Inside sales, business development reps — everyone in sales can use video to help move the conversation along. But what works best?

A client of ours recently mentioned that their inside sales team would be thrilled to have a new video to share every week — but, of course, “we don’t have the budget for that.” Actually, if they — and you — have a video budget at all, you probably do have the budget to produce the right videos for inside sales.

What kind of videos does inside sales really need?

In an article titled “Inside Sales vs. Outside Sales,” Gabe Larsen of InsideSales.com asserts that there’s no versus about it: “It’s all sales.” InsideSales.com has data to back up this claim, including data on the increasing time spent selling remotely through social media, email, CRM, etc.

Inside Sales and Outside Sales both put in a lot time selling remotely. Different kinds of affordable video can lessen the burden, increase engagement, and improve the communication.

While there is apparently no factual basis to the assertion that a picture is worth a thousand words (or to AI pioneer John McCarthy’s corollary that 1,001 words are worth more than a picture), there’s no reason to doubt the universal experience that visuals — including video — can speed communication and improve understanding. But what kind of video is needed in these combined, and often protracted, remote selling efforts?

For one thing, the conversation needs to go beyond marketing messages and product information. An interesting finding in the Miller Heiman Group’s latest Sales Performance Study is that the companies who say they’re good at providing clients with insights and perspective win more sales.

Source: Miller Heiman Group, Selling in the Age of Ceaseless Change: 2018-2019 Sales Performance Study.

Video screen capture and personalization

When I asked sales maven Andy Paul about the use of video in protracted sales processes, he replied that “currently, I don’t see much being done in mid-to-late funnel video (other than Zoom for calls and CloudApp and similar apps for video and screen capture email.)”

That parenthetical “video and screen capture email” gave me pause. First of all, not everyone uses this kind of video. Some companies have never given it a thought. Secondly, screen capture apps like CloudApp represent a cheap, easy and highly usable solution to video personalization when you need to show instead of tell, and when you just need to put across your message in an engaging way.

Vidyard and the above-mentioned Gabe Larsen have collaborated on an eBook, How to Use Video to Boost Your Sales Pipeline. It’s full of practical suggestions on getting the most from simple personalization. For example, while It’s well known that mentioning video in the subject line of an email increases opens, this guide tells you how to make a video thumbnail for the email body that gets your contact to click. I recommend it.

[A version of this post previously appeared in Biznology.]

If you think of video as a type of "content" — stop. A marketing strategy based on video content makes about as much sense as a strategy based on words or pictures.

You often see references to “video content” in articles comparing different types of content for sales enablement and content marketing, in this blog post and elsewhere. But, if you think about it, we don’t make video content. Nobody does, because video isn’t a “content type” like white papers, case studies, and other established genres. With a white paper, you know what to expect just by reading the title. Not so with video, where you hardly ever know quite what to expect.

It’s not just that comparing the effectiveness of established types of text publications with the effectiveness of an all-purpose communication medium leads to fuzzy thinking. It also narrows how you think about content and leads to siloed video budgets, rather than an agile approach that makes the best use of video to improve the buyer’s experience.

Rethinking video content strategy

Take another look at these categories designated in a typical comparison of content types

• Case studies
• Webinars
• Third-party analyst reports
• User reviews
• Video content
• Blog posts
• Infographics https://elements.envato.com/corporate-infographic-slides-V6F4K5Z

Any and all of the text/graphic genres listed here can be a video, can be converted to video, or can be enhanced, summarized or promoted with video. This is a more productive way to think about video than thinking of video as a type of content. It’s more productive than planning for various types of video content (explainers, tutorials, webinars, etc.) For one thing, you’ll end up with a lot more videos if you routinely add video components to other media. For another, you’ll make engaging videos for the entire customer journey. Most B2B marketers concentrate on making sales-y videos for top-of-the-funnel awareness — as if buyers stopped appreciating video’s communication power after they jump into the funnel.

Case studies

If you’re developing a written case study, it should be easy to add video elements (taken with a salesperson’s smart phone, say). It’s not much more difficult to have a salesperson or subject matter expert tell some or all of the the story on camera. Stories of dramatic turnarounds are natural for video, though such quasi-documentary productions usually require professional videography and editing.

Webinars

Most webinars are people talking over (or in front of) PowerPoint presentations. There’s usually a demo portion that can be excerpted and re-used in videos. With webinars recorded for later viewing, the user experience can be significantly improved with freely available interactive video tools that put the user in control.

Third-party analyst reports

It’s common to mention favorable analyst evaluations in all types of content, including video. If your company makes favorable analyst reports available for download, it makes sense to create a video “trailer” to promote the downloads in social media.

