Still relying on slides in 2021? It’s possible to win at the sell on with video.
Picture the scene. The New Business push has gone well, the discovery questions have unearthed a need and the demo went like a dream. What comes next?
“That’s been great, can you share me those slides from today and I’ll discuss with the team and get their feedback.”
When deals go bad
This my friends is a dangerous stage in the buying process. Many a good sailor has had their boat sunk in these waters.
It’s incredibly rare these days that a decision is made by one person without consulting others. The usual next move can often be the one that causes the problems.
The issue is this. That person on the demo was impressed. They are bought in. They may well even be your ardent supporter and all-round advocate. But when they send those slides around the impact is only a fraction of what happened on the call.
Strength in numbers
Having one advocate, no matter how vocal, is rarely enough. Go to any HBR / Gartner / Salesforce study on the number of decision makers involved in B2B and the number is steadily increasing from on average four to five to six+. Think about it, when was the last time a CIO on first contact and on their own said, yep we’ll buy that, send me the contract. It doesn’t happen.
The struggle is real
Our task is to convince half a dozen busy senior people and we’ve perhaps so far had one or two of them on a call. The other four are about to be told your complete story via the medium of Powerpoint or Google slides.
How does that make you feel, confident? Nope, me neither.
What can we do to turn the odds more in our favour. The good news is there are a couple of options here.
The first is lean into the support of the vocal advocate. If you can work with them to set up a series of introductions and demos with all the key players then this can really help the situation. The goal here is that when that advocate sends the email round saying we need to set up a trial to evaluate your product, all the decision making cohort of heard of it, seen it, been impressed by it. That trial has much more chance of getting off the ground.
This is worth doing, particularly for higher value sales. It is however, time consuming and needs to be balanced against the risk of slowing the pace of the potential deal.
How to win the sell on with video
Another option is to use video as well as or even in place of the slides. How to approach that video? A good idea for a narrative is to highlight the prospects challenge, show how your feature works and relate back the benefits that customers are enjoying. (If you want to know more about the thinking behind this, check out my ‘so what‘ post)Sharing a short clip can have a much higher impact than some boring old slides.Not only does it make your efforts stand out but it’s time efficient for both sides of the discussion. It really is possible to win the sell on with video. Get into a groove and it’s easy to start recording sub five minute clips on first take. Think about the time save vs churning out yet another slide deck. The prospect can also digest the information at the same speed and you may well be in their good books simply for not making them chew through another 40 page ppt. There’s more benefits behind the scenes. Using the likes of Loom or Awesome Screenshot the video owner can get a count on views so we have an extra secret weapon to assess level of engagement across the prospect. If that clip is suddenly getting 20, 40, 60 views then it’s time to really go for it and shout about getting that trial set up. Here’s an example of a short clip done with one of my clients, Sennen Tech, who have developed their own platform to help busy asset managers working in renewable energy.
All the touch points, incremental gains
As with most things in this world, one move alone does not guarantee success. The use of video is just one more small way of tipping the odds in your favour. The good thing about this one is that it’s easy to do, doesn’t take any special kit of skills and just might put you to the top of the short list, all for five minutes work.