in the hundreds of millions of dollars deal, because it's just not worth the risk. And so we need to reevaluate that sales process and think, you know, these areas of our process that required in person, that required physical contact. How can we replace them? What's the best way to create the best customer experience to ensure our sales process stays cohesive and that we're actually keeping our close rates up there. What is going to replace that? And I obviously strongly believe there is video in certain spots. There is phone calls, there's personal letters, there's actually shipping things out. There's a lot of different mediums that we need to think about now in this new world.

Yeah, I agree that video, I think what used to be something that we do because we can't make it to somebody in front of them now just becomes a core sales piece. Do you feel like there's a difference in the types of process and tool tweaks that an enterprise team would need versus maybe an SMB team or a BDR team?

Yeah, I think the BDR team, you know, if we start at that level in the beginning phases of a deal, it's all just about making a personal connection. It's just about making them feel like you're human. Because as HubSpot has shown, like prospecting, email volumes are triple what they were before all of this. So you need to really cut through the noise. Like BDR Video is just about making that personal connection and trying to get a response. Whereas account executive and account manager becomes, I can't shake their hand, I can't bring them maple syrup. When we used to fly down from Canada as a joke. Like, none of that works anymore. And so what are we going to do? Well, we're going to mail them the maple syrup and we are going to send a video so that we're still making that personal, fun connection. So the next time we get on a demo or the next time I send you a proposal video, you know, you have some kind of connection with me. And the way I see it between an SMB rep and an enterprise rep is just the quality of your content. What we're actually finding, ironically, enterprise sales, the customers we're dealing with don't turn their videos on. Whereas SMB sales, everyone turns their video on. And so you also have to be cognizant that some of these larger enterprise Y corporations may actually be a bit behind in that. But that doesn't mean that you need to turn yours off. I think back in the day it used to be, you know, if the other person had their zoom camera off, you turned yours off. That's actually not the case anymore. They just may be in a spot where their kid's on their lap today, so they're not comfortable turning their video on. You should still leave yours on so they can see your facial reactions. They can feel the passion that you're coming through. And so on the enterprise side of the business, it becomes just putting a bit more of a polish on some of the videos you're sending out, making sure your solution consultants or engineers are making the demo videos instead of a salesperson, just hacking them together, making sure their proposal video is very well done and well practiced and succinct and sounds professional without any errors. And you might have to retake it a couple of times. And so it just depends on who you're dealing with. And you need to match that style the same way as it would be where you'd wear a suit and tie into a large enterprise. You now need to make a bit of a better video when you're sending it out and who are you sending it to? Is it C level? Is it frontline manager? You need to think about who you're sending it to and match your style exactly like you used to with in person meetings.

Yes. And because you're Vidyard, I have to go one step further and just say, I would imagine a lot of people listening to this right now are thinking, okay, I want to start to incorporate video. I have to do that. What would you say is one really quick tactical thing that everybody could do if they wanted to start incorporating video in either their demos or their pitches right now?

Today? Yeah. I think the biggest thing is it's like easy right off the box. You have your first meeting and then you need to follow up with it. Maybe there was a few people missing, they couldn't make it, they dropped off early. Whatever it is, make sure your follow up has a quick little video at the top. Doesn't have to be your full follow up. You can stay with your standard follow up templates that you use, but create a quick video. You know, Vidyard.com free gets you a free tool. Make that quick video saying, thank you for the meeting today. Really excited to meet everybody. I'm glad you turned your camera on today so we could actually have that conversation and feel like we've actually met each other. And I wanted to follow up for anyone who couldn't make it today with this quick video. All the resources are below. Just something really quick like that. Tactically, there's some fun things to think about. Make sure your camera is slightly above you. It always just has a better camera angle. Have some lights to make sure that you've got, you know, you're not backlit with a window behind you. I actually had to move my desk around last week because pandemic. I just came home and settled. But now I'm like, okay, no, this is long term. I need to rearrange my desk. I need to have the background in a certain way, I need to have the lighting in a certain way. And so you need to start thinking about those things and almost become a video producer. So just a couple fun little tips there.

You hit me with that one. I did the same thing. My entire, you know, our office is in our guest room because work from home life is just crazy, right? And so my desk used to be along this wall and the window right here would shine on one half of my face. So I had this kind of weird two faced thing happening in every video and I would try to do a weird lean to get out of it. And so I think even things like that that we didn't used to have to think about, that we do now, are so important. And especially a specialist in the area telling us these quick tips. Thank you so, so much for being here today for the tips. Thank you, Dan, at vidyard for sponsoring this content. And once again, I am Christina Brady with sales assembly. We will see you next week for another study break. Thanks, everyone.