User reviews

Video “testimonials” are invaluable. I don’t know of any enterprise technologies that get the kind of consumer  technology product reviews that are most popular on YouTube. But this approach clearly works.

White Papers/Blog posts

A few companies have turned blog posts and research reports into videos. Samples of a few we’ve done can be found here.

Infographics.

OK. I’m not a big fan of infographics in general. But if you’re wondering how tough it is to turn them into videos, you don’t need to look beyond inexpensive templates for doing just that, like this video infographic template.

Interactive video can mimic the types of Q&A back-and-forth that leading sales methodologies focus on.

A summary of findings from up-to-date academic studies, Evidence of Improving Knowledge Retention with Interactive Video, was recently published by the developers of the free open-source interactive video tool H5P, which I’ve written about previously. Here are a few that are especially relevant to complex and enterprise sales.

• Interactive video has more impact than traditional video
• The interactive layer (HTML5 user controls added to standard online video files) allows learners to significantly extend their attention span
• More students accessed online content when it was interactive.
• Adding interactivity significantly improved completion percentage and average viewing time
• The ability to track and analyze the behavior of learners is critical to improving the effectiveness of learning environments
• The use of interactive video to enable learning through the process of experiencing failure can lead to ‘deeper learning’ and accelerate skill acquisition
• When learners have control over learning, they are more involved in the learning process, which is essential for maximizing engagement

Sales methodologies and sales enablement

Learning concepts are relevant to just about any modern sales methodology, which all aim to advance the conversation by asking the right questions. (HubSpot has a nice summary of the top 10 sales methodologies). In the Sandler Sales Methodology, for example, reps are trained to talk a lot about the obstacles that could keep the buyer from considering their solution. That helps to establish trust. Interactive video is far better suited to nuanced Q&A than linear video. (The latest H5P release adds a “Branching Scenario” authoring tool which could be used to create a “Choose Your Own Objections” learning experience).

In sales enablement programs, one goal is to get the salesperson up to speed ASAP. Interactive video can enhance this sales training — and then help champions and influencers in your target organization do a better job of explaining the benefits of your solution.

It’s not just video

The designation “interactive video” is misleading in the sense that other types of content can easily be incorporated in the experience — text from blog posts, diagrams from product sheets, use-cases from customer videos, screencasts from tutorials, etc., can all be brought into an interactive experience. This allows for re-using or repurposing existing content to enhance the buyer experience.

Not every buyer has the time or the inclination to to watch your software demo. But you can communicate its value — and entice people to take a closer look — with a short demo showing one essential feature.

Software makes a big impact on the bottom line in just about every organization today. Real-life software users influence buying decisions. So, if you sell a technology solution that involves software, at some point in the sales cycle you need a persuasive video software demo.

Depicting credible reason(s) to try your software

As with any marketing video, the essential purpose is to get the viewer to seek out more information. You may want the customer to download a trial version, or to sign up for a live demo. In either case, you’ll be asking a busy person to put out a fair amount of effort.

What kind of video will entice them to do it? A detailed tutorial-style screencast might work — but it’s not a great place to start.  A better solution is to give the prospect a quick look at one credible reason to take the next step. And, your inside sales team will appreciate being able to share a series of such videos in a drip campaign. The good news is that it can be done inexpensively.

15-second video software demo example

Just about every technology solution promises “visibility.” A very short video demo can show people what they’re missing out on.

To illustrate this point, we’ve developed a series of video software demos as part of our video content “Good Ideas” series. The 15-second example here uses a clip from an explainer video to demonstrate just one benefit the technology solution promises: visibility. All it takes to create a simple video like this is a poster frame (important for social media, including YouTube), a video clip, and an offer of further information at the end. Music is optional. That’s it. Simple and cheap. [More very short demo examples can be found here.]

Screencast and video demo tips

In fifteen years of writing and producing videos about enterprise technology solutions, we’ve watched many, many live and recorded demos. Here are a few tips worth considering.

1. Try to populate your demo with realistic (but not real) data around which you craft a story. It’s hard to maintain focus on a demo that just shows what happens when a tab is clicked or a menu it is selected.
2. Add annotations and text. This not only reinforces what is being said, it also makes viewing more comfortable for people whose first language is not the one used on the audio track.
3. Billboarding your demo with interactive chapter headings makes the content more accessible and makes it easy for viewers to repeat sections they find interesting.

There are lots more practical tips in  this infographic from TechSmith, makers of Camtasia and Snagit.

Five tips for reducing video costs, increasing efficiency and — most important — making a technology solution video that customers value.

How do you get ready to make a video? Most enterprise technology solution video production starts with someone’s assumption that a video is required, a budget and (preferably) a deadline. Then someone writes a script or a treatment.

Here are five practical planning steps (my take on excellent suggestions from TechSmith, makers of Camtasia and Snagit), that will save time and money in the production process.

Define one customer benefit

Your goal is not to make a video. It’s not to tell someone something. The most creative way to define your goal is to state plainly at least one way in which this video is going benefit the customer who watches it. This will help you come up with a story line. It might even lead you to make two shorter videos (for about the same cost) — instead of one video that interests each of two different buying influences only half as much.

Write a visual script

Behind every enterprise technology solution video is the idea that customers will prefer watching video to reading text. Your script should describe as clearly as you can what the viewer will see. Try not to invoke vague abstractions like customer-centricity and digital transformation, even if your solution helps achieve those things. Whatever graphics you can devise to represent those concepts won’t add much to anyone’s understanding.

Gather assets up front

Can you repurpose existing video or photos? Maybe your customers have visual assets they’ll share. Are there logos and branding guidelines? It’s a lot more efficient to create scripts or storyboards around existing visual assets than it is make changes later on in the production process.

Make storyboards

No matter how hard we work at describing visuals in the scripts we write, people tend to ignore them in the editing process. It’s a lot harder to overlook the visuals in storyboards — even if they’re just stick figures. Concepts that are nebulous or downright wrong-headed tend to stand out. Some narration text will almost certainly need to be rewritten to improve the visual flow.

Get feedback

If you’re going to make a mistake, make it up front, not when you’re working with animated or live-action video. Rewriting a script is cheap. So is refining images in storyboards. Reshoots and re-recordings of narration are not cheap or easy. That’s why you want to get good feedback early on, especially from those people who have enough clout to demand changes later in the process.

This is the first in a series of practical suggestions for producing more effective enterprise technology video.

Technology solution providers looking for new ways to keep up with customers may want to jump on one of these video trends.

This is the time of year when content creators mull over the year’s “trends” and opine about what we should be doing during the coming year. I’m not going to do that, but I will share a few “trends” noted by others that could be video trends of interest to technology solution providers.

Get more out of the videos you’ve already made

This is my favorite, from a Vidyard blog post titled “Three exciting B2B video trends for 2019.” While the idea of re-purposing content doesn’t sound all that exciting or trendy, it’s a really good idea with plenty of potential for innovation. Everyone should do it (in which case, it would be a trend).

There are lots of ways to re-use a video: edit it, send a personalized link to it, make it interactive, and so forth. Author Jesse Ariss suggests getting started with a technique that’s amazingly simple: update the thumbnail! An attractive and informative thumbnail makes a video easier for sales teams to share. This is especially apt for YouTube webinars, many of which seem to be billboarded with a random screen grab from the middle of a demo. Thumbnails (or poster frames) are really important. For videos shared via social media, the thumbnail is the only chance you get to stop the viewer from scrolling past your video.

6-Second Video Ads

This is trend #6 out of 10 trends noted by Shutterstock. It’s declared a trend on the strength of research suggesting that 61% of six-second ads lift brand awareness.

While snackable content is a proven tactic in the competition for attention, six-second storytelling may be too heavy a lift for most technology products (as opposed to brands). There are no B2B spots on this list of the best six-second ads from HubSpot. But how about crafting six-second stories around specific competitive advantages? Or product features? (If you can’t make those work, you’ll be interested in Shutterstock’s #7 trend: “Brands Exploring Longform Content” like product walkthroughs and unboxing videos.)

Using Video to Scale Corporate Training

Panopto’s Top 5 Corporate Video Trends coalesce around the value of leveraging internal resources such as the expertise of subject matter experts. Fully capitalizing on these “trends” takes a dedicated video content management platform (like Panopto’s).

Panopto calls their approach an “Enterprise YouTube” for corporate video management. While it may not be a trend that’s gathering momentum with technology solution marketers, the general idea is certainly worth thinking about.

A searchable, customizable library of on-demand video assets that takes full advantage of all the creativity you can muster from internal resources and external partners could provide an invaluable knowledge-sharing resource to your customers and sales team, and a productivity boost for your bottom line.  A recent workplace productivity study by Panopto and YouGov actually put a dollar value on the cost of inefficient knowledge sharing: $12M annually for a company with over 5,000 employees.

From marketing, advertising and sales to corporate training, video will continue to grow as an important tool in 2019.