Everyone wants to move faster, close more deals more quickly, and blow away targets. We are bombarded with new tools and tricks to accelerate our close rates every day. Let’s take a deep breath and consider more than just speed when it comes to productivity.
As we shared in our blog last August, in the “new normal” it is critical to break routines, create personal connections, and display empathy to be truly successful. While the newest and hottest sales enablement tools are using the power of AI to automate processes and deliver real-time insights, we must be careful not to lose our humanity along the way.
Sales teams crave face-to-face avenues to connect with clients. Unfortunately, in the age of COVID, sales travel and in-person meetings are close to nonexistent. Same with internal team huddles at our cubes or in meeting rooms. Whatever the future brings, we’ve all experienced the advantages of remote work.
How do we preserve the impact of face-to-face interaction at a distance without drowning in Zoom meetings? Short. Async. Video.
Benefits of Short Async Video
Maintaining a personal connection with clients and team members could be as easy as sharing a short video like we do on Instagram and TikTok, but professionalized and secure. While we have ready access to text-based messaging platforms like Slack and email, video is powerful in many ways:
- Non-verbal communication. There isn’t a consensus on exactly how much of communication is non-verbal, but some things are undeniable. Things like facial expressions and hand gestures change how people perceive your communication. Some say up to 95% of communication is non-verbal.
- Empathy. Our brains are pre-programmed to respond positively to human faces. Time spent looking at the vulnerability of another human face is invaluable.
- Attention. Video within an email increases the click-through rate by 96% and users spend 88% more time on websites with video. Video has the ability to simultaneously inform and entertain us in a way that a simple text message never could.
- Recall. Our brains are programmed to understand and remember video better than text. According to studies, the average viewer remembers 95% of a message when it is watched, and only 10% when read.
- Control. Zoom fatigue not required. Create, view, or respond on your schedule.
Your approach to integrating short videos into your workflows should depend on whether you plan to use it to improve internal collaboration and connection or external communication.
External Asynchronous Short Video
Demand Metric previously reported that “more than 70% of marketing and sales professionals reported that video converts better than other content types, yet fewer than 10% are actually using it to effectively engage, qualify and convert their audiences.”
Our capacity to create and share video content is being simplified and accelerated on an almost daily basis. Additionally, video can provide metrics around viewership related to specific prospects to gauge interest and investment.
While this trend has been a long time coming, Hubspot Sales Director Dan Tyre says “I’m confident that video will stick in 2021. The underlying statistics are undeniable — salespeople who use video will connect at three times the rate of those who don’t, reducing the inefficiency of the outreach process as a whole.”
FOR EXTERNAL ASYNC SHORT VIDEO, TRY VIDYARD
Benefits Snapshot:
- Speed – We talk 6x faster than we type, view at 2x
- Attach quickly via email
- Get face-to-face time with customers asynchronously
- Quickly repurpose existing sales presentations
- Relay emotional context and connection more effectively
- Integrate with your existing prospect management tools, like Salesforce
- Low production lift
Get Started
Work with your sales team to identify a targeted set of contacts at your key accounts that are hard to get in front of. Develop a video-based outreach campaign to highlight valuable demo moments their team saw, but they didn’t.
If your sales cycle is in flight? Use an async video touch to get that all important comfort level of knowing the exec sponsor heard it from you and is aware of your progress and next steps.
“Talk” with them as if you were sitting across the table! If you dip your toe in the water with a targeted set of contacts, it will be easier to understand and measure its effectiveness. I have a hunch your prospects will find it a refreshing way of working with you.
Internal Asynchronous Short Video
Video on the go has been the norm for some time now. In 2016, people uploaded more video content in 30 days than major U.S. television networks created in the previous 30 years.
Fast forward to today and TikTok has 800M active daily users. In our world, short async video provides an opportunity for sales to speed up note-taking and insight-sharing. In addition, reps can capitalize on the ability to show personality and creativity with low production lift. Internal communication can become more human and authentic, especially in light of the drop-off of in-person chats.
FOR INTERNAL ASYNC SHORT VIDEO, TRY VOODLE
Benefits Snapshot:
- Speed – We talk 6x faster than we type, view at 2x
- Send from anywhere
- Get face-to-face time with colleagues asynchronously
- Relay emotional context and connection more effectively
- Integrate with your existing workflow tools, such as Slack
- Low production lift
Get Started
Work with a small team of your reps to start “Voodling” customer/prospect meeting recap and updates. Voodle was smart and integrated into Salesforce, Outreach and others. The tool appends and transcribes in your tools, so don’t worry about “if it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist” still holds true.
If you are like me, hearing and seeing your rep’s recap of the meeting is as important as the information itself. Truth be told, I actually retain more of it this way. Again, keep the initial test tight to a team of people you know would embrace and enjoy the journey, and have fun!
