Ep 14 How to Make a Video Proposal

You've been asked to send a proposal. That's easy. You do that every day. But are you willing to go the next step? Sending a proposal in a video format.

Speaking the show about effective, speaking in public to the media, at work and in life, speaking with TJ Walker.

Folks, if you're like most people, you're not sending video proposals. Very few people do. I've been doing this for two or three years now. I frankly hope my competitors aren't watching this and don't send video proposals. Because a lot of my clients tell me that they in fact hired me because I was the only person to send a video proposal. Now some of you are thinking, well, T.J. that's not really appropriate in our industry. It's not needed, it's not necessary. I want to challenge you on your thinking here. Why are you doing what's necessary? Shouldn't you be doing what stands out as above and beyond what everyone else is? Isn't that how you win new business? I don't know about your business, but if it's any kind of business where people are getting proposals from more than one person and you're not already the incumbent locked in, why not stand out? I just don't know of any way where it's easier to stand out than providing a video proposal. Now again, every industry is different. If you're able to meet with a prospect one on one or with a small group and really have an in depth conversation with them, then hey, perhaps it's not needed. But for many, many industries these days with the Internet, phone, email, text, prospects are calling us and they're not willing to come to our office and meet with us. It's not quite worth our time to fly to them. We have to communicate electronically. Now the default method for doing that is text writing, PDFs, occasionally graphics, PowerPoint slot. But all of your competitors are doing that. Why not stand out? And that's really what I want to talk to you about today is how to do these video proposals. It's not as hard as you think. Every single prospect who writes or calls me and contacts us here at Media Training Worldwide, I give a personalized video proposal to them. Now you may think, well, isn't that time consuming and expensive? And the answer is no. It actually takes me a lot less time than it would take you to write a three or four paragraph letter. Writing a letter or a new proposal, you have to write it, rewrite it, edit it, spell check it, sometimes format it. All I do is turn the camera on, hit record, talk and then I hit stop. That's it. I do all my video proposals in one take. Now, full disclosure. If I feel like I've really messed up in the first 10 seconds, I'll just hit stop, delete and I'll start over. But if I'm two, three minutes in and I stumble over a word, I just keep going. I don't let it bother me because that's what would happen if you were having a conversation with someone. Here to me is the real value of video proposals. If you are good at selling, if you're in the same room with someone, if you're face to face with someone, if you can't then meet with them face to face because they've simply called you over the phone or they've written to you through email asking for a proposal, then my recommendation is, yes, do a video proposal. Here's the most important thing to cover in a video. It doesn't have to have flashy graphics. In fact, I don't use this backdrop. Some of you don't like this backdrop. I understand. Doesn't have to be anything flashy. All that's really important is that you talk about a prospect, mention it by name. If it's someone who calls me, it's Mary. And she has five executives in the chemical industry and they're looking for crisis communications training. I hit record and I'll say, mary, I understand you have five colleagues and since you are in the chemical industry, you always have to be prepared for a crisis because what happens if a truck overturns? What happens if there's a fire or an explosion and all of a sudden CNBC and Bloomberg are at your doorstep? Everything I do is through the lens of what Mary has specifically asked me. So I don't say her name every two seconds in a cheesy way. But I start the video off by mentioning her by name, talking a little about her industry, and talking specifically about how I would help the executives in her company. So it's not generic. It's not just, I'm glad you've contacted Media Training Worldwide. Let me tell you about how great we are. No, it's like with any one on one sales pitch, you sell more. The less you talk about yourself and the more you talk specifically about your prospect. You do that and you'll be in great shape. Now, let's talk about something that I know is frankly holding a lot of you back. And this is the thing that you're going to waste more time on than anything, so we might as well get to it.

Technology insights.

The technology. I hear it all the oh tj, I would love to do video proposals, but we've been working on our TV studio for the last six months and we'll be ready in another month. Oh, good. Good grief, you can't wait that long. The technology is not important now. I have a fancy camera and some studio lighting and this is just a TV screen behind me. You can be just as effective holding a cell phone video, as long as it's not shaking and there's decent lighting. For a proposal video, the main thing is people can see you and they can hear you clearly. Unless you're a video production company or an ad agency where production values are the most important thing. But for anyone else, any other professional services or product, a simple talking head video is the way to go. Would it always be perfect? No. In fact, right before I went to this video segment to introduce this, I had a little flub because I am with a mouse right here, clicking on the various video segments, the teasers. Forgive me, for those of you listening purely on audio, I just held up a computer mouse and I couldn't find the right one. So it was a slight awkward pause for two seconds. Who cares? Nobody really cares, I find. So just go with the don't worry about making your proposals perfect. Don't edit your proposals. Once you start the editing process, you'll be working on it for three days, and at that point, the prospect has already narrowed the list down, probably hired someone else and completed the task. So my recommendation is to do simple talking head videos where you're talking to the prospect as if they were sitting right across the table from you in your office, and tell them what you can do for them. Tell them about their problems, their concerns, and how you can help them, how you can reduce some pain, increase their productivity, help them make money. Whatever it is you do, talk about them, don't talk about yourself. And when you do talk about yourself, just do it through the lens of how you're going to help them do that and you're going to be in good shape. It's hard for me to imagine anyone saying, well, I would have hired this firm, but I didn't like the way they sent me a proposal video, even though no one else did. In theory, could that happen? I guess. But I think the far more likely scenario is you can distinguish yourself in a positive way. So that's my question for you folks. Are you willing to do a proposal video this year or next year? If not, why not? And if so, what's holding you back? That's the question for the day. Are you going to do a proposal video explaining your services, explaining your products? And if you're not, what's holding you back? Please send your comments to me tjediatrainingworldwide.com you can always reach me on Twitter jwalker and you can also post your comments right here on the Facebook page, YouTube page, my blog, itunes, anywhere you can find it.

