🥶 Selling With Video

Just when I thought Sales people can’t get any more cringe, they started sending videos to their prospects.

I’m all for sending GOOD videos, but my god some of the stuff I’ve seen…

IT MUST BE STOPPED.

Today you shall hear (read?) me rant about the issues with selling with video, how I do it and have been successful at it, and how you can be too 🩵

The problemSsss 🥶

1. A video is extremely personal, so please, for the love of god don’t send any unless you have some kind of rapport with the prospect.

2. Most videos I’ve seen SCREAM lazy. Using your computer webcam, with a messy background, with a shitty microphone is NOT it.

3. Drop off rate. Your “bestie” Linkedin sales guru will tell you to keep your videos at 60 seconds because it sounds cool. Here’s the thing they’re missing though, most people will stop watching your video at the 30 second mark, so if you’re not optimizing your video to be ENGAGING, then they will miss 50% OF YOUR VIDEO.

4. PeRsOnAliZaTiOn - It’s not enough to say their first name and show their Linkedin on the first 3 seconds, this is the equivalent of using a prospect’s university name in your email and then saying you personalized it…

The Solution

You have to treat your video as if it’s a youtube video.

A GOOD youtube video.

Obsess about how engaging your video is.

Think about the different things you can add to make it feel personal to your prospect.

Think about different ways you can add animation, transitions, change the background, change the angle, let your creative juices FLOW.

Cut out that crap where you just sit in front of a webcam and read your sales pitch.

This is your opportunity to shine and be a STORY TELLER.

What you see above is my Final cut timeline which took me a total of 1h and 45 minutes to edit and export.

I only do these kind of videos to:

1. Prospects I REALLY want to work with ( no shame in my game, I am going to pick favourites)

2. Prospects that I already had a discovery call with and got the green light to send them a follow-up video.

The Response

Not only does this work, but this worked on the CEO of one of the hottest companies out there right now.

Here are some ways I personalized the video for Will:

• I picked some songs from the “Grand Budapest hotel” to be the background music for the video since both the movie and Lavender give off the same quirky vibes.

• I color graded the video to be more purple.

• I did a shirt switcharoo and wore a purple shirt and brought attention to it for some comedic relief. ( matching the brand’s tone)

• I picked specific comments that Will left on some Linkedin posts, added them onto the video and referenced them in my script to support my argument.

Takeaways

• Most sales people are making really bad videos

• Don’t be like them, take this opportunity to out-shine them

• Learn how to edit a video

• Learn how to tell a good story ( this will help you in ALL aspects of your life )

• Invest in good equipment ( your new iphone will do a great job to record your videos, you don’t need a fancy camera)

• Reply to this email if you want to see the video I made for Will 👀

By the way, I know this email was a bit vague, if I were to read this as a complete newbie, I would feel like I can’t make any better videos today that I could yesterday, but I’m hoping that I at least now got you to be curious about it.

I plan on making a video walkthrough of how to actually edit a video, how I write the script, how I add animations, websites to leverage etc…

So stay tuned for that!