How Sales Can Use Video to Turn Prospects into Leads

As video marketers, we want to educate interested prospects through content focused on our personas. We hear it all the time: If we want our video marketing efforts to pay off, we have to create rich, engaging stories, rather than push our product. But are we forgetting our friends in sales?

Sales reps are trying to determine which leads have a real interest in the product and, of those, which ones are a good fit and actively looking to buy. This is where things can get messy. Content certainly isn’t one size fits all. The ways in which we can approach prospects via content are becoming more varied every day: video, interactive video, flipbooks, quizzes, even social chat bots.

Sales needs video content that speaks directly to the benefits of the products to further their conversations and move leads from interest to consideration, but are we listening?

We often write about video marketing across the customer journey. Within this, there's been an assumption that this journey is a responsibility owned exclusively by marketing. What we haven’t addressed is how the qualification, discovery, and solution evaluation stages of the sales cycle overlap with marketing’s engagement phase of the customer journey, so activities during these stages are jointly led by marketing and sales.

This is only one such case in which sales and marketing have to combine initiatives to drive prospect and lead behavior forward. When you align the needs of both marketing and sales teams as you’re developing content, you can share resources while supporting the goals of each department.

Aligning Sales and Marketing through Business Video

By aligning sales with marketing, you create the right mix of videos. Armed with the right content, your sales reps can use video to have more meaningful conversations with prospects and shorten the sales cycle.

Creating Qualification and Discovery Videos

The most successful salespeople know that while it takes more time up front, the easiest way to win business is to ask questions, do a lot of listening and truly understand what the prospect is looking for. Impatience or too much excitement can ruin this, meaning many new sales people will skip the discovery phase.

But a preliminary conversation about the prospect’s search for a solution needs to take place for the opportunity to enter the pipeline. Can video help your sales team to move the discovery process forward or even secure a meeting?

Questions to Answer

• What problems do your prospects need to solve?
• Why is it important to solve the problems?
• What is your brand’s solution to the problems?

Fully understanding the prospect’s problem is the common ground where sales and marketing teams meet. By developing content that answers the above questions you’ll build trust and rapport, potentially increase the size of the deal and of course, close business faster.

Types of Videos that Work

• Video introductions
• Tip series
• Business use case videos
• Webinars
• Interactive, self-guided demos

How to Create a Pre-Call Video Voicemail

Provide your sales reps with the capability to “self-author,” i.e. create their own custom videos.To secure a sales call or ramp up anticipation for an in-person meeting, give sales the tools to send along personalized video communications.

Before a sales call, reps can send a quick video to humanize your brand, demonstrate value, and inspire the target prospect to take a meeting. This unique approach to video allows the sales team to articulate the value in working with your brand.

After a call, your sales rep can follow up with a prospect by sending a personalized demo that they recorded themselves, digging into product features and addressing the prospect’s need.

Of course, you’ll want to be able to track this data. This can be done easily if your company has an online video platform (OVP) that connects to your CRM.

Video Sales Outreach Script, A How-to

Need a little help getting your sales team started with video follow-ups? Use this handy script.

Hi {NAME},

{SALES REP} here from {BUSINESS NAME}. Thanks so much for reaching out to demonstrate your interest in {X PRODUCT}. It looks/sounds like you could stand to benefit from our {X FEATURES}. I’d love to talk with you about this more and how to solve {X PROBLEM}. I’ve outlined a few meeting options in this email, just reply back to confirm.

Thanks again {NAME}.

Alternate line: Thanks so much for making the time to talk to us at {X CONFERENCE}.

Bonus points if you house videos on their own landing pages with interactive capabilities to schedule a meeting within the video.

Creating Solution Evaluation Videos

Show prospects that you understand their concerns by giving them concrete examples of solutions that alleviate their problems and allow them to accomplish their goals.

By helping your sales team to stress the brand’s authority and leadership within the field prospects will feel confident going deeper into the evaluation process with your team and give the sales proposal more consideration.

Questions to Answer

• How, specifically, does your product solve the prospect’s problems?
• What are your product’s features and benefits?
• How can your product impact the prospect’s users and business?
• What sets your brand/product apart from your competitors?

Because you are demonstrating authority in your space, sales will readily utilize both product-centric and customer-centric content that marketing has created, or in some cases, can create their own.

Types of Videos that Work

• How-to/tutorials
• Webinars
• FAQs
• Buying guides
• Personalized demos created by sales rep

Many companies believe video belongs exclusively to marketing. But as with sourcing any type of content, sales teams offer terrific insight into the types of content needed and the compelling messages that convince prospects to listen. Listening and developing a video plan together allows both marketing and sales to hit their numbers.