5 Ways To Use Videos To Build Pipeline And Boost Conversion Rates

What's the deal with video prospecting?

If there was one thing you could do that boosts your reply rates, books you more calls, and speeds up the sales cycle would you brush it aside?

Of course you wouldn’t! And yet few sales reps are using video in their sales process. Those who don’t are

1. struggling to stand out from the crowd,

2. building trust takes longer,

3. and we haven’t even talked about the number of follow ups it takes to get a deal across the line.

Maybe you just haven’t been shown how video can help you overcome all these but that about to change in the next 5 minutes.

Hi, I’m Viktor, a full-cycle Account Executive turned Sales Manager with 10 years of B2B Sales experience and on this blog I cover topics from prospecting to closing and everything in between.

And by the end of this post you’ll know 5 ways you can use video for sales to get you closer to crushing your quota. Let’s do this!

When, why and how should you use video as a sales rep?

As a seller everything you do revolves around building pipeline, increasing win rates, and decreasing time to close so we’re going to look at how video can play a role in each of these three areas.

And I’m not just going to list 5 things you can use it for but also what basic dos and don’ts you should follow to get results.

Then we’ll end with 3 tools you should consider using that take the hassle out of video creation so you can choose the one that best fits your use case.

1. Cold outreach

The first use case is when reaching out cold. The point here is to educate and inspire prospects in a more engaging way than you could over email and evoke reciprocity that make it all the more likely for prospects to take a call with you.

You’ll want to keep these under 1 minute so prospects actually watch the whole thing. You also want to avoid sending video on the first touch. Sounds counter-intuitive at first, right? If videos boost engagement why on earth wouldn’t I start with that? The thing is including attachments, links, and images in your email hurt your email deliverability and you’re dead in the water if your emails land in spam. Also you can never be 100% sure that email addresses are valid and because recording and personalising videos take time it can seriously hurt your activity volume. On the other hand video is a great tool for following up because it evokes reciprocity so at the very least you get a response which is already better then being ghosted.

Apart from follow ups you can use videos instead of leaving voicemails, educating on complex problems visually that get the prospect interested and for showing something exclusive that inspires prospects to take action. This can be a demo, walking through a customer success story, or presenting the research you did on their company and why you believe they could benefit from talking to you.

2. Managing open opportunities

The use case I’ve used video for the most is managing opportunities async. With both internal and external stakeholders. See, for Enterprise deals especially you’ll meet at least 6-12 stakeholders from the buyer’s side along the buying journey all of whom have influence over the deal to a different degree. Add another 5-8 internal stakeholders across pre-sales, product, customer success and leadership who you have to get on the same page with and then stay aligned with during the sales cycle to close the deal successfully. It’s impossible to align this many calendars so multi-threading and async collaboration are your best friends. Using video makes this almost effortless and there are 3 ways I love doing that.

Firstly for presenting additional context in your call summary while keeping the email body short. This lets you keep text to an easy to skim minimum and then use video to engage them. The added bonus is that you can track prospect engagement. Have they clicked the video? How long have they watched it for? Any sections they rewatched multiple times? Have they left a comment? Have they shared the link with someone who wasn’t involved yet? All of these help you make smarter moves that improve your win rates.

Secondly there are times when you just can’t get people on the phone and this delays opps for weeks at a time. Why wait for stakeholders to be available to get their feedback on a proposal when you can send a video and let them reply on their own time? Not saying you should discuss prices over email or video, simply record your proposal and ask for their input. Does this align with the impact they’re looking to make? Any objection to the scope or something they’d do differently? Getting feedback like this async let’s you push the deal along faster.

Lastly if you’ve ever worked with Product teams and Leadership you know they’re on back to back meetings all day. You can’t afford to wait until they have an opening. The way I’ve gotten support from cross-functional teams faster is by briefing them on where we’re at and making it clear what input I need from who and by when. Then everyone can reply on their own time and I get to respond faster to keep the customer engaged.

3. Social proof

Piggybacking on these first two points you can use videos to collect customer testimonials via short 3-5 min live interviews and sharing them with stakeholders regardless of whether it’s part of your outbound flow or closing flow. Think of how much more credible a story is when coming straight from the mouth of a satisfied customer!

4. Buyer enablement

At number four we have buyer enablement. You just love explaining the same things over and over again, don’t you? Prospects need guidance on how to use the product or how to make the sale internally but you end up feeling like a parrot in the process. It’s also time you could be spending on creating pipeline. So instead of repeating yourself over and over again make recordings of FAQs and micro-demos of individual features that add up to a specific impact. With evergreen content like these you can piece together explainer videos with close to zero effort. All the while champions will have everything they need to convince decision makers in internal meetings where you’re not on the guest list. Other use cases include how-to videos for POCs and Onboarding videos after the sale.

5. Having crucial conversations

Before we jump into the dos and don’ts we have use case number five. Ever had a misunderstanding with a teammate or customer because of how they perceived your message? The thing is you can’t control how others read your messages. Sure you can use emojis and tread carefully but it’s way easier to convey intent by showing tone and body language, both of which are possible over video if you can’t get on a face-to-face call quick enough. So use videos for running crucial conversations. When done right they deescalate the situation and disarm your counterpart so sour feelings don’t end up derailing your deal.

Make fewer avoidable mistakes and get results faster

Now let’s help you make fewer avoidable mistakes by going over some dos and don’ts!

Avoid

1. Don’t send video on the first message. Already mentioned this in the beginning but making personalised videos take a lot of time and if the email ends up bouncing you just wasted all that effort. And even if the email is valid your message may land in spam because of security filters. Stick to a plain and short email as the first step.

2. Next up: Don’t pitch. Using video won’t compensate for a connect and pitch approach to outbound.

3. Also don’t send generic videos with outbound. The whole point is to create interest through a highly-personalised message. Even though video messaging tools let you repurpose videos use it to personalise at scale when it comes to enablement - not outreach.

4. I hate this one the most: don’t add a gif with the prospect’s name on it as the thumbnail. Please. It’s salesy and they know the only personalisation was typing in their name.

Do

1. On the flip side keep your videos short. If your message is longer than 1-3 minutes it should be a conversation. Depending on your goal the purpose of the video can be to inspire which should be 30-60 seconds long, to explain something complex visually which can be 1-3 minutes, or to get feedback async which is also 1-3 minutes. Enablement videos like step-by-step walkthroughs can be longer but I’d recommend splitting them into shorter segments and turning them into a mini-series.

2. You should use visuals. Yes, appearing on video already shows effort from your part which helps but if you’re not showing something compelling then you’re missing out on an opportunity to intrigue your prospect.

3. And lastly always add a supporting message that tells the prospect what the video is about so they have a reason to click - else they will just ignore and archive it like it’s any other message.

Tools to consider

Now let’s talk about tools! What you want out of a good video messaging tool is to make video creation easy, you’ll want insights around engagement that help you make smarter and more timely moves, and to sell faster by working async.

Loom

Up first we have Loom. Loom is a perfect all-rounder for individuals and teams who are looking for a standalone solution. Loom offers a rich free plan and affordable teams plan that makes signing up a no-brainer. It’s also what I’ve personally been using for years and my customers love it.

Vidyard

Next up we have Vidyard. Vidyard is best suited for teams who want everything that loom can do but also care about integration with the rest of the tech stack so no matter where you are you can record straight away or have engagement insights at your fingertips. Vidyard integrates seamlessly with tools like Gong, Salesforce, LinkedIn and other sales engagement tools so you can cut down on context switching and admin. They also recently released a cool feature called Vidyard Rooms which enables buyers by bringing all enablement assets related to the opportunity into a single place. No more searching through emails and folders.

Ubique

The third tool worth considering is Ubique. Ubique is all about scaling outreach. As sales reps we repeat 90% of what we say when reaching out cold so we use templates and snippets to send out more emails and personalise just enough to get a response. But videos takes way more time, don’t they? Ubique gets rid of the hassle by using AI to clone your voice and personalise variables in your video like first name and company name. Record once, personalise hundreds of emails and before sending the video add a personalised cover message to go along with it.

That’s it for the three tools, let me know in the comments which one you liked best!

That's a wrap!

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