Never forget that you’re selling to people.

Sales are the backbone of every successful company and it’s always a good idea to study up on how to improve your sales ability through one to one communication.  In order to thrive, sales must engage personally though not necessarily in person – this concept is not always easy to grasp.  You can create personal engagements with the use of specific content that is relevant to the folks your sending it to.  This information could be in an email, tweet, landing page, text, or phone call.  Your not communicating to a company, your conversing with a person who has their own fears and concerns that you need to address.  Just because they aren’t sitting across from you doesn’t make the fear disappear.  It’s in you best interest to find out what their concerns are so take the time to do so.

Learn to say no

All leads are not created equal – not every customer is a fit. The sooner that you learn this and put it into practice, the quicker you will be able to move on to clients that are going to help you produce references and generate flows of revenue. Marketing will qualify through lead scoring in an attempt to let you know which targets have higher probability for you. Actionable insight is key for one to one sales communication. You need to learn to decipher who is a prospect in the market to buy your product and who will just waste your time. Look for the trigger event.  Just because they downloaded a paper does not make them a lead. It might sound harsh but time is money and yours does matter. Do not get clogged up with prospects you know cannot or will not be interested in your product.

Close the Right Thing

Have you ever been asked for a commitment way to early in the process?  I always think of car sales asking me – “how can I get you to buy today?”.  Instead of using a static tactic, try getting a smaller commitment instead. Not a commitment to buy, but a commitment for more of your prospects time for one to one communication, in return you give the prospect more of your time. Use this time in a persistent manner to show them more of your value, customer successes, or examples of your services that they care about. The less pressure you put on them, the more likely they are to want your services. There is no excuse to not ask for a commitment – just make sure its the right one.

Timing is Everything

They may be the right prospect however they are not primed to buy. You may think it’s a bad idea to push them back to Marketing to include them in a nurturing campaign and that you need to control the flow. Talk yourself out of it, control is an illusion and the prospect is already searching the web for data points.   You (may) run no risk at this stage of pushing back to Marketing with a request to nurture. I always felt its worth the risk as you need to be focused on time management.  You have prospects that are primed to buy and you need to be talking to them.  This point is VERY specific to the prospect and you need to be very conscious of what you are doing. Marketing groups will electronically communicate with the prospects until they pop up again with a more specific interest that you can personally address.

Skip the Company History

Prospects do not necessarily care about how your company was founded and how much of a profit you made last year. Keep your presentations relevant to the them and their concerns. Get the prospect emotionally involved with personal stories relating to the benefits of your products of services. Mention their competitors and or friends on Linked In that are using your products. Make your prospect feel like they have to have your product or they will be left out. It’s about them – not your company.

Give Them a Laugh

No one wants to buy a product from someone who is not excited or enthused about what they are trying to sell. People can tell when you’re passionate – it’s hard to fake – so relax with them. Do not focus on how you are going to sell your prospect, but instead focus on the value you are delivering and how you can motivate them to understand your services and the fit between you both – one to one.

Sales One on One Communication

Most people want to feel like they are special and indeed, every prospect is unique and special in their own way. Let them know how you can provide one on one personal service through tailored messages based entirely upon their requirements and interest characteristics.

Customer testimonials are typically hard to get. I thought I’d list a quick way that I have gotten video testimonials from customers in the past using flip cameras and dropbox.

1. Step one buy some video cameras Kodak Playtouch ($179) or Flip Cameras ($80) with your loaded logo (as of today you still can) – see picture to the right.
2. Step two send the cameras to your clients with an email & document asking them to find a quiet room that’s well lit.
3. Step three ask them to turn the camera on, sit in front and read the questions aloud and then answer (its also helpful to send a “best practices how to record”).
4. Step four ask them to upload the raw footage to your dropbox folder you have just shared with them – or ship the camera back.
5. Step five edit the video down to under 1:00 in total time.
6. Step six load the content to your site with appropriate tracking codes to see who watches and what they do next (don’t forget a call to action).
7. Step seven ask for their final approval and tell them to keep the flip as a gift.

Marketing should exploit the immediate connection and effectiveness of using video in their referral process. Video is an effective and simple way to make a connection. These types of clean videos come across as very honest as there is very little “production”. I’ve gotten five testimonials completed in 30 days using this method.

It might be obvious to some but the web is becoming a broadcast system. People love consuming content this way and it really has an impact. You don’t need large budgets or time to enable this component of your demand generation marketing engine.

