SalesVPI

Second Voice Vignettes for Telesales and Prospecting

As a sales professional, telephone selling is a key element of my sales job, especially in the critical, initial stages of prospecting and engaging new customers. For many sales people this is a frustrating, time consuming, low probability of success activity.

Here's an approach that significantly improves your odds, provides value to your prospects, gives you important feedback and, for now, will clearly differentiate you from other sales people.

I've been thinking about the binary nature of sales prospecting and cultivating initial customer relationships. Consider, with most sales calls:

1. We either connect, or don’t
2. Leave a voicemail, or not
3. Send an email, or not
4. The prospect answers, or doesn't
5. Is willing to talk, or not
6. Is interested, or not
7. Is willing to meet, or not
8. Is the right person or not, etc.

Of course, the odds of a favorable outcome for each option don't favor us.

But what if there were a third option?

I use "second voice vignettes" to capture prospect attention, to help them understand why I'm calling, to get feedback on whether my message resonates or might be relevant to the prospect, to make it easy for my initial contact person to refer me to the appropriate person.

At each stage of the above process it provides a third option that significantly increases my chances for success.

Here's pretty much how it works:

1. I create a short (three minute or less), personalized vignette that addresses the relevant business, sales, marketing or communication issues of my prospect (this is what our business is all about, the process is noted in many places)
2. I send the vignette in a VERY short email with a customer oriented, compelling title (the art of this is critical and is addressed well by many experts)
3. I make my call and if the prospect doesn't answer, I leave a message (the message is also critical, covered elsewhere, but it MUST be oriented to the business issues I'm looking to discuss -- and not be "pitchy"
4. In the message I refer the person to their email "to view a 3 minute custom streaming video that I assembled to introduce them to the issues I'm interested in discussing." I also suggest that my email be shared with others in the organization who have responsibility for the issues
5. If I connect with the prospect, my conversation is very short, issues oriented, requesting of a fifteen minute meeting -- but I'm now focused not on binary options, but more open dialog about the impact of the issues, how they are prioritizing them, etc.
6. The vignette helps me approach the prospect from a problem solving, educating perspective, to see if they would be open and interested in viewing my vignette. It gives me another tool to support the full range of questions that prospects use to delay and diffuse sales inquiries
7. When the prospect views the vignette, I get an email notification (each time). This gives me feedback (and motivation) that my message and issues might be relevant. It helps me prioritize this prospect for follow up.

This method is no panacea. But it is a game changer. It intrigues and captures prospect attention. It helps the prospect understand why they should talk with me. It helps me capitalize on that attention in much more impactful ways than an email message.

If I've selected the right issues, I have a high probability the prospect will listen to my three minute message. Think about it -- three minutes! Audio and visual impact vs. a couple of text sentences that will be skimmed in seconds from an email.

This always reminds me of the infamous Crocodile Dundee scene when he's in New York City with his girl friend who tells him to give the punk assailant his money because "he has a knife …"

Once you start using customized, personalized vignettes, you'll realize the phone and email are limited communication tools for prospecting. You need a bigger knife.

Relevant Video Communications

We released support for native video as a media type in Avitage Collections this week.

This got me thinking of the questions associated with using video throughout an organization.

John Chambers of Cisco has predicted 90% of internet traffic will be video in just a few years. Who will produce all this video? What will it cost? What un-intended consequences will we bear? How can we prepare for this impending reality?

Here are some questions to consider:

• Are you relying too much on live communications in an online, on demand world?
• Will your text-based content grab attention well enough?
• Do you really know how to create the volume of relevant content to address all your audience variables by roles, issues, buying stages, industries, and purpose -- without an exponential budget increase?
• Is search really the best way to direct busy salespeople to the right content for each selling situation?
• How well do your messages get delivered when your experts aren't available to deliver them directly?
• Are you sending your sales people to engage customers with documents in a video and multimedia world?
• How have you been doing e-learning -- isn't this essentially what lead nurturing is all about?
• What if your competition started sending tailored videos to prospects and customers, how would you respond, how would you feel?
• How would you make your videos relevant for every situation?
• How well do you organize and update your PowerPoint slides and shows -- so, you think you're ready for video?
• Are you losing sleep over the prospect of video as ubiquitous as PowerPoint -- should you be?
• What's the best way to enable an organization of business communicators to regularly assemble and deliver relevant videos?

Avitage Approach

What if marketing pre-produced souce video and multimedia content, not as finished programs, but as modules that could be organized into all common communication scenarios required by marketing for lead nurturing and sales for JIT learning and customer communications?