Speaking is brought to you by Media Training World. For all of your media training and public speaking training needs, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com.

If you have never done a proposal video, there are going to be a couple of things that you're instantly going to worry about. Uh, oh, let me wait till I lose a few pounds. Let me wait till I get a better hairstyle. Let me wait until I've lasered my eyes. I don't have to use glasses. Again, with all due respect, I would ask you if a Great ideal Fortune 500 prospect called up and said, I could be in your office in 10 minutes. If you can give me a pitch, would you say no? Or whoever your ideal prospect is for your company or your organization, whether it's a donor, if you're a nonprofit, if someone who really fit your ideal profile of someone you would want to talk to, who could help you and they said they could meet, let's say 10 minutes is too short. Let's say they could meet with you tomorrow morning, would you tell them no? Would you say, come back in six months when I've lost £20? I don't think so. I think you'd find a way to meet with them. Because when you meet with someone, you can connect more as a person. They can see you, hear you, you can react, you can sense their overall interest. And for most people, it's just a higher percentage of closing. Doing a video proposal isn't quite as good, but it sure is a lot better than just sending an email of a PDF attachment or a Word document. It is just so much better than that. And it's especially better because your competitors aren't doing it. If you wait another five years, you're going to be behind the curve. Those of you old enough to remember 20 years ago, if you had a website, you could put out a press release and it would generate news because none of your competitors had websites. Or 22 years ago, shall we say. Nowadays, if you don't have, you don't get any credit for having a website. If you don't have a website, it makes you look like you have gone out of business and you're considered a joke. I think we're going to be in exactly the same situation when it comes to video proposals, that they're going to be the standard, they're going to be the norm. If you don't have it, it's going to look bad. If you do have it, you're frankly not going to get a lot of credit, so you might as well get used to it now. Let me warn you, if you haven't gone through media training with me or someone like that, you don't have to for this, but you're likely to be a little shocked at how you look and how you sound. Most people don't really like how they look or sound on video. So my recommendation, do a practice one for a fictional company. Look at it, figure out what you like, figure out what you don't like, keep doing it, do it again and again and again until you're comfortable that your proposal video looks the way you want it to look, sounds the way you want it to look, and then send it to a couple of people you trust, ask them for their feedback. You're not looking for perfection, and they may say, well, your lighting isn't perfect. Some of their advice, although well meaning, won't be that helpful. But some of it will be helpful. So listen carefully and then just figure out, okay, I'm going to improve it. But if that proposal is due on Wednesday, I'm going to send it Wednesday, no matter what. You want to talk about the power of video. Some of you have heard me mention this before, but 20 years ago, I put together a demo video of my media training techniques on an old vhs. Believe it or not, one client hired me later, told me she never even looked at the video. Just the fact that I had a video made her seem legitimate in my eyes. Now, it's not quite the same these days because video has never been easier to create. But in your particular industry, in your niche, it still might be rare. It still might be a way of distinguishing yourself. So, hey, why not do it? Why wait? You know, if you waited till 2004 to have a website and all your competitors had1 By 1999 or 1998, you lost a lot. I'm telling you, we are entering a video centric world. Millennials, young people would much prefer looking at a video than reading. And they certainly don't like it when you call them on the telephone. I can tell you that from personal experience. But they don't mind if you send them video that they can watch when they want it, how they want it. So that's my real challenge to you for your proposal videos. If you want me to take a look at yours, I will do so. So if you post a link on my website, YouTube, Facebook, I'll be happy to take a look at your proposal video and tell you what I think. I'm TJ Walker. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success. Thanks for joining me today.

Speaking with TJ Walker is the number one rated daily streaming TV and radio show devoted to all aspects of speaking and communication. If you received value from this show, then please subscribe to it@mediatrainingworldwide.com Please review the show, leave comments, and share it with your friends and colleagues. Today.