CHALLENGE: GETTING MORE WEBINAR REGISTRANTS

As we all know, breaking through and getting prospects to respond to webinar invites is getting harder given the inbox overload that most people are experiencing.
For Building Engines, they were looking for new ways to draw people into webinars and adding video seemed like a cost-effective solution. The goal was simple and easily tested add a short video promo to their traditional webinar promotion (through email) and see if it converts more attendees.

SOLUTION: SEND A WEBINAR PROMOTION APP

Building Engines used the VisibleGains webinar promotion application with coaching and best practices for one of their campaigns. In just a few hours, Sarah was able to script, shoot, and build a webinar promotion video app to include in her campaign. She featured the video app in her email and on her landing page.

Click Here To See How IT Worked

RESULTS: LARGE GROWTH IN WEBINAR SIGN-UPS

For this campaign, Building Engines was able to generate an immediately measurable impact. The key results were:

• 13.8% click-through rate for the 11,000 email send which was almost double the prior webinar*s click-through rate of 7%
• Quadruple the number of registrants over the prior month with the second highest total registrants in a webinar to date
• 65% of the audience was Highly Engaged during the webinar

Since this first video app with VisibleGains, Sarah has created a number of other VisibleGains videos for her webinars with continued success.

CHALLENGE: GENERATING MORE ACTIVE LEADS

As Jill Konrath says, “Today’s buyers are crazy, busy people” and the impact on webinar attendance has been one of the casualties. So how can content be leveraged in other ways that are more consumable by an audience? At byallaccounts, Barbara Kotlyar was looking to use a webinar in new ways to achieve two primary goals:

1. Generate net new leads for her sales team to call into
2. Warm up leads already in her funnel

SOLUTION: INTERACTIVE VIDEO FAQ AND ON-DEMAND WEBINAR

Click Here To See Barbara’s Solution In Action

Joe Chernov from Eloqua says that people these days prefer “pre-digested content” and byallaccounts used a combination of the VisibleGains Teaser Interview and On-Demand Webinar formats to provide this to the people in their funnel.

Working with VisibleGains coaches and the easy-to-use VisibleGains builder, byallaccounts created interactive video apps that allowed the viewer to navigate to short segments they were interested in from a GotoWebinar recording and a related video interview with the presenter.

RESULTS: GROWTH IN WEBINAR SIGN-UPS

By using interactive video before and after her webinar, Barbara achieved the following:

• 20% increase in live webinar attendees by including interactive frequently asked questions with presenter
• 4x additional On-Demand webinar viewers with simple quarterly re-marketing of interactive webinar segments

After this success, byallaccounts continues to use video to promote webinars and for on-demand webinar assets. In addition, byallaccounts experiments with FAQ interviews and Highlight reels as promotional assets to increase the long-tail nature of the content.

CHALLENGE: PITCHING A SOLUTION TO THE RIGHT STAKEHOLDER

One of the hardest things to do these days is communicate your solution to the right business stakeholder especially when there is a gatekeeper that you need to work through.

For TimeTrade, they are focused on ramping up their business and they needed something that could quickly communicate their solution to enable them to get a first meeting with a prospect.� Within this communication, they wanted to cover what their product does, some of the key benefits, and the business impacts that a customer could expect.

SOLUTION: SEND AN INTERACTIVE SALES VIDEO

TimeTrade used the VisibleGains interactive sales pitch application to help get the first meeting with a prospect. Working with best practices and the easy-to-use VisibleGains builder, TimeTrade was able to combine a personal video intro with an animated overview to engage viewers for about 2 minutes followed by a set of actions including watching a demo, learning more from their website, and booking a meeting.

Click Here To See Gary’s Solution In Action

RESULTS: VIDEO SHARED TO TEAM, DEAL CLOSED

TimeTrade uses this video app for numerous prospects, but for a major retailer they were targetting, the key results were:

• One email sent to one person who shared it with 10 different people generating 14 views
• 10 Days later, TimeTrade had a booked meeting
• 90 Days later, TimeTrade had a signed deal

TimeTrade has expanded on their success to utilize video throughout their funnel in both sales & marketing communications as well as within their actual product for training and support.

I recently sat down with Ann Handley of MarketingProfs and CC Chapman of Digital Dads , Co-Authors of Content Rules.  What a fun time we had getting their perspective on the key themes of their book, which is a great guide for all marketers and especially honed in on the use of video as a part of of an organizations content strategy.  They address easy ways to get started with video for marketing and key concerns, including I have a face for radio syndrome – where people are scared to be on camera.

Click Here To Check Out The Book

This article was originally posted on Constant Contact’s blog.