The result might look something like this.

Don Hewitt and the New Producers

This summer Don Hewitt, creator and producer of 60 minutes died.

For those of us in the communications business -- most of us -- there is a lot to learn from this man.

Despite working with text from our youth, most of us don't write very well. When it comes to graphics, animation, audio and video we truly have a long way to go. But these are the new tools for communication in our age, and we are the "new producers".

As business communicators, we must learn from "publishers" how to create quality content, quickly and affordably. Digital media and the web have raised the bar making us not just publishers, but broadcasters. Don Hewitt was the master of the broadcast world.

I'd like to call your attention to this interview, and to several statements in particular that relate to web-based communication. A shorter segement is below.

Conversations at KCTS 9: Don Hewitt, December 1, 2008 - 28:00

This legendary TV producer began his career working with Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly and went on to create and produce CBS News and 60 Minutes.

Listen to this shorter excerpt and his message about Audio and Competition.

Audio: it's not about pictures, it's about the copy that goes along with the pictures. Simple, profound.

Competition: your competition for your online messages and content -- your web site, webinars, e-learning, podcasts, blogs and videos -- is the mouse. The computer equivalent of the television clicker. Hewitt compares the clicker to a gun and it's ability to shoot you instantly the minute interest lags.

Whether we're in sales, marketing, training, or the executive suite, what are our primary communication challenges?

• Attention: to capture it
• Convenience: make it easy to receive messages
• Compelling & Relevant: content
• Internalize: help people internalize messages
• Motivate: audiences to make changes and take action
• Availability: have appropriate content available to be delivered the moment it's needed
• Constraints: resolve practical production challenges of technical and creative expertise, time, desire and above all, cost

Multimedia offers a compelling remendy for these challenges. But to meet the practical constraints of quality, time, budget and volume requires a new paradigm. The traditional production paradigm based upon production professionals defining a fixed deliverable and working through a traditional process of scripting, storyboarding, producing content and assembling a final "production" product doesn't meet the needs of the web-enabled digital world.

Business communicators know their audiences. They know their communication objectives for engaging those audiences. With this they also know the right messages, timing, and preferred consumption methods of their audiences.

The relationship business communicators have with their audience is essential to capturing attention so messages are consumed. To do this, they must make the final determination of content, delivery method and timing. They must become the New Producers.

Google or YouTube his name and select from a number of excellent video clips.

Using Twitter to Sell

Maybe there is something to this Twitter thing, even for sales professionals.

I've dabbled with Twitter for over six months, mostly as spectator. Last week I listened to a streaming audio conversation hosted by John Jantsch, Taking Your Brand Online, with Guy Kawasaki, David Meerman Scott and Chris Brogan, and it's worth checking out.

In response to the question, "what 2 or 3 things should a small business do first with social media?" Guy Kawasaki resonded, "Twitter, Twitter, Twitter!"

Co-incidentally, I read Dave Stein's blog on using Twitter. So, I took a couple of hours for additional research.

My specific selling interest was to find people at key companies who are running virtual events or virtual shows. I used Twitter Search with those keywords and instantly discovered several people with whom I wished to connect. Given the several weeks spent trying to accomplish this objective, this was a major achievement.

But, my story doesn't end there.

Next, I created a short multimedia vignette from my Avitage Collection. In this vignette I invited the person to try one particular feature of our service -- iNgage Presenter -- a live streaming audio and video communication console that also delivers visual support during a conversation.

Within two hours, I conducted three online conversations, responded to two email requests and had two phone conversations. I have three immediate follow on meetings scheduled. It was truly an exciting and mind blowing experience. And, did you hear me? TWO HOURS!

Lessons Learned

First, a little context: To me, marketing and selling is all about resolving some fundamental communication challenges:

• Find interested people


• Capture their attention


• Capitalize on attention with compelling, relevant content


• Enable viral communications to make sharing easy


• Deliver the right information, the right ways, at the right time -- timing is everything


• More marketing and sales "conversations" are conducted over the phone, through email or on the web, especially at the early stages of the customer buying process


• In a complex sale, a key communication challenge is to enable third parties to carry our messages: customer sponsors, partners, referral sources, etc.


• Even after live meetings, we need ways to sustain and extend conversations and deliver our messages

This objective is significantly enhanced by using multimedia programs, and this is a main part of our business.

