5 Ways to Use Video to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

by Shawn Karol Sandy

How excited does your prospect get when they see your email pop into their inbox? Wouldn’t it be great if they had a Pavlovian response and immediately expected to see something cool, interesting, or insightful when they clicked on your message?

Sadly, most clicks on sales messages—especially cold or following up—are to delete instead of open. As my colleague and super sales expert friend, Dianna Geairn suggests, most people get a little hit of dopamine when they delete messages from their inbox. They feel empowered and happy to reduce clutter and clear out unimportant items. When you send those “introduction” or “just checking in” emails, the joy they feel in the click is because they’ve deleted your message and accomplished a task.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to not be deleted? To not get shuttered to the dark corner of the internet trash bin, we’ve got to give our prospects and clients a new experience and new expectations.

How can we be invited in, opened, and not deleted? By being personal, relevant, timely, and customizing messages. By giving your buyers a preview into what communicating and working with you is truly like.

Do this with video.

Yes, video.

No, not a perfectly polished marketing driven video that took $5k and 2 months to create. I’m talking about you creating a short clip to share with your customers to help drive the sales process forward in a unique, creative, and distinctive way.

There are dozens of ways to use video—from your LinkedIn profile to meetings or upselling. Here, we’re going to focus on:

Grabbing your prospect’s attention using video
Shortening the sales cycle with live video
Looping in decision-makers to stay top of mind
Giving tutorials and demos with video
Following up creatively (without using a boring checking-in email)

5 Ways to Use Video to Shorten Your Sales Cycle

1. Make Attention-Getting Intro Videos for Warm or Cold Prospects

Use a tool such as Vidyard that lets you quickly and simply create a personal and customized video for prospects. Show up with a compelling reason to reach out—reference common connection, LinkedIn profile, trigger in their industry, or a similar client.

Vidyard is a Google Chrome extension that makes creating videos easy as well as sending them and tracking the opens and views. The tracking info lets you know their interest and an ideal time to call or follow up. And certainly, this gives your prospect a preview of you—your voice, your face, your energy level—and can build connections quicker than one-dimensional emails.

2. Shorten the Sales Cycle by Using Live Video

How many emails does it take to set a meeting? How many emails back and forth does it take for you to answer questions about a proposal? That is IF you know your prospect has opened it?

Use a live video meeting to cut down days, possibly even weeks from the sale time by setting a meeting to discuss the proposal, options, or contract LIVE and in person.

Several of my clients are using Zoom

Zoom to do this by setting a live meeting time and sharing their screen as they review proposals, answer questions, and move to the next steps in the same meeting. This not only cuts down on the time, but it brings your customers closer to you quicker than your competitors who are doing the same email volley back and forth. If you can get questions answered, make clear details, and develop personal relationships quicker than your competitors, yup, you get the deal.

3. Loop in Additional Decision-Makers

When your prospect leaves your meeting or takes your information, they most likely have several more influencers or decision-makers to pull into their process. They’re armed with your information but they’re left to sell the details to the others on that buying committee.

How effective is it when they are selling vs you are selling?

Using video, you can record (with customer’s consent) your conversation or walk through so they can share it with their colleagues. This saves them headaches of having to remember details and this gives you the power to sell, explain, and differentiate without losing anything in translation.

4. Use Video to Explain, Demo, or Tour

Some of your clients are remote and cannot do site visits, make meetings, or take tours. One of our clients started using video to shorten the back and forth with her clients by using live and recorded videos to send clients clips of bands, venue setup, décor, floorplans, et cetera.

Instead of glamorized, perfectly manufactured marketing videos, send clients quick, powerful, and customized videos to tour or explain details about your product or proposal. If your company doesn’t have demo capabilities (and maybe, even if they do), a preview or demo of your product in action is a great way to pique interest or move a conversation forward.

5. Creatively Re-Engage and Follow Up

After a meeting or a call, most sales pros send the standard, “Thanks for meeting” email. It’s nice, but what does it really do? What if you could leverage this follow-up as a powerful point of differentiation that makes an impact and moves the process forward?

Imagine your buyer opening an email with your video thanking them for the meeting but also recapping key points, answering questions brought up, and setting up the next steps? Personal, customized, moving the process forward. These are great for follow-ups but can also be used to re-engage opportunities that have gone cold.

An email or a phone call is easy to ignore. Your face and voice, however, are the next best thing to being IN their office. Creatively use video to do more than “Check-In” with your prospects.

If you don’t know where they are in their decision-making process, you might not be in their decision-making process. Create a video introducing a team member, inviting them to an industry function, or make a personal ask about reconnecting.

Create Personal, Timely, Authentic & Effective Sales Experiences

You don’t have to have fancy equipment or editing tools. The beauty of video in this day and time is that it feels more authentic and real when created on the spot and without scripting or marketing’s glitter and jazz hands.

Try it in multiple stages in your sales process. Whether you’re prospecting and trying to break into new accounts or new departments, video can be a fantastic tool to bring parties together to close the deal or welcome or onboard customers.

There are pretty much no barriers to using video. You’ve got the equipment on your desk or in your pocket.

Start Using Video In Your Sales Process Today

Using video effectively will help you shrink the sales cycle and set yourself apart from your competitors.

For more details on how to use video in your sales process and some key “do’s and don’ts” for using video, watch this episode of The SellOut Show where Dianna Geairn and I give you some real examples from our own experiences!

Until next time, stop hoping, start SELLING!