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VP of Marketing @ Vidyard | Author of The Visual Sale | Host of The Sales Feed Show
Video selling can be the secret weapon to propel your sales team to higher conversion rates.
Think video selling is just about prospecting? Well, you’d be wrong.
Video’s attention-grabbing power can impact all stages of the sales cycle – from the initial outreach to personalized demos and sales proposal walkthroughs.
Video in B2B sales isn’t rocket science – as long as you have the right tools, processes, and strategies to guide you.
Tyler Lessard joins Closing Time to provide insights on video-based strategies for prospecting, conveying value propositions, mitigating no-show rates, delivering short demos, and facilitating smooth handoffs to customer success. This episode is particularly beneficial for outbound reps, account executives, and customer success managers seeking to enhance their performance in these areas.
Sales reps often struggle with the issue of no-shows – imagine having a calendar filled with scheduled discovery calls or demos, only to find that people don’t actually attend these calls. But here’s the thing – video can be a game-changer in this scenario.
Picture this: whether you’ve generated the opportunity through a video, the prospect has come to you via your website, or at a later stage in the process, the goal is to ensure that every opportunity translates into a live meeting.
One effective approach Tyler has seen is salespeople sending a brief video message before the scheduled meeting. This video summarizes what the meeting will cover, what the prospect should prepare, and what outcomes they can expect. Now, you might be thinking, “Isn’t this similar to sending an email reminder?” Well, yes, but there’s a notable difference.
Sending a video message brings back the human touch. It’s harder for the prospect to ignore or ghost you when they see your face and hear your voice. It’s kind of like re-establishing that personal connection.
Interestingly, guilt plays a role here. When the prospect recognizes you as a real person – let’s say, “Hey, that’s Val, and I’ve got a call with her tomorrow” – they’re more likely to communicate honestly. If they can’t make it, they’ll tell you instead of just disappearing – allowing reps to reallocate that time and effort toward other deals.
Live demos are debatably one of the more important steps in the sales process, meaning pre-recorded videos should never replace them. But what if you’re struggling to connect with a prospect? What if you can’t get them on a call? Are there other key stakeholders who can’t attend the live demo? This is where sellers can really leverage the power of personalized short demo videos – both pre-made by your marketing and enablement team or DIY by the seller themself.
For instance, let’s say you can’t align everyone for a demo, but the prospect still wants to see something. In such cases, you can create a short demo video focusing on what interests them most. It saves them time and effort, plus they can share it easily with their team.
And here’s another scenario: after a live demo, questions arise. Instead of scheduling another call, you can promptly respond with a tailored video. This is not only more convenient but keeps the deal moving without the back-and-forth hassle. Using this strategy gives salespeople a graceful way to handle tough questions. When you can’t answer on the spot, you can promise a detailed video explanation follow-up. It buys you time and ensures a thorough response with visuals if needed.
Now, let’s dive deeper into the sales funnel. You send out a proposal, but sometimes things stall a bit. Tyler recommends sending a proposal walk-through video to re-engage buyers and prevent deals from stalling.
The idea isn’t to replace the live proposal walkthroughs, which are still vital. Instead, consider the scenario after you’ve sent out the actual proposal – whether via DocuSign or PDF. Think about what happens next. Your primary contact (champion) receives it and might forward it to others for review and approval.
Here’s where the video comes in: you bridge the gap for those who weren’t part of the live calls by recording a short video. It’s like a condensed introduction, contextual explanation, and problem recap all in one.
Start with a quick reintroduction – establish trust even with those you’ve never spoken to live. Summarize the challenges you identified during discovery and how your proposal tackles them. Connect the dots between solving these challenges and the benefits that follow. When there are additional components, like service costs, address them proactively. You can even anticipate questions from specific teams, like finance, and address their concerns upfront.
It’s a straightforward approach that’s surprisingly effective in increasing close rates and expediting deal closures. It eliminates the need for repetitive explanations and back-and-forths, especially for people beyond your primary contact.
Alright, so let’s shift gears to the next phase – closing the deal. It’s a great achievement, but we all know the awkwardness of that handoff call, right? When your sales rep is like, “I’m done, talk to this guy now.” It’s not the best vibe.
Customers want to feel a connection with the team they’ll be working with – it’s all about trust and rapport, which makes the post-sale CSM handoff so important.
Traditionally, there are two options: a forwarded email introduction or a live video call. The latter is more personal, but it often feels like an extra scheduling step for the customer.
