Sales prospecting has gotten tricky. It’s much harder to connect with prospects these days. Video messaging is a great sales prospecting tool for sellers to introduce themselves and show prospects that we understand their pain points. It also helps build trust and rapport early. Video prospecting is a great way to rise above the noise on LinkedIn and email with personalized messages that are authentic, sincere, and relevant. It’s important to differentiate your cold messaging from the crowd. Your conversions will improve with more human connections facilitated by video.
LinkedIn has recently released an enhancement to their messaging features. You can now send an individual or a group of people, who you’re connected with, a video message. It’s super easy to do.
- You do need to be connected to someone to send them a video message.
- You can only do the video message from a mobile device.
- You can send a message to a single person or a group of people.
It’s easy to do. The hard part is what to say and how to say it. You can access the LinkedIn Help article to learn more by clicking here.
Here are ten tips to enable your teams to take advantage of this new video communication tool.
#1: Develop Video Messaging Strategy
Decide when you’ll use video prospecting messages and what the right kind of messages is appropriate. Look at your sales process and map out the points in your buyer’s journey where a video message makes sense. You can also create a list that is different by role. Think about the video messages that makes sense for sales versus customer success. For sales, there are many times in the sales process to use a video. Here are some examples:
- Intro video to a prospect
- Pre-meeting agenda
- Post-meeting follow up and next steps
- Thank you video after meeting
- Video proposal summary
- Thank you email for signing new contract
If you’re a VP sales lead by example. Show your team examples of your own videos.
If you’re a front-line manager, reinforce the importance of video messaging in building relationships and closing deals faster.
If you’re a salesperson, don’t wait. Start using video more.
If you’re a sales enablement leader, help your teams master video selling.
#2: Add Videos Messages To Your Cadences
Regardless of what Sales Engagement Platform you use (Salesloft, Outreach etc), add video messages to your cadences. It’s a great addition to the 8-10 step process focused on emails and calls. Everyone is sending email. Most are not sending video. It’s a great way to stand out and differentiate.
#3: Research Your Prospect. Know Your Buyer.
Using videos on LinkedIn for cold messaging but sending generic video messages misses the point of direct, personalized communications that are intended to be relevant. Research should inform a problem or trigger that’s most likely top of mind to your prospect. Know your buyer.
Research the person. Research the company. You know how to do your research. Check the news. Read earnings calls. Check out Glassdoor. Look at their Twitter channel. Know what’s going on in the company. If they just finished a customer conference or they just released great earnings, make reference to it if you can. LinkedIn prospecting with video messaging needs to be custom, concise and tailored to your sales prospect.
#4: Keep Your Videos Short
The ideal length for a video inside LinkedIn Messaging is between thirty and ninety seconds. Anything longer and you’re probably pitching too much. You’ll become a master at these after you do a few of them. The first ones will be awkward but you’ll eventually be able to do them from anywhere, anytime.
#5: Follow This Format For An Intro Video Prospecting Message
Start with a smile. Follow this flow. End with a smile
- Warm personal intro, saying the persons name and pronouncing it correctly too.
- Clearly state what you learned or read about their business or about them personally
- Offer up a time to meet to discuss how you can help them solve this problem or goal
- Close with a thank you and say the person’s name again.
- Don’t forget to smile
Drift does a great job providing template scripts for video prospecting messages. You can read them here.
#6: Write Out The Messages
When prospecting on LinkedIn it’s a good practice to write out messages before recording a video. Write them down. Read them out loud. Take out any necessary words. Make sure to think of the person receiving the message. Share the message with your team and manager to get feedback. This is a great coaching huddle teams can run together in SalesHood.
#7: Be Authentic
Use video prospecting to establish a real connection. It’s better to speak from the heart versus reading a script. Your message and value will also be better understood with a video.
You will be able to build relationships faster with prospects with video messages that address real problems they’re trying to solve. Your prospects will now see you and they’ll hear you. Your message when delivered sincerely and based on real research, will sound authentic. Don’t pitch.
Always make sure your video is professional. Don’t worry about the perfect backgrounds. There isn’t much people can see around you when recording a video from your mobile phone.
#:8 Practice Recording Video Messages
It’s highly advisable to enable your teams to be conversationally competent and natural in their videos. It’s a must in these times. It should be a non-negotiable job requirement. The more we practice LinkedIn prospecting messages the better the video messages will be. We should all be recording their video messages multiple times and getting feedback from our peers and our managers. There should also be a library of best videos to watch and learn from for new hires to ramp and veterans to freshen up their talk track and style.
With SalesHood, you can scale getting your teams practicing and learning from each other. Pitch practice is a big part of how companies use SalesHood to boost up sales productivity. Here’s a video on rolling out a pitch practice process at your companies. Plus you can read this article in our Help Center to learn how to do it in SalesHood.
#9: Measure Impact
It’s a good idea to measure pipeline creation, deal progression and win-rates of your teams. Correlate the impact of video messaging in your sales process.
#10: Replicate Success
Create a culture of sharing examples and success stories. Put all your practice video and actual videos including scripts if you have them in a central content repository like the SalesHood Library.
Whether you’re new or a veteran to video prospecting with LinkedIn, LinkedIn Video Messaging makes it easier to connect with our prospects and buyers. Take advantage of these tools and don’t forget to practice and learn from your peers.
