Personalized videos significantly enhance the buying experience and sales outcomes. Videos help capture the attention of the buying group, generating interest and building trust. However, why do most B2B sales professionals still fail to harness the power of personalized videos?
We interviewed 300 sales representatives and sales managers and asked them:
Do you believe personalized videos would improve the effectiveness of your sales and differentiate you from competitors?
Over 85% of sales representatives and Sales Managers responded with a resounding “yes.”
Often, this stems from a situation where the average size of the buying team has increased while the time customers allocate to salespeople has decreased. This has heightened the need to find new ways to grab customers’ attention, spark excitement, and deepen engagement. But why are personalized videos still underutilized in the daily operations of many sales teams?
The reason behind this hesitation is uncertainty, apprehension, lack of expertise, a misunderstanding of the effectiveness of videos, and the complexity of technology.
More than half of sales professionals hesitate or even fear making videos. Even though sales inherently involve social interactions, many salespeople find recording themselves on video challenging. There’s a barrier of self-consciousness about how they look and sound in the video.
A critical factor in reducing this fear is helping salespeople understand that personalized videos directed at the buying team are not public videos. Instead, they are more akin to a direct message, where a salesperson speaks to a group of, for example, five members of the buying team who are in different locations at different times.
New practices often cause anxiety before they become a routine part of operations. It’s essential to acknowledge and not trivialize this anxiety openly. It’s also crucial to accept that acquiring a new skill and practice takes time before it becomes a safe and effective routine. The same emotional dynamic was experienced by many sales organizations when transitioning to remote sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. It might now be hard to remember that video meetings were initially nerve-wracking, and many customers and even salespeople kept their cameras off during meetings.
One fear-reducing factor is realizing that personalized videos don’t need flawless delivery. Authenticity and humanity, complete with imperfections, are compelling.
Even if the courage to make videos is present, the need to understand what to communicate in videos can be a hindrance. We offer coaching on using videos in various sales process stages, what to convey, and how to communicate effectively. In B2B sales, the crucial difference between the best and worst videos is that the best videos don’t merely talk about the service and its benefits but consider the customer’s needs, goals, and situation and align the video with the structure of the service.
For ideas on the content and execution of videos at different stages, you can refer to our blog:
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Boost Your B2B Sales with Personalized Videos: 8 Proven Strategies
Many who doubt their ability to create valuable content also question the effectiveness of videos. However, customer feedback on videos is invariably positive. Customers appreciate the concise communication and the effort put into it.
When customers give positive feedback on videos and the sales hit rate improves, it embeds videos into the sales culture.
Sometimes, a colleague’s example and their results can kickstart video usage. We often begin with a small pilot group, followed by the broader sales team.
Even excellent ideas won’t translate into action if they add complexity to daily routines. One significant reason for the underutilization of personalized videos is the need for easy-to-use tools within the organization, with video production and sharing happening separately from other sales materials.
When video creation is made easy alongside other materials in the digital sales room, it becomes an integral part of the sales process. Technology ceases to be a barrier to video utilization when a video can be created with a couple of clicks without worrying about recording, compressing, and sharing.
Personalized videos can provide a significant competitive advantage. Sales teams that, despite apprehension and resistance to change, ensure their salespeople are skilled and provide flexible technology for video production can offer a distinctive buying experience and achieve better sales outcomes than their competitors.
