On average, it takes nine months to onboard a sales person. Surprised? I was, when the sales and social selling expert Barb Giamanco mentioned this when we spoke recently about using videos in the sales process. She noted that video could — and should — be used more effectively, because an interval of nine months spent not contributing to the bottom line is distressing for salespeople and sales managers alike. Wouldn’t you would be grateful for any videos that liven things up and shorten the time until you start generating real revenue? It’s not just a matter of getting people to watch videos — I’m talking about actually using video for sales onboarding.
Of course, onboarding is not a subject that comes up frequently in planning sessions for technology solution videos. As Barb noted, marketing folks are charged with product promotion and lead development — so they tend to focus more on producing content than looking for additional ways to use it.
Better sales-marketing dialog
I’m not suggesting the marketing staff, who most often control the video budget, should be strategizing about video for sales training or or video for sales onboarding. But sales and marketing, working together, could spin off useful content tailored specifically to sales from just about any marketing video.
I know from experience that a starting out with a wide-ranging sales-marketing dialog always results in more effective video scripts. That’s why we always suggest involving sales in the marketing video development process. Developing a conversational storytelling script from messaging documents and PowerPoint decks is hard. We get a much better script when we chat with salespeople.
It’s also easy for us, as producers, to edit video in different ways to tailor it to different audiences. The interests of the customer audience and the audience of sales newbies may be widely divergent — but it just takes a little planning, and not much work, to tailor videos that appeal to both.
