I’d like to share one of my favorite ways to add value to my prospects and speed up the deal cycle.

The tactic involves using videos to attract attention and speed along the sales cycle. You will record these videos yourself and they will be customized to your client.

I know it may seem intimidating but I can assure you it’s really not.

There are two scenarios primarily where you would use videos to speed up the sales cycle:

Scenario 1: Capture fascination and get first meeting.

Scenario 2: Help your champion sell / educate internally with video.

Scenario 1 uses video to help you get a foot in the door. Your first meeting. I outline how I implement Scenario 1 at scale in great deal in the Semi-Personalized Sales Method.

Scenario 2 uses video once you’ve had your first few conversations and identified the challenges you can solve. You’re creating a video here to help your champion sell your ideas internally. Rather than them pitching your product they can forward your video or play your video to stakeholders.

There is a subconscious element here too. By creating a video you are going the extra mile for your prospect in a way that few salespeople do, even though it’s not that much extra work. Your prospect will associate you with someone who is an educator and partner rather than just someone trying to push a deal through.

The tools you’ll need to create these videos:

1) Quicktime
2) Camtasia or iMovie (Optional but recommended)
3) Wistia (Optional but recommended)

Quicktime is great because just about everyone has it standard with their operating system. The only challenge with it is that you cannot edit the video once you’ve created so you have to get it right the first time. Camtasia is great because it lets you edit and add effects.

Wistia is a video hosting platform that provides you with stats. It’ll tell you who watched your video and how much of your video they’ve actually watched. It’s a tremendous tool for measuring engagement.

1) Timing – No matter how wonderful your voice is or how charismatic you may be, nobody wants to sit through a long video about your technology offering. The old adage of KISS applies: KEEP IT SIMPLE and SUCCINT. In our case, that means no more than 5 mins and hopefully far shorter.

2) Voice Tonality – Sound excited when telling your story and selling your ideas. You don’t need to be Tony Robbins excited but you should definitely sound enthusiastic. If you’re voice is slow, dull, or there are a lot of ums, ehs, then your listener will get bored.

3) Story Layout – You are the star of your own mini-film. You’re also the director. Way to go you rock star. And like any good director it makes sense to layout the story beforehand. I’m not saying you have to storyboard, but just have some sense of what you’re going to say before you say it.

Few things to remember:

– No need to spend too much time introducing yourself
– Get as quick into the value as possible
– Don’t worry if it takes a few tries to get the wording and story right

4) Edit – If you’re using Camtasia or iMovie you can edit your work a bit. Maybe you mispronounced a work, or have to much white space in between sentences. All this can be quickly cut and edited out so make sure to do it. It adds to production value.

5) Upload and send – As I mentioned, I use Wistia because it lets me track who played my video and how much of it they watched. It costs $100 / month so it’s great if you share it on your company account with other salespeople, but if you’re a one person shop, I get how it could be costly.

If that’s the case, just upload it to YouTube (but keep it private), on your own website or subscribe to Screencast which is a much cheaper private video / image player.