Sales reps tend to focus on what their customers and prospects are doing when they can sit down and see them face-to-face, but Michael Litt says the way they spend their time online shouldn’t be overlooked.
Litt is CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, a Kitchener, Ontario-based Salesforce Canada customer, that provides a platform for selling with video assets. In this third and final installment of our interview series with him, Litt discusses the way trends in video are moving from the consumer to the business realm, and how firms can measure their progress as they begin trying out this medium. If you missed the earlier posts, check out our first where Litt makes the case for selling with video, and part two where he shares best practices for selling with video.
How are the consumer social platforms to share video, such as Facebook or Twitter, influencing the kind of content business people expect to receive?
The core foundation of our business is that consumer behaviours often predict enterprise and business trends. We saw social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn emerge as a consumer behaviour — people were sharing their lives, their stories, their images and thoughts through these channels. A couple of years ago, smart businesses said, “This is our audience. We can learn from this to help sell our products to them. But we can also develop our own social presence that they can follow, and it’s another touchpoint for them to connect with our brand.” If I had gone to a major company in 2006 and told them they would have a team of five to 10 people dedicated to running social media, they would have called me crazy. Video is a similar story. The consumerization of video started with YouTube — everybody experiences that now on a daily basis — and we’ve since seen Vine, Instagram and these other technologies start bringing video to the consumer. We also see the really smart companies now investing heavily into video marketing because their customers are consuming hours and hours of video. It’s definitely a wave that’s well on its way.
What are some of the key metrics companies should be considering as they pursue selling with video?
There’s always engagement and completion rates — how far people make it through an asset — but I also think you need to take note of digital body language.
What is digital body language?
When speaking with someone in person, you can read a lot into their interests by examining their physical body language and noting how they respond to different ideas. In a similar vein, digital body language represents the actions an individual takes online that offer insight into their areas of interest. Traditionally, some sales teams have used ‘click-throughs’ on emails and whitepapers to learn more about their customers. But if you download a white paper or click on an email, even with a proper system in place to track those interactions, I don’t know which parts of the content you actually read, if any at all. With video, I can see second by second how much of that asset you watch. Now, think if we were sitting in a room together and I was selling you something. I might be able to pick up on some cues as to your interest, your excitement, whether you focused on certain key products or features based on what I put in front of you. On the Internet that’s very difficult to do, and downloading a white paper isn’t always enough information, because 90 per cent of people who download them never read them. If you spent 100 per cent of your time with the video I sent you, though, that is what we call “leaning in.” That is engagement, something that should be an example of a prospect giving information to a rep that would indicate that they should reach out and follow up. If I’m looking at a lead record in Salesforce and someone has watched 100 per cent of three videos on three different features, but only 20 per cent of a video on a different feature, they’re probably not interested in that last feature. So if I jump on a call, I know exactly what to talk about, because I know what they’ve experienced with our brand.
Can video help sales reps figure out when to make that call?
Yes. When someone is on your website and watching video assets, and they’re watching 100 per cent or even 80 per cent, we’re tracking that in real-time. If you’re going to talk to that person when they’re most engaged, the time to do it is as soon as they’re finished watching that video. They’ve engaged with your brand, they’ve invested time with it. If they get a call from someone in your organization while they’re showing interest that is when you’re going to move that prospect along the funnel. We all know that 70 per cent of the purchasing decision is made before someone even talks to a sales rep, so if you can do anything to get ahead of that 70 per cent — maybe get them when they’re at 20 per cent — you develop the relationship with your brand and you humanize the experience in a way that can be really difficult to achieve in a digital age.
For more selling ideas, check out 130 Sales Tips a free eBook from Salesforce.
Michael Litt is the CEO and co-founder of Vidyard, a video marketing platform helping marketers measure the impact of their video content. Thought leader, surfer, and serial entrepreneur, Michael is passionate about content marketing and changing the way we engage and purchase with video. Chat with Michael on Twitter @MichaelLitt or LindIken to learn more.
