I’m going to start by saying what every sales rep knows: getting the attention of new prospects is getting harder.
When you send an email, is it dying in the person’s inbox? When you leave a message, is it going to be returned?
Here at Frontify, we’re big believers in the power of brand. I mean, we’re basically screaming it from the rooftops. We’re providing an all-in-one brand management platform, uniting DAM with brand guidelines and collaborative project spaces; enabling companies to tell an authentic brand story. With that in mind, it’s only reasonable that we’d like to take that approach to sales as well.
That’s why we’re constantly looking for ways to do that – beyond cold calling and emailing prospects. Then, we thought… why not video?
The search for a new way of selling
As sellers, we have a mission.
We need to consult with our prospects, connect with them, and help them. But, ultimately, it’s up to us to make sure our customers are happy with the solution we’re offering up. Otherwise, they’re going to churn.
For me, that means taking a personalized approach to our customers. McKinsey is predicting personalization will be the prime driver of marketing success within five years. Plus, leaders that have embraced personalization have found proven ways to drive 15% increases in revenue, and 10 to 30% increases in marketing-spend efficiency.
The key to personalization boils down to one factor: impressions.
Customers decide very quickly – in a matter of seconds – whether they like what you’re offering. We’ve got a split second to make an impact on that decision, so we decided to use that time to make an impact through video.
Shaking up our outbound sales approach with video
I recently read about an approach to sales that’s stuck to me like glue.
“If you want 10 minutes of my time, make sure that you at least spend 10 minutes of time researching me.”
This ☝️
Customers want to be heard; we all know it. We kept this in mind when we started experimenting with personalized videos in our outbound approach.
First, we research their company to see what they’re all about and whether or not Frontify can actually help their brand. Then, using what we find, we build and send a personalized video to introduce ourselves. We send them out to a company’s decision-maker. The person whose attention we want the most.
To date, we’ve sent hundreds of personalized outbound videos using Drift Video.
Drift Video allows us to:
- Record/share videos: All our reps have to do is record a video, drop it in an email and hit send. Easy!
- Get real-time notifications: We get real-time notifications when someone watches our videos, and in turn, we can connect with them in real-time.
- Start a conversation from the video: When somebody starts watching a video of ours, we can just in and chat with them in the video instead of waiting for an email reply.
- Keep our data safe: This is a big one. We need to know that any material we’re putting out there is safe. We can set video privacy settings to ensure your video can only be viewed by the person you want to see it. Plus, integration with single sign-on (SSO) apps like Okta and Microsoft Azure make sure all of our data is secure.
Our videos always aim to offer up a sneak peek of our product but deliver it in a way that’s more interesting than just talking about the solution itself.
Then, something magical seems to happen with video.
If the prospect likes it, they’ll share it around to their team and ask them what they think. This takes the pressure off the key-decision maker about whether or not the product is a good fit and encourages feedback. And, it helps take a lot off of our sales rep’s plate in terms of how much they have to push the product. Win-win.
Reinforcing value through video is our future
The question we ask ourselves when pitching a prospect is… how much is too much?
We’ve made a rule when we send out our pitches. We keep the videos to a minute (max!), and if it’s shorter – it’s even better. We do this because we don’t want to give away too much from our value proposition. And if the video is too long, we know the people are not going to watch it anyway.
One of the coolest things we’ve found since introducing video into our selling toolkit is that it helps with our proof of concepts. When I talk to a customer about a proof of concept, I walk them through it, and then afterwards, I make a video that walks them through it – again.
Why? Three reasons:
- It’s easy for stakeholders to share amongst themselves and review post-pitch
- It gives a full and quick tour of Frontify’s solution
- It helps stakeholders see the difference between the frontend and backend of our product (it’s easy to get overwhelmed the first time you use Frontify, which is the last thing we want for newbies!)
An example of what Frontify looks like under the hood
If anyone on our customer’s end has a question, they can hit me up instantly in the chat function of the video, and I’m notified immediately through my Drift app. This cuts out a ton of friction in our selling process and allows me to respond to customer queries in real-time.
Its level of connection helps us close deals on the fly every single day. Building a connection with customers on this level really helps drive our value across. Using video, we have a chance to explain just how much value our product can add to a prospect’s business, and we’ve been able to show that we’re better than the competition.
We listen to our users, not only through day-to-day support; our product development is user-centric because our users know what’s best. That requires a partner, not just another tool. With Drift, we can be that kind of approachable partner.
For us, personalized videos have become our new path to winning.
Looking to drive more opportunities through video? And understand how prospects are interacting with your marketing content? Get started with Drift Video noW.
As a Brand Solutions Manager at Frontify, Thomas helps organizations to centralize their brand materials, by establishing a single source of truth – using brand management software. As a strong believer in the power of tech, Thomas loves helping companies get rid of old and inefficient processes in favor of new, dynamic, and inclusive cloud-based solutions.
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post. Interested in contributing content to the Drift blog? Email Elizabeth Hilfrank at ehilfrank@drift.com.