Businesses and organizations of all types and sizes use email to communicate and share information with their customers, members, and prospects. Early on, of course, email communication was limited to text. Soon, many remembered the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words and began including pictures and images in their communications. The result of including these images was just plain more — more people opened the emails, more people read the emails, more people remembered what they read, and more people took any suggested action.

So allow me to propose a new adage: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words (according to Forrester Research).

You may be asking, why video now? For one thing, it’s easy, it’s cool, and it works. But it’s more than that. Over the next four weeks, I’m going to share my thoughts on why use video, who should create videos, what kind of videos can you create, and finally, how to create great videos.

To start, here are six great reasons to use video in your email marketing:

1. Tell your story quickly. People don’t have a lot of time, so you want to get your message across quickly. Video can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. To repeat the adage above, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a one-minute video is worth 1.8 million.
2. Put a face to your business or organization. A video helps bring your business or organization to life, and it makes your communication more personal. Putting people on camera makes you and your team real to your customers and members.
3. Get your readers to remember your message. Let’s face it: In general we remember little of what we read. Our retention of a message is much better (estimates are three times better) when it includes pictures, sound, and motion. Your readers can only take action if they remember what you said.
4. People enjoy video. People like to read, but they really like video. We watch TV, go to the movies, stream video content to our computers and mobile phones, and more. In fact, according to comScore, the average U.S. Internet user watches 186 videos every month.
5. Videos are easy and inexpensive to create. The great myth is that video is hard and expensive. Video cameras are cheap to buy (many cost less than $125) and easy to use. Look at the Cisco Flip or Kodak Zi8. They both allow you to shoot with one button. If you have an iPhone or some other mobile devices, you already have a video camera. You can also just use images and add a voiceover. Creating video is very simple.
6. Get your readers to take action. Forrester studies have shown that email communication that includes video can double or triple your click-through rate.

I’ll be back next week to discuss what types businesses or organizations should use video. Till then, I’d love to know your thoughts about why video works: Feel free to post them here or on Constant Contact’s Facebook Page.

As is widely written,  companies must be prolific creators of insightful, content, relevant to the individuals in their segment, in order to fill the top of the funnel.  The marketing team is the shepherd of this effort, articulating the content strategy and taking the lead on its creation.  However, even in a world where we talk about sales and marketing being joined at the hip, often referred to as Smarketing, we miss a key pieces of content in that strategy.

Ultimately the goal of any organization is to create BANT -  Budget, Authority, Need and Timetable  -  so that the client can self convert or the sales person can guide them to a close.  Ultimately the marketing efforts target a couple of different types of people, influencers, recommenders, decisionmakers.  the person who often raises their hand to and moves from a marketing qualified lead to a sales qualified lead is an influencer or reccommender.  Those people don’t necessarily have BANT.  However that does not mean they are not good or ready prospects.  Yes, we can wait for BANT and ship them back to marketing or we can use this early opportunity to create the lead position for creating a vision and closing a deal.    Would you rather be part of a well defined RFP process – where BANT is likely defined or would you rather create Budget.  I read a great post on this on Raintoday FAINT.

So, as organizations, we must begin to think about creating content that helps the inside sales person, that recommender or influencer to help move from FAINT to BANT.  Too often marketers say that is not their job.  Their goals are to create marketing qualified leads.  It is sales who must turn them into opportunities.  So here is the great missing void – what content can you give to your influencer early on to enable them to start the process of moving someone from FAINT to BANT.

Today I was watching a tutorial on Yahoo Pipes for an upcoming project. The tutorial was great and was very educational, however the related video area was not as flattering. When you use free platforms like Yahoo, YouTube or Vimeo, you’re subjected to the way they want to treat it. Like this example where I was offered a video tutorial on having sex in a car. Get Control Over Your Video!

Creating effective business video is something that people learn how to do in stages and our advice on the relevant “3 quick ways” varies accordingly. Choose a path through the interactive video below to see what 3 Quick Things might work for you…

Depending on your choices, this will take between 45 and 90 seconds…

While the 3 things you were offered in the interactive video above varied by your experience level, the following things to watch our for apply in all cases:

1. Be careful working on video formats that contain complex messaging (see this post for 12 different types of video by difficulty)
2. Avoid developing content by committee (see this clip from Cisco’s Tim Washer on committee development)
3. Avoid using complex video production techniques including green screens, teleprompters, and multiple cameras (see this post about business casual video to hear our suggestions)

Where are you in the pool and what have you been doing?