Here’s how Tyler suggests leveraging video in this case: the current rep and the handoff person (maybe with a Solutions Engineer if needed) set up a quick Zoom call together. They hit record and have a natural conversation. The current rep introduces the customer to the new team member, who can then share a bit about themselves. Once the chat is done, they download the Zoom recording, save it in their Vidyard folder, and send it off via email. It’s a neat video package that the customer can watch at their convenience.
This isn’t a full-blown production. It takes less than 5 minutes – just a genuine conversation caught on video. These little gestures go a long way in enhancing the buyer experience and showcasing your organization’s commitment. It’s all about creating those meaningful connections that truly matter.
Next in the sales funnel are upsells and cross-sells, typically handled by a growth AE or the CSM team. The real opportunity lies in how customer success or account managers can use video messages frequently with their customers. It’s about staying top of mind and nurturing that rapport.
What usually happens is that customer success reps will onboard a new customer, things get rolling, and then there’s a lapse in communication. Six months fly by, and suddenly, the customer hasn’t seen or heard from you. It’s not that there were big issues – it’s a good thing they didn’t have problems – but you’re no longer a vivid memory. That personal connection fades.
So here’s the tip: Customer success and account managers can periodically send short video messages to their customers. Are there new feature releases, webinars, or updates that your customer would care about? Rather than sending an email, share that same message in a video. These micro-moments of connection are easier than ever with video tools, like Vidyard – they help CSMs revitalize their relationship with customers and ensure they stay top-of-mind throughout the renewal cycle.
Video selling. It’s not just about prospecting. We’re learning all about using video selling tactics throughout the stages of the sales cycle in this episode of Closing Time. Welcome to Closing Time, the show for go-to-market leaders. I’m Val Riley, head of content marketing for Insightly. Today I’m joined by Tyler Lessard. He is VP of Marketing at Vidyard, host of the Sales Feed podcast, and the author of the book The Visual Sale. Welcome to the show, Tyler. Hey, Val. Thanks for having me. It is an absolute pleasure to be here to talk about using video. Awesome. So, Tyler, I have to admit that I have personally pigeonholed video selling into that like first outbound prospecting stage where salespeople are trying to make an early connection. Is that the best use of video? Well, I will say it is often the first use of video for a lot of sellers. You know, video messaging within sales has been around for a few years now. And the one thing a lot of salespeople have realized is the opportunity for using video messages inside of emails and even direct InMails gives them a leg up when it comes to standing out with prospects. And that’s really where the idea of video prospecting began, because one of the biggest challenges we all have right now in prospecting is just getting the attention of individuals. There’s so much noise. They’re getting so many emails. So video works really well for that to help at least create that first conversation. But as you look at the opportunities throughout the sales process, there are frankly, I think, no stages where video doesn’t make sense to use as well. Right. At the end of the day, if you can record a short video where you’re able to articulate your message more clearly, do a screen shared actually show rather than just tell. There are I mean, literally countless ways you can use it throughout your sales process. And a lot of sellers are starting to learn best practices around that now. Yeah. You know, one area where I think go-to-market teams struggle or the ones that I’ve worked with, are no-shows, right. It’s so discouraging. You have this rep’s calendar, it’s full of discovery calls or demos, and then people just don’t get on the call. So can you talk about how video can help with that? Yeah, it’s actually one of the really great use cases. And, you know, whether you’ve sourced the opportunity with video or they’ve come in from your website or maybe even your later stage in a process. And to your point, you really want to make sure you get every chance you have to make those live meetings happen. I found a lot of success with sellers sending a short video message prior to the meeting to recap what to expect in the meeting, what to prepare if necessary, and what outcomes to expect from that upcoming meeting. And a lot of salespeople may do this already using traditional emails, send an email or an automated email, even reminding the prospect about the meeting to increase your show rates at least a little bit. But what we found is by sending this video message in many ways, it re-humanizes you as an individual, and it makes it a lot more difficult, frankly, for the prospect to just ignore you or to even ghost you. Right. There’s a lot of power, I hate to say it, but there’s a lot of power in guilt. And once they reconnect with you as a real person and they go, Oh, yeah, look, that’s Val. Oh, yeah,. I’ve got a call with her tomorrow. If they weren’t intending to show up, they’re now more likely to tell you and say, you know what, we’ve got to move it. But otherwise, now they become much more inclined to show up for that meeting.. And that can actually have a really material impact on how your deal cycles move. Yeah, it really does humanize it, so I get it for sure. I saw a tactic where you actually coach sales reps to use video maybe in place of a live demo. Like, like it’s a Hail Mary, right? Like we cannot, I’m going to lose this this prospect. I can’t get them on the phone. I can’t reach them or whatever. Let me just see if I can throw something out there in the form of a short demo and it sticks. Yeah, there’s a few different ways to think about it because when you think about, you know, how video can work for you, one of its most