In the last couple of years, there has been an increase in the number of sales professionals who believe in video for sales. At Hippo Video, our ongoing interactions with sales teams have allowed us to gain valuable insights into how they use videos in their day-to-day activities. We’ve learned that many sales professionals face the following video challenges:
- Difficulty in creating contextual videos for different touch points as they have been limited to creating plain webcam or screen share videos, resulting in less engagement.
- Owing to the additional effort or time constraints associated with creating videos, sales reps use them selectively for specific touch points and for high-value deals alone.
- Sales reps often need to record videos repeatedly for every prospect in order to personalize conversations, resulting in a reduced productivity rate.
Despite the great potential of video in sales, there are two distinct types of video users in sales: video aware and video productive. Let’s dive deeper into the differences and also find out which one you are.
Video Aware Vs Video productive -> Which one are you?
As mentioned earlier, both a video-aware and video-productive sales professional understand the importance of videos. However, there is a key difference between them. While a video-aware sales professional makes use of videos, they are selective in their use and are not necessarily taking full advantage of them. On the other hand, a video-productive sales professional knows the value of integrating video into their daily sales process and uses it as a key part of their overall strategy.
Let’s break this down to explain further based on the process they would follow:
“Save time and increase productivity”
Saving time while increasing productivity is a major time goal for all salespeople, regardless of the number of tasks they handle at one time. Because this is their top priority, sales professionals can effectively work on their tasks by retrofitting the same video across multiple platforms using an in-house feature.
1. Recreating videos Vs Repurposing them
While a video aware person would recreate videos from sctrach for each touchpoint, a video productive person simply repurposes a video to contextually personalize it to suit the touchpoint they intend to use it for.
2. Creating videos from scratch Vs Creating videos using templates
A video aware person would create each video from scratch for every prospect they want to send videos to, while on the other hand, a video productive person would send out more videos that are hyper-personalized in a fraction of the time using time-saving features such as video flows.
To do this: Hippo Video has pre-designed templates for various use-cases such as Prospecting, Deal Progression, Follow Up, Closure, Sales Enablement, Account Management, and Greetings. This is how the inside of each of the templates will look like:
3. 1:1 personalisation Vs 1:many personalisation
As is the case with a video-aware salesperson, the possibilities of personalization are limited to first name personalization or even holding a whiteboard with their company name, a salutary greeting, and a friendly face. On the other hand, a video productive person knows the value of time and will hyper-personalize videos at scale with minimum effort using Humanize AI. So what is Humanize AI? With this one-of-a-kind feature, you only need to record one video and use Humanize AI to hyper-personalize it for MANY prospects. The standout feature of this tool is that it will call out the names of each of your prospects with you in the video without any extra time or cost on your end.
“Have more impactful communication to increase engagement”
4. Plain webcam videos Vs Interactive video
A video aware person will restrict themselves to just plain webcam videos a.k.a vanilla videos while a video productive person will opt for an interactive video. Let’s look at the main differences between plain webcam and interactive videos:
a. 1 way vs 2 way
In a webcam video, the viewer can only watch the video therefore it is known as a 1 way communication. On the other hand, in an interactive video, the viewer can interact with the video by clicking on a link, submitting a form, or even taking a poll.
Example of an interactive video created using Hippo Video
b. Linear flow vs custom video flow
In a linear video, the sender decides the flow of the video, meaning, the viewer can only see what the sender records in the video. Whereas in an interactive video, the viewer can decide the viewing path by choosing the options provided in the video.
c. Limited action Vs A world of possibilities
With a webcam video, the actions you can incorporate are limited to, say, booking a demo or a CTA that takes them to a particular page. Whereas, with an interactive video, you can do all this and all other dimensions of video messaging such as running polls, surveying the lead generation forms, etc. In fact, an interactive video will also help you cut down on the back-and-forth emails sales reps generally send to find out the prospect’s pain point, a convenient meeting time for them, their feedback on the videos you’re sending or even on the service you’re providing—the list goes on and on.
For eg: Rather than spending valuable time and energy on multiple emails or calls aimed at uncovering customer pain points, you can create a simple video that contains possible pain points as sub-videos. This allows prospects to click on the relevant point they are experiencing and be shown a video specific to their issue.
5. Non-contextual vs. contextual videos
Instead of sending your prospects a generic video, make your videos contextual by including elements that are specific to them and the deal scenario.
To achieve this, you could take advantage of our video flow feature, where you have the option to use your prospect’s LinkedIn profile or website background as the video background to capture their attention and stand out from the mass emails and videos most sales reps send out today.
“Video Selling as a strategy” – “Data is King”
6. Unclear intent Vs Complete intent captured using interactivity and analytics
Video analytics are a great feature to have. However, a video-aware salesperson will solely rely on the video open rate and the watch rate. A video productive person, however, will gauge the complete user intent with CTRs on the interactive elements combined with the video views (watch rate and video open rates) so that they can deliver a contextually personalized experience at all stages of the sales process.
Conclusion
Video has been a powerful tool in the arsenal of sales reps for many years now, and its continued popularity and effectiveness can no longer be denied. However, many sales reps are still only video aware. The good news is that this doesn’t have to be the case. With video platforms like Hippo Video, creating effective videos becomes much easier than ever before. Not only can you create stunning videos without burning out your entire day, but Hippo Video’s comprehensive features also allow you to easily customize each video at a fraction of the time. So are you ready to switch from being video aware to a video productive sales reps? Let us know your thoughts below.