Now, my Twitter lessons:

• Twitter can help find individuals and companies at the time they are focused on a specific topic


• Twitter provides a direct, personal way to deliver a targeted and well timed message


• Today, people on Twitter are eager to receive appropriate messages through this medium


• Like all good communication tools, Twitter can accelerate the selling process by helping us find and engage people who are interested, and possibly ready to buy.

Consider the communicaton tools that were in use in this example:

• Twitter


• Multimedia vignette for dynamic, but asynchronous communcations


• Email


• Phone


• Web site -- everyone checkout out our website before contacting me


• Real time web-based communcations using streaming video, audio and graphics (aka PowerPoint).

I'm sure there are many other selling uses for Twitter I'm not yet familiar with, please share your insights.

Are you ready for the coming multimedia tsunami?

Our communication culture has shifted -- communicators and audiences alike are now demanding dynamic rather than static methods of information delivery.

This is illustrated in a recent Wall Street Journal article of March 4, 2008: The New Workplace Rules: No Video Watching. (link requires subscription)

"In December, Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos on-line, according to comScore Inc. -- one of the single heaviest months for on-line-video consumption since comScore began tracking it in 2006." 10 billion videos viewed on-line in a single month!

Shifts in culture provide opportunities or organizations to think differently and take action to create competitive advantage. This shift is no different.

Today, how does your organization use multimedia in its daily sales operation to communicate with customers?

How would you feel if you learned tomorrow that your key competitor had their sales people using multimedia on a regular basis to:

• Create executive summary multimedia proposals
• Address and respond to customer questions and objections
• Deliver customer stories in the customer voice
• Regularly communicate in personalized, tailored ways with each stakeholder in a Target Account selling model
• Get new customers engaged in conversations sooner
• Receive "voice in the helmet" sales coaching in the minutes prior to sales calls?

Consider, you use multimedia for training/e-learning and marketing (webinars/Flash). What if you had a process that made this a practical tool for sales?

And it will require a different process than that used for training and marketing. The sales use model is different. Content is different. Sales people will need support unlike that required by trainers and marketing people.

But the trend is clear. High demand for video consumption today is a pre-cursor for high demand for production tomorrow. The multimedia tsunami is coming to a computer near you. Are you ready?

Real Time vs. On Demand Communications

Despite my high interest in the Red Sox, I've watched only a few of the playoff and World Series games in real time. House guests and the need to get up early have forced me to record the games and view them at another time.

Almost all of the TV viewing in our family these days is time shifted.

This got me thinking about sales communications. We tend to rely heavily on real time communication methods: meetings, phone conversations, even email is quasi real time. I find if people don't view my email the day I sent it, the chances are pretty good it's going to get lost in the email backlog.

For all of us, real time is precious. Sales professionals need to master on demand communication methods to reach customers when real time conversations are not possible.

Two methods we are working with and developing proficiencies around are:

• Customer portals
• Multimedia vignettes (streaming audio graphic programs)

Rather than stuffing documents into emails which are sent throughout a 3 to 6 month sales cycle (longer if we start before customers are ready to consider a solution), we're creating portals for each customer.

Portals allow us to manage our collateral and messages in more convenient ways for customers. If they don't view one piece of collateral when we first invite them, they can still find and see it at a time that is more convenient for them. It makes our content easier for them to find and to share with colleagues. It allows us to know when (how often) a customer views content. Finally, in the aggregate, we're beginning to get some interesting data on collateral usage.

Multimedia vignettes are narrated PowerPoint shows. We tailor them to each customer and situation. We attach relevant collateral to shows, a concept we refer to as "merchandising our messages". By this we mean we use the narrated shows to explain key messages and introduce supporting collateral.

Links to shows are easy for customers to recieve, view and share. Multimedia truly brings messages to life and allows us to control the quality and consistency of message delivery, especially when they are passed around the organization.

We may not always be able to meet in real time with key customer contacts, but on demand programs are the next best thing. For customers who are not ready for a direct conversation, they are the best way to reach them.

Watching Webex Webinar on Sales 2.0 Enabled Business

Do you want to see a fantastic topic mangled by inept programming?

Webex Sales2.0 Webinar

Two major points to be made about this webinar:

1) The ideas behind Sales 2.0 are very important for sales professionals and have important implications for the suppot marketing can provide sales

2) This is a classic example of many of the problems with the way webinars are run today

The Sales 2.0 topic will be covered extensively over the next few months.

Let's look at the bigger implications raised by the production issues with this webinar.

We are all going to be incredibly challenged to master communication principles and practices in this new era of web and multimedia communications.

