3 Use Cases for Sales Video Messaging Beyond Direct Sales Prospecting

While the use of personalized video messages throughout the sales process has been gaining traction over the past couple of years, the new reality of virtual selling has only accelerated the importance of delivering personalized messages to prospects.

Many sales leaders are beginning to recognize the importance of video to build relationships and nurture prospects through their buyer’s journey, but the impact of video extends beyond those use cases.

For example, personalized video messages can effectively deliver information to other audiences, such as channel resellers, existing customers, and your internal team.

In previous articles in this series about selling with video, I’ve described various use cases for sales video messaging that your team can implement to connect with prospects throughout their journey, such as:

• Why You Should Use Video for Sales
• How Sales Reps Can Fill Their Pipeline Using Sales Prospecting Videos
• A Guide to B2B Sales Video Proposals

While all three of these topics are essential to the modern seller, now I want to introduce three other unique use cases of videos those articles didn’t cover.

3 Video Sales Messaging Use Cases

Let’s face it, we’re all bombarded with emails, phone calls, Slack messages, and social media notifications. We’re pulled in a million different directions. Yes, this applies to your prospects, but it also applies to existing customers and your internal team.

But your channel and account managers still need to get their message to resellers and existing customers. And you need to send messages to each member of your sales team.

What’s the best way for your message to be heard?

Personalized video messages grab people’s attention because they are personal and different from the other messages they receive. And, viewers are more likely to remember them because they’re able to see your facial expressions and experience the emotion of your message.

Best of all, you don’t need a ton of fancy equipment or to spend a ton of time editing. In fact, the whole point is to show your personality and make a personal connection. So, too much editing or tweaking can actually be a negative.

And while the video sales messages I discussed in previous articles, as a use case example, apply to most sales reps with a quota, here I’ll discuss the benefits of video sales messages for three other roles: channel sales managers, account managers, and sales leaders.

1. Channel Sales Managers

One of the reasons vendors use channel partners is that they give them a lot of “feet on the street,” meaning field sales reps who visit clients and talk to them face-to-face. Of course, this is no longer possible as everyone is working from home. And, this probably won’t be part of the new normal for the foreseeable future.

Without the feet on the street, and with hundreds of competitors fighting for mindshare, video messaging is a great alternative to reach prospects and gain a competitive advantage.

For instance, one of the biggest challenges in channel sales management is getting the attention of partners because, in many cases (particularly the IT world), the solution provider partner may have 100 different vendors on their line card.

If you’re a channel manager for one of those companies, you need to stand out from hundreds of vendors for the partner to pay attention to your message. Perhaps you have a new product or promotional campaign. When everyone is working from home, it’s difficult to secure the time to share that message.

Instead of a regular email, channel sales managers can send a sales message through a video platform such as OneMob and attract the attention of the channel partner. In the video message, the partner can see your facial expressions and hear your intonation, which creates an instant connection through mirror neurons and boosts your credibility.

Plus, the personalized video messages will differentiate you from the 100 other vendors you’re competing with for the attention of your reseller. When channel sellers provide valuable messaging, such as a successful playbook or how to address objections from a specific persona, and deliver that message through a unique and more relatable platform such as video, they’re likely to stay top of mind with their channel partners.

2. Account Managers

While the exact title or responsibilities may vary from company to company, account managers are typically farmers who take care of existing clients. In some sales organizations they may carry a quota for upselling or expanding relationships but usually account managers do not have closing responsibilities.

These account managers must build strong relationships with multiple people inside a client’s organization. Depending on the size of the company, they may manage 10, 20, or 50 accounts.

This is where asynchronous video messaging becomes a great tool for them to continue nurturing multiple relationships at the same time. Yes, they could schedule separate Zoom calls with each person, but let’s be realistic. It’s simply not practical to cycle through 50 Zoom meetings in an effective amount of time.

The simplest and smartest alternative is to record one video message (explaining a new product feature for example) and send it to the 50 clients.

Besides the amount of time your account managers will save, there are other advantages to this approach:

• The customer still sees the account manager delivering the message (remember that to the brain, there’s no difference between seeing someone through video or in-person), which strengthens the relationship.
• The video has a high probability of being seen by other people in the company or passed around the team. While synchronous video conferences are usually restricted to those who can attend, short video email messaging builds more awareness because of the pass-along effect.

3. Sales Leaders

As a sales leader, you’re managing a virtual sales team during the pandemic and there’s a lot you need to communicate to them. Sometimes, a written email or document may be the most appropriate way of communicating (detailed policies or long checklists, for example).

When the goal is to get your team excited and fired up, then the emotion of a video message is unparalleled.

Leadership communication is critical to morale, particularly the salesforce, on which lies the overall success of the company. Additionally, many salespeople are extroverts who may be struggling with the new routine of working remotely more than others.

As a sales leader, it is your responsibility to keep them motivated to continue exploring new ways of prospecting, building relationships, and networking.

You can use video messaging and other remote selling tools to keep your sales team motivated and confident. Sellers need to hear from their leaders about the plan, the strategies, and how to overcome difficulties. These messages are often communicated best through video.

Plus, as explained in previous articles linked above, many video platforms allow you to easily track who watched it and if they clicked on any other links.

Learn to Leverage Personalized Video Messages in Sales

Video has proven to be one of my most effective social selling tools in recent times. And now more than ever, it’s the go-to tool to prospect, follow-up and close deals for sellers working from home all around the world.

The use cases I’ve described here and in the previous articles in this series have been extremely useful for me and also for many of our clients. That’s why our Selling with Video Virtual Bootcamp is so popular. We train sellers how to effectively use sales video to start more sales conversations.

This program is 100% virtual and will teach you and your B2B sales team all the viable use cases for selling with video, how to be irresistible on camera, leverage verbal and non-verbal cues, how to write effective scripts, and more.

In the new work-from-home selling environment, all B2B sellers will benefit from selling with video skills. Don’t be left behind. Improve your sales team’s results with the power of video.

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