Sales reps, perhaps more than any other position within your company, benefit from ongoing training routines. Onboarding is always a priority, but you can’t really expect anyone to absorb all of the information being thrown at them their first week. In order to succeed, your sales team has to constantly be ready to adapt, and that requires allocating time from the week to ensure that your sales reps are able to accurately communicate with prospective clients concerning the value and specs of your products and services, explaining the necessary gaps that your company fills, and fielding questions from clientele to drive your brand’s image and overall growth rate.
If you’re a proponent of nature in the nature vs. nurture debate, you’ll be right on board. Now here’s the catch: what if we could apply the same principles of this training routine to sales prospects? What if we could curate video material and train clients on understanding the importance of our product line and how it fits into their business schematic?
We believe this can be achieved, and video customization is the strategy guiding the way. It’s the best of both worlds, integrating many of the same modern sales video training techniques with your marketing and sales efforts, resulting in a funnel with high-level prospects that can be converted into loyal customers. So with that in mind, let’s look towards using video prospecting methods to extend the range and expedite the speed of your sales funnel.
Building the Funnel with Concrete, Not Sticks
Creating conversions should be the name of the game for your team, but you already know that. How can it be done? As Isaac Newton posited, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Put another way, you’ll get out of your prospecting what you put in.
If you’re training your team to copy and paste pitches to send out blindly, your conversion rate will reflect that level of personalization. The first step to increasing your conversion numbers is by employing video over text in your prospect engagements. Video creates a far more powerful, effective means to communicate with your prospects.
Not only that, but modern video content management systems (VCMS) have created clever platforms to more effectively follow leads and monitor conversions from the top to the bottom of the funnel. This forms the ideal cycle for potential growth, as your funnel will ultimately be filled not just with large numbers of leads, but quality leads that you can track, manage and nurture into a stronger customer relationship.
Using Video to Start the Conversation
If sending out prospecting emails feels dull and repetitive, stop! Your sales reps should never have to sit with their head in their hand, monotonously clicking over and over. Video customization breaks up this monotony, leading to stronger customer reactions and happier employees.
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The impact of video on conversions is intense: simply by adding the word “video” in an email subject line, click-thru rates have been shown to increase by anywhere from seven to thirteen percent alone. Just for typing the word video.
The real magic happens once prospects have clicked. The inclusion of an embedded video in an email increases the email’s conversion rate by roughly twenty percent over using traditional text or static imagery. That’s a make or break number that simply cannot be ignored.
You’re probably thinking, “This all sounds great, but I don’t think we have the time to devote to this!” Fortunately, platforms like the aforementioned VCMS’s establish an easy-to-use outlet to create and embed personalized videos for your emails. These videos don’t have to be Hollywood productions; they can be as simple as a short introduction explaining who the sales rep is, giving some comforting background on their role with the company. This part of the video can be created and saved for repeat use.
The personalization comes from adding a section with a brief explanation of how your products or service can mesh and fit a specific customer’s needs. This section will show that your sales rep has taken the time to familiarize themselves with the customer and add a touch to the sales side that can really make your business stand out.
Editing this all takes little more time than writing a well-constructed prospect email, especially once your sales reps are properly trained in the video software. The personal touch and opportunity to augment conversions will make the whole process worth it. On top of that, your employees will be thrilled to increase their skill set and have a chance to show off their creative side!
Analytics Tell the Rest of the Story
Video explainers and video-based demos delivered to prospects have been shown to increase the likelihood that a product is purchased by up to 85% (depending on the method of delivery). Best of all, by working with a proper video platform you yourself can better measure accurate and in-depth analytics of your sales strategies to know where to make adjustments.
From tracking conversion rates to monitoring engagements, video platforms and VCMS’s are such a dynamic tool because they monitor video metrics in ways that regular emails or brochures simply cannot. Video analytics can measure anything from which videos prospects viewed, the number of times and when a video has been viewed, and how long a video was watched for. If there’s an interactive portion of the video, you can also check those interaction points and include opportunities for customers to ask questions or pose comments throughout the video.
These details will help your sales team construct an overall visualization of how they’re performing and what specific steps they need to make in order to improve. In the end, the combination of analytics, personalization and visualization methods all flow seamlessly to create an ideal method for converting sales prospects into long-term customers. Explore video for yourself and start your journey down a path towards stronger conversion, greater sales growth, delighted customers and productive sales reps.