For over 15 years I've been declaring the coming role of the "new producers". People on the front line of business in sales, sales support, marketing, even the executive ranks who will be producing the equivalent of TV or video programs. Well folks, here we are. It's called the webinar.

When communicating through the web, we have to rely on our visuals, our voice and our messages. It's a a completely different experience from live delivery for both presenters and audiences.

While many are challenged to deliver effective live presentations, this medium really ups the ante.

If we don't learn to produce quality programming, we'll kill our opportunities, our brand and ultimately our businesses as we turn off viewers and mangle our messages. If you thought controlling these things in the era of PowerPoint was a challenge, get ready for a multimedia nightmare!

But to not learn and master the effective production of multimedia programming as a marketing or sales professional is to put yourself and your organization at a competitive disadvantage. If you're not working your way -- and your organization's way -- up this learning curve, best get started.

A Few Observations

• A lot of learning about what not to do can be taken from this program:
• Get the audio levels correct before you start the program -- poor audio levels are both distracting and unprofessional
• Have a clear communication paradigm -- is this a monologue by two independent speakers, a phone conversation we're listening in on, or a presentation of ideas?
• Eliminate off the cuff ramblings -- stay focused on a tight outline if not a script
• Structure the program -- the end slides did a better job of explaining what Sales 2.0 is and why I should care, they should have been at the beginning.
• Have slides support commentary -- don't talk for more than a minute on one slide, and certainly not for 12 minutes on slide 1 and 6 minutes on slide 2
• Design the program -- especially when there are multiple speakers, each should know what the other will say and the parameters of the program

A Few Ideas

• A talk show is a lousy communication paradigm -- especially for business webinars. I'm not coming to this program just to be entertained, but to be informed, to learn something.
• I listen at 200 words-per-minute (wpm), but you speak at 100 wpm. Keep it moving! I've got a lot of other things to do. According to Wikipedia:
  • 150-160 words per minute, is the range that people comfortably hear words. Slide presentations tend to be closer to 100 wpm. Conversations are maintained at around 200 wpm.  Wikipedia WPM
• We've all grown up learning how to deliver live presentations. In live presentations we minimize the use of visuals, to avoid "blazing PowerPoints". "You are the message" Roger Ailes has told us.
• But on-line, multimedia communications are a different medium, a different experience. I think we're closer to Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message."  What did McLuhan mean?
• Most of us have little, if any, training or experience producing TV or video programs. We need to get some, and work with people who do have this experience, to come up the learning curve quickly, and to avoid mangling our opportunities.
• Rather than using a presentation paradigm when preparing a webinar, I suggest a "virtual video" paradigm. Video was originally 30 frames per second, that is, 30 pictures per second. Turns out, for most applications, you really don't need 30 fps. One picture every 10 to 60 seconds will do. In this medium more is better. Changing pictures engage people's attention. It will also force you to create better visuals. Because we don't see the presenter, all we have are the visuals. The user experience from this medium is akin to watching a video than a presentation.
• Make it easy for me to know where you are in your program, where you are going, and how long it will take you to get there. I am constantly considering my option to discontinue viewing. If you move to an uninteresting or irrelevant topic for me, how will I know it's worth staying?
• Think in terms of "series", as in TV series. Think also of your personal brand as a program host or expert. Are you creating an experience that will have me prioritize you and your programs in my future, limited time inventory?

Watch the webinar. There is good content embedded, and the lessons for producing webinars might be more evident through this experience than through a more professional program.

New Approach to Web and Multimedia Communications

Most new technology is first applied in pretty traditional ways. TV programs were first created by recording live stage plays. Computers were used as advanced calculating machines, then as electronic typewriters. And today, web and multimedia communications are predominantly electronic mail, website and presentation formats.

Asking: "given my business and how I market and sell, how should I use web and multimedia communications?" is fundamentally the wrong question. But that's the approach most customers and vendors have taken today. "Get Webex and cut down your sales travel, have more meetings."

A more helpful question is: "Given web and multimedia communications technologies, how should I be marketing and selling?"

Multimedia technologies were first applied in the corporate space in the learning organizations (e-learning) and then in marketing as short video clips on websites, or webinars for internal, customer and prospect communications.

Despite Webex and others spending millions to promote the use of live, synchronous web communication technologies, in the selling domain, adoption is still in its infancy. Often the initial experiences are under-whelming, below expectations set by vendors. To date there has been little education around best practices beyond how to use the