beneficial capabilities is as we mentioned earlier, it’s ability to show rather than just tell. And that can be done either via prerecorded demo videos that your marketing or your sales enablement or solutions consulting teams have created. Or even you as a seller. Or they can be done as custom recorded videos with a simple screen share. If you’re a software company, where you can maybe record a quick demo, walking them through a certain feature or capability and explain it in terms that are more specific to your prospect. And I don’t typically recommend this as an alternative to live demos. Right. We all know the value of getting a customer on live to walk through and then discovery becomes just as much a part of that process. But either in the absence of or in addition to that live demo, these recorded either, again, ready to go or ones you do yourself, short demo videos can be really, really effective. One instance is when, to your point, maybe we’re not able to get everybody aligned on a demo the customer really wants to see something, take that that time commitment off their plate. Say, You know what, I’m going to record you a short demo. I’m going to walk through the things. I know you’re most interested in. I’ll send it over, have a look at it, share it around with your team and let me know what you think. And one of the benefits there, not only is it more timely, but it’s also something they can easily share with anybody else on their team. The other thing is, if maybe you’ve had your live demo and questions come up, right? Hey, we didn’t get a chance to look at this or I had a question about how this thing works. More specifically, rather than saying, Oh, yeah, let’s schedule another call and hop on. What you can do is again, say,. You know what? That’s a great question. Just give me a minute I’m going to record a quick video for you to show you that a little bit more detail. And when you send that over, same sort of benefits, they can watch it immediately. They can share it around with others. And you can keep that deal moving forward without having to play calendar tag and phone tag and ultimately really respecting the way that people want to buy these days. Yeah, Tyler,. I really love that tip because, you know, when you ask a question and they don’t have an answer right away, you know, some junior sales reps get nervous, they get flustered. But that really gives them not only a great way to answer that question, but incorporate it into a really engaging follow up. Yeah. Yeah. Even that simple notion of if somebody does ask you a question during a meeting and to your point, you’re not able to answer it, you can be really explicit in that and say, You know what? Afterwards, I’ll send you you know, a short video to really clearly explain that because I can’t do it justice you know, right now and there’s something. I want to show you as part of it as well. So there’s a little bit of a get out of jail free card but also it does give you that time to say, you know what, I’m going to answer this in the best way that I can. I’m going to share something on the screen. I’m going to walk through something. Or maybe we already have a video that explains it really clearly. So, yeah, lots of benefits to doing this for both the seller and the buyer, which is what makes it really great. So let’s keep going down the funnel a little bit. I saw your team talk about a proposal walkthrough video, and I have never heard of that before, but I do think it’s quite brilliant. So you know, you get a proposal and then sometimes maybe it stalls a bit. So do you find that these proposal walkthrough videos, maybe prevent that from stalling and then like how do they work? How long should they be? This is such a great use case and. I have to give credit where credit is due. This came from a lot of our customers who had told us about how they’re using it when we discovered it, it wasn’t something we had originally really thought of. And we heard from more and more that they were saying, I never send a proposal without including a video. And much like the demo scenario, we don’t you know, I don’t preach that you should just send video instead of doing a live walkthrough of your proposal, you should always still be trying to do that wherever you can. But then as you go to send the actual proposal, whether it’s a DocuSign or a PDF or whatever it happens to be think about the process that’s about to happen, right? That’s going to land in your champion’s inbox, and they are more than likely going to have to forward that around to other individuals for review and sign off. And in that case, there may very well be individuals who weren’t really close to the deal process who may not have been on any live calls and who are probably going to have some more questions that may end up stalling. And by recording a short video to go along with it, it allows you to add those key contextual elements that you normally would if you had been able to chat with those people for three or 4 minutes. Right? So what you can do is a really simple video, just, you know, your reintroducing yourself for those who maybe haven’t met you, right? So now you’re actually earning trust with people you never got on a live call. You know, walking through, recapping the problems. Right? That’s really important. You can say, you know, through our discovery, we learned A, B and C, right? And these are big challenges for your organization. And we agreed that if we can solve these, then this benefit is going to come from it. And that is why we are suggesting X, Y and Z in this proposal. And there is an additional line item here for services because you indicated that you want to have this up and running in 30 days, whatever it is. Right. But it gives you that opportunity to clearly explain what’s in here, why it is, to help reinforce it with any others that it may get forwarded along to. You can also quickly, proactively address anything that are common issues, right? It may be And for those of you in finance, taking a look at this, you’ll notice that on page four, this clause here,. I often get questions about that. And let me just let you know, here’s why it’s there