Sales enablement is about giving your salespeople the knowledge and tools they need to sell more effectively. That makes video a vital addition to any sales enablement strategy. Used to its full potential, video can help your salespeople get up to speed more quickly and engage buyers at every stage of the sales cycle.
Like so many corporate buzzwords, “sales enablement” is a murky term. Gartner defines it as, “The activities, systems, processes and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with clients and prospects.” In other words, sales enablement is anything a business does or puts in place to help its sellers better connect with buyers and close sales.
Sales are the lifeblood of any business, so it’s well worth the time it takes to hammer out an effective sales enablement strategy. Unpreparedness accounts for a third of all lost sales, according to global market intelligence firm IDC. At the same time, IDC estimates that salespeople spend seven hours each week searching for content in preparation for sales opportunities.
Make video a pillar of your sales enablement strategy
Where does video fit in? Here are five powerful ways video can help your sales team sell:
1. Better salesperson onboarding
A new hire means another person to chase leads, nurture customer and client relationships, and run sales demos – but not straight away. It could be months before a fresh employee is familiar enough with your business to sell effectively.
A lot of employers count on senior staff to orient recruits to the company culture, sales tactics, and products and services. But tying up seasoned sellers this way can actually hurt sales capacity for a time. Businesses also often send new employees to offsite classrooms to get the knowledge they need. This can be expensive for the company and not always effective for learners, who may suffer from information overload.
It’s in the best interest of any business to ensure onboarding is as undisruptive and cost-effective as possible. With a library of standardized, high-quality onboarding and training videos, new sales personnel can learn the ins and outs of your products and services without drawing on long-standing staff. This is especially valuable if your company has multiple offices or sellers who work remotely.
Video learning empowers new staff to learn at their own pace. Plus, newbies and veterans alike can rewatch onboarding content at any time to reinforce their knowledge. With the average employee forgetting 35 percent of their training within a month – and up to 90 percent after six – the value of this is clear.
2. More accessible training
Video training isn’t just for new hires, of course. Video is a great way to build your entire sales team’s knowledge and skills and to share around the latest information about your products and services. It may even be employees’ preferred way to learn. According to one Forrester Research poll, 75 percent of employees would rather tune into a training video than read a document, email, or online article with the same information.
But is video learning effective? Absolutely. In fact, video is an ideal match for two proven concepts in professional learning and development: just-in-time learning and microlearning. These approaches enable employees to grow their knowledge at their own pace. What results are learning experiences far more conducive to comprehension and retention. It certainly beats packing everyone into a classroom for a day or two of wall-to-wall training.
Video on-demand (VOD) content can also make it easier for employees to locate information. With a video content management system like Kaltura or Panopto, an organization can index transcripts and on-screen text to make their video content library highly searchable. Say a salesperson needs to clarify a product feature. All they have to do is enter a fitting keyword or phrase to bring up a list of videos that include it, then select one to skip ahead to their answer.
3. Easier remote collaboration
When it comes down to it, sales is a team sport. Making sure your sellers have opportunities and tools to collaborate is an important part of any sales enablement strategy. It can be tricky to keep the lines of communication open when your sales team is distributed or includes salespeople who are mobile. Phone conferencing and instant messaging are always options, but video is the next best thing to having everyone together in the same room.
A video conferencing platform can give your salespeople an efficient and reliable line to anyone else in the company. Many offer mobile versions that let users make video calls or join video conferencing sessions from anywhere. Features like file transfer, screen share, and virtual white boards can also boost productivity.
Enterprises can use video to promote collaboration in other ways. For instance, most video content management systems let employees across an organization shoot and upload instructional videos or announcements for on-demand viewing. This makes it easy to share around updates, best practices, and other important information.
4. Enhanced prospecting and engagement
No one ever said cold outreach has to be cold. Video can add warmth to communications with potential customers or clients. When sales sends an email, chances are it’ll land in an inbox full of similar messages from other companies also vying for the account owner’s attention. Add a personalized video to your pitch and it’s a lot more likely to stand out. Case in point: embedding a video in an email can boost click rates by 300 percent.
The same principle applies when it comes to engaging inbound leads and building customer relationships after an initial sale. Sellers can record and attach personalized videos to messages whenever they follow up with a customer or client. This simple touch could help influence a renewal, upsell, or cross-sell.
Kaltura Pitch and VidYard are just a couple platforms that offer this functionality. Both feature real-time alerting whenever a prospect tunes into a video message along with detailed analytics that can help you figure out which videos are most effective.
5. More engaging sales calls and demos
In today’s global market, it just isn’t feasible for sales teams to meet with every potential customer or client in person. Video is the perfect compromise. Through video, sellers can chat with prospects face-to-face (albeit virtually) wherever they are. The medium also makes it possible to run sales demos remotely. This is critical because often the best way to get across the value of a product or service is to show it in action.
VOD content like video case studies and tutorials can also be great assets for sales teams. In fact, customers are 64 to 85 percent more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Live video is another powerful tool for sales enablement – and three times more engaging than on-demand video content.
Of course, simply jumping on a video conferencing call, uploading a product video, or hosting a live stream won’t necessarily net you these kinds of results. The quality of your video or live stream is an important factor.
Ultimately, all you need for a video call is a computer, a webcam, and an Internet connection. But imagine you’re a customer meeting with a salesperson over video. The seller gives you their spiel about how their company’s product can solve such and such problem. Meanwhile, you can’t help but notice the poor picture quality, the tinny audio, the unflattering shadows cast by subpar lighting. How might this affect your response? What impression would the seller’s presentation give you about the product they’re selling, the brand they’re representing?
It’s tough to stand out in today’s borderless and highly competitive marketplace. Impeccable video quality is one way your business can get an edge – but you’ll need the right equipment.
Make your sales team shine
Just like a salesperson might invest in a tailored suit or a new pair of shoes, it’s worth stepping up the quality of your sales videos to make a good impression.
Epiphan Pearl-2 and Pearl Mini hardware encoders make it easy to produce professional-quality video content and live streams that will make your sales team stand out. Multiple inputs for video and professional audio let you connect high-end cameras and microphones to stream or record at high-resolution (up to 4K) with crystal-clear sound.
Learn more about how Pearl-2 and Pearl Mini encoder hardware can support your business’s sales enablement strategy. Be sure to contact our product specialists if you have any questions.
See an example of the kind of high-quality sales content your team could make with an Epiphan Pearl all-in-one video production system.