We have Robert Weiss with us today with Multivision Digital. And what we’re going to be talking about is incorporating video into a business sales process says because, of course, video has been there for business to consumer for well over a decade. But in a lot of business to business types of interactions, video is still fairly early in its adoption curve. Robert, feel free to please chime in, don’t let me talk too much. That’s one of my governing rules. Don’t let Doug talk the whole time.
You don’t want to get me started. So I think it will be a very interesting conversation. You know, some of the pre work we did, we could have recorded that because who’s ever watching this or listening to it, I think start taking notes.
Excellent. Well, because one of the things we were talking about in the pre conversation is how it’s just sort of the evolution of video just in terms of the sales process, because, of course, when you’re talking business to business. Right. Everybody uses email. A lot of people get leads online. A lot of people do either ads or posts on LinkedIn. There’s a number of those 21st century elements. But one of the things that video marketing, it feels like there is a way to incorporate that into sales funnels that is more sophisticated than it’s being done right now. Just because at least what I see in a lot of cases is, for example, you’ll have a YouTube channel. There’ll be like, say, a few brand promo. I’m thinking specifically in the business to business space, because I think that’s where there’s the most room for improvement with video, because in the business to consumer space, people are already on the bandwagon because it’s a medium that the video serves really well. Right. You’re trying to get a broad audience to pay attention to something. So splashing out a whole bunch of videos makes sense. In the case of, like, a business to business, do you have, say, a CEO or a CFO or a division vice President who is your decision maker? And so what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to isolate a very small niche of companies with video. And so I think it’s still a powerful tool, but it has to be used differently than if you’re trying to do something like, I don’t know, sell bean bag chairs. And we say that because we bought a bean bag chair from us up for Christmas.
A couple of weeks ago. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The use case of video is completely different, B to B to C. And our business behavior is driven by our personal behavior. That’s why we are all comfortable buying plane tickets and hotels and six figure four figure or sometimes even five figure six figure purchases online. We didn’t do that years and years ago. That’s where the adoption of video comes in, from a B to B, standpoint. But the difference with B to B is finding the right place. So you want to stick within the rails of your processes that you have and then slide video into that video is nothing more than content. That’s it. Yeah, right. Brochure is content. A web page is content. A phone call is content.
Right.
So if you have this process that you have in terms of the sales process and you’re going to have those touch points, well, there is a place for video in that, and it’s becoming more prevalent in that process because people are researching before they talk to sales people.
So you need to be found. You need to be able to explain to a busy decision maker quickly in order for that lead to convert, to have the opportunity to engage into a sales conversation. So therefore, video does a really good job of giving somebody who you don’t know the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time and they can watch it over and over again and share it with people.
Yeah, totally. Because
I think the thing that I think of that video can be really helpful for is if you can appropriately incorporate it into a sales funnel, you can use it to help prospects prequalify themselves so that instead of you having to take them down the whole sales path, then you can start in the middle.
Because of course, getting past the awareness, familiarity, if you can come in where they already have awareness, they already have familiarity, they already know what you do and are halfway convinced that it’s the right thing for them that can reduce time and increase closing rates considerably. Now, putting that together is no small fee. Right. That’s not something that we’re going to do in a quarter of an afternoon. But I think that to me is where the use case really is going to be the strongest. Let me know what I’m missing. I’m sure I’ve got blind spots here.
Well, when they convert so somebody’s online, they’re researching, they convert it to a lead kind of already convinced that you’ve got some value there. So the use cases are well, how does video convince them? Well, if you have a video on a website versus not having it, you’re making it harder for them to be convinced. So therefore, your conversion rate is going to be higher with video. And then once they are converted, what happens then? You talk to them. You’re consulting, you’re coming up with a scope, you’re doing whatever you do within your industry, but you have competition. And that’s when, again, you can use video. Different videos than the one that they saw at the top of the funnel. They’re now in the sales funnel. You might have case studies, you might have product specific videos, you might have guarantee videos, you might have process videos, whatever that might be that reminds them of all of those things. So you’re talking to them now on Zoom or phone call, you meet them, how much are they really going to remember? And also, do you have access directly to decision maker? Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you have your champion then has to distribute information to that decision maker or that decision making committee going off the PDF and the limited knowledge that they have of your organization. What if you had a video that you gave to that champion, that they needed to click a button? That’s it, right? They don’t need to say anything. And you are directly communicating with that entire decision making committee. So powerful, like, what are your chances of doing everything you need to do the know, like and trust factor. It’s just through the roof. So therefore, that’s where kind of video plays a role in generating that lead and then taking that person through the sales funnel. But that organization, the selling organization, needs to understand that they need a library of videos. It’s not just one that’s going to do all of that.
Well, because when my mind was going, when you were talking about that, is that in order to really do this, essentially what you’re going to do is you’ll need to take probably the better part of a day brainstorming out, okay, what are all the things that people would either want to know about their rep, about the company, about the product, about the solution? Essentially think of every question somebody might have that you’d want to answer, and then that becomes then you need to figure out, okay, what’s the script for all of those and then just start recording and just understand this process could take a while, but those are going to give you the pieces, kind of the chess pieces that you need in order to use video for that, in order to really incorporate video into your sales funnel. Because I think that the way that a lot of people think about using video is that they think, okay, we’re going to make a three minute promo video for the company. It’s like, okay, well, yeah, but that doesn’t quite do it. Because if you’re talking B to B,
what you really need is you need a way to get what video will really do if you do it correctly is you need to be able to get decision makers to self select and then go down the know, like and trust curve without needing to be chased down by a rep. Because the traditional way of business development is you essentially have a representative who sends out emails, makes a whole lot of phone calls, and as I say, basically chases down and chases down and tries to tackle the decision maker, metaphorically speaking, not literally.
And that’s not the way it works anymore.
Yeah, I know for a fact there are organizations still doing it that way, but that’s not best practice anymore. That’s very much in 80s, 90s way of doing it.
But you know what, I think if we really look at it on an aggregate level, you have organizations doing both.
They understand to some extent that they need the digital channel to generate, but they still have salespeople doing some traditional stuff. So how do you bridge that when it comes to this stuff? There’s many ways to do that. But this podcast today is about video, so we’re going to stay focused on video.
So what you said is writing down all the questions that a prospect would have versus that company overview video. Right now, let’s just think about those two things because I have this conversation all the time.
We probably haven’t almost done me.
Oh, yeah. We want to do a video that talks about us and shows about us and about us. I’m like, okay, that’s great. But that gives you one video that is about you versus coming up with a plan to utilize that budget and maybe create ten videos that are FAQ question and answer videos that your customers actually care about. And they’re out searching for those solutions to those problems, right?
Yeah.
I’m not saying you still need to do that corporate overview video, but if you’re like getting started or SEO or content creation is part of your strategy, what would you rather have ten or one of.
The things I keep thinking too is that it’s probably dated now, but I think there’s an extremely successful sales letter for a video sales letter for a popular investment newsletter. It’s about ten years ago or so. It ran for, I don’t know, it ran effectively for multiple years. So basically what it was a video that just had a background image and then a person reading and then the text just came on the screen one sentence at a time as they were reading it. It’s like a 45 minutes sales video. It was just the simplest, most brain dead simple thing, but it converted like crazy. And so I think that’s the other thing too is that there’s a tendency to want to make everything flashy, but ultimately you have to go with what converts.
Yeah, exactly. Now that being said,
if you’re a professional organization, it should be professional. Okay. Flashy, professional and not quality are three different things, right?
Yeah.
I literally had an email yesterday, I was going to say last night with a marketing consultant whose client is a very large financial services company and they have some YouTube videos of their top executives looking down the Quality Is crap. It’s on Zoom. And I said to them like, there’s a better way to do that, right? And he’s like, well, we kind of don’t want it to be that nice. I’m like, yeah, you can have it still be quality and professional, but not that nice. It doesn’t need to be overly produced. But we’re talking like the CEO of a $2 billion company. And I said to him, they would never have a brochure like that. They would never show up a meeting like that. Right. They would never have a trade show booth. That was not so nice.
Yeah.
Why is that okay with video?
And the thing is, especially because if you’re doing, say, where you have just a person to camera type of video, sort of similar to, like, what we’re doing, it’s really not that complicated to produce a decent video. Number one is make sure that you try to have as many distractions as you can away. Number two, make sure you have a light so that the person doesn’t have weird shadows on their face. And number three is make sure that you look at the camera. Because what a lot of people do, especially in Zoom, is they’ll look at the person’s image that they’re talking to, not necessarily the camera. So their eyes will look like they’re reading a book that’s underneath the screen. Yeah. That is the telltale sign of people who are doing Zoom on laptops. Is that it’ll look like they’re reading a book that’s underneath it, that’s under the camera. And that’s because they’re looking down at the camera or they’re looking at the screen instead of at the camera. That’s the thing is, it’s not that complicated to be able to, especially if you’re just doing a person to camera type of conversational video. It’s not that complex to make a halfway decent video.
Yeah, I totally agree. Some people don’t want to invest. I don’t know the reasons why, but what I would say is always lead with the professional. And this is also what I said as marketing consultant.
It’s okay to have lesser than good quality video as long as you have the majority of the stuff out there is high quality.
Yes. People are forgiving. And that’s what they said, right? People are forgiving. Yes. But make sure that you have good stuff out there. If you’re a professional organization and if you got one or two pieces that are like off the cuff, not so great, then that’s okay for us. We’re a video marketing company, so we need to have good stuff. But I also have stuff like that I’ve done on my phone at a trade show or something like that. That’s not the highest in quality. That’s okay, because I’ve got a ton of other great stuff out there that people can see. That’s not me. The other stuff is me.
Well, at least the way that I would think would probably be optimal to mix that up would be that if you are incorporating video into your sales funnel, then that’s something that you really want to have pretty sharp. On the other hand, if you have something say that you’re posting up on LinkedIn or say you end up putting it like Instagram or TikTok or whatever, I don’t think the bar needs to be set as high. But if you’re trying to bring people down the know, like and trust path to where they decide they want to do business with your business. That should be something that you thought of in advance. That is not something where you want to be shooting from the hip.
Yeah. Another thing to consider is that video lasts a long time. So you mentioned Tiktok. Yeah. Something that’s going to be on TikTok that you probably don’t want to put a lot of money behind that. But a sales video, how long is that going to last? And we have clients that we’ve created sales videos for four years ago. They still use them week in and week out. They invested appropriately in them. And they have good quality video. And it’s not just the look of the video, but there’s a lot that goes into a quality video that you will never, ever see. The pre production and the planning, the framing, like you said, to kind of make things nice in the background. Those are things that we all take for granted because we watch TV. That’s perfect.
Yeah.
Most of the stuff nowadays that we watch on Netflix or Amazon or Apple, it’s shot in a studio and it’s green screen 100%. It’s perfect all the time. So there’s a lot that goes into making a good looking video and to make the right investment in a sales video that you’ll pay or invest today. But it’s like the gift that keeps on giving because literally you can use that sales video for the next three to four to five years, potentially.
The way that I would think about, especially some of these sales videos is similar to some of the old school long form sales letters. And now I’m going to be dating myself here. But like, I’ve gone onto his website, watches his son’s website and read some of the old Gary Halbert sales letters. And some of these things converted for 5 10 years, basically where they would just print them up, fold them up, put them in letters, send them out, and then people would mail in money and really, really well written sales letters or really well done sales videos can convert for a disturbingly long time.
Yes, exactly. And I’m sure there’s a lot of thought that went into that sales one.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Let me tell you, the people who are good at writing those sales letters, they don’t just sit down and do it. There’s a lot of pre planning that goes in there’s, multiple edit versions, they’ll send out the split test. There’s a lot of work that goes into making these things really consistently high converting.
Yes. Agreed.
All right. Let’s say that people who are listening and they say, all right, I’m sold. I want to take the next step. What’s the next step?
It really depends on where they are at their video adoption. There are different levels. Like they’ve never done video before. I’ve done some video or I’ve done a lot of video, but I need a strategy, right?
Yeah,
So we have those three personas getting started, doubling down or need a strategy. It really depends on where you are on that adoption curve. But what I would say is that if you’re at a zero right, it’s a great time to get to a one, two or three. If you’re at three or four, it’s a great time to get to a five or six and if you’re at a six, seven, eight it’s a great time to really Hone a strategy to make sure that you are consistent and then get up to a nine or a ten. So that’s kind of where I would say to respond to that.
Got you. All right, well, where can people go to learn more to either connect with you, your company or to just dive deeper into the rabbit hole?
Yeah, Multivision digital our website there’s a ton of thought leadership stuff there there’s tons of portfolio sections that you could check out and our contact information is at the top of the page so reach out, call me, email me, fill out a form. Happy to spend some time just advising and answering some questions. Video is so much of a professional service. The cameras and equipment are really just how we execute on the professional service. So happy to again spend some time giving ideas, bouncing some things around with people.
Got you. Well, that’s great to hear. Everybody that let’s see. Multivisiondigital.com. I seen it.com. Okay. Multivisiondigital.com and Robert really appreciate your time today.
Thank you very much and hope everybody got some good value out of it.
Alright.
Thanks Doug.