and what it really means. So it’s a really simple thing that you can do. But I’ve heard from many different sellers that it has helped them increase their close rates and helped them get the deals over the line faster because they don’t have to get into those back and forth to explain things or to re articulate things to others beyond just the champion. It’s funny that you mentioned the finance guy because that’s exactly what I was thinking. Gosh, if we could preempt some of those questions that finance is going to have and just speed that process along, that would be great. So I really love that tactic. But let’s move on let’s say we closed the deal, right? Which is great. And then, you know, there’s nothing more awkward that that handoff call, right, where your sales rep is kind of like, hey, I’m done with you. Don’t call me, call this guy. And it’s not the intention. But I saw you propose a video solution there, too, so can you talk us through that? Yeah, this is another simple way, right? People love to get to know the people they’re going to be working with. They want to feel that sense of camaraderie, rapport and trust and so today we always think of like two options. One is I can send an email and copy that person and then, you know, they can try to schedule a call. Or number two, we actually try to set up a video call and I do a live handoff so they can get to meet them. Right. That second one sounds great, but again, most customers are going to be like, I don’t need to schedule time just to meet this individual. Is there a better way? And honestly, I think that better way is recording a simple video, right? What a lot of our users will do is hop on actually a Zoom together. So that the current rep and the handoff, and maybe an SE if needed, will hop on a little Zoom, they’ll record it and so they can do it together and they’ll say, hey, this is me you know,. I want to introduce this individual. They’re going to be working with you. They can introduce themselves, talk a little bit, and then when they’re done, they download that Zoom recording, drag it into their Vidyard folder and send it over via email. And so they’ve now got this little video that they can watch. And it’s just, again, these simple little motions where that doesn’t take any more than 5 minutes to do. Right. This isn’t like producing a video. This is just hitting record and speaking naturally. But these micro-moments of connection really add up to just giving a much better buyer experience and setting a bar for how it is that you work as an organization. That would really make me as a buyer feel like my time was valued and we were super efficient too. So I like that at all levels. OK, so now again, we’re going even farther down the sales, the sales funnel into like upsell or cross-sell. So is it just kind of like the same process starts all over again in terms of like a customer success rep pinging a sales rep for maybe an upsell, cross-sell opportunity? I think the bigger opportunity here for using things like video messages is for that customer success or account manager to be using short videos frequently with their customers to make sure that they keep, you know, themselves top of mind and to make sure they kind of keep that rapport building going. Because what often happens with a lot of customer success reps is that, you know, they’ll have a new customer, they’ll onboard them and you know, things will get up and running. And then there’ll be a couple of emails here and there, but six months will go by and you’ll realize, Geez, they haven’t seen my face, they haven’t heard my voice, right? Like we haven’t had any live conversations, probably because they haven’t had any big problems, which is good. But you know, you’re, you’re no longer really top of mind. They don’t necessarily remember you as a human and as a real person. And those things can be really important. So I encourage customer success and account managers to think about that, say, hey, like, you know, periodically send a short video message to your customer, whether it’s to deliver a message you were going to send via an email and now just do it in a quick video so that you’re present or if you want to walk them through things, right? Like, Hey, we just launched this cool new feature. I thought you might enjoy it. I made you a quick video here just to show you how it would work for you so that you can clearly understand it. And maybe this will help. Again, these are all these micro-moments of connection that we can now create through quickly recorded videos that we couldn’t really ever do before without tools like this. So that’s how I think about it in that customer success role. And again, the sort of intangible benefits of that rapport building, that being top of mind, I think can go a long way to to building a long lasting relationship. All right, so micro-moments of connection. I think that’s my big takeaway from using video through all phases of the sales funnel. Any final thoughts, Tyler? You know, for a lot of sellers out there, this is new, right this idea of like recording and sending video messages. And it’s different from hopping on a live video call where you’re having a more natural conversation. And so what I really encourage folks out there to do is just start trying this. There’s free tools out there where you can now just record send simple videos. And the more you do it, the more comfortable you’ll get with it. You can use it internally with your peers, with your boss, with your employees, again, as a way to just start to get more comfortable with making video messages and being on camera. And I have no doubt this is a skill set you’ll use for, frankly, the rest of your career. So now’s the time, but you don’t have to be a video producer. It’s about connection, not perfection. So just get at it. I love that thought so much. I think we can do a whole nother episode on that. Tyler, if you’ll join me again real soon. I would love to. Val, thank you. And thanks to you all for joining us for this episode of Closing Time. Remember to subscribe to this channel, like the video and hit the bell for notifications so you don’t miss an episode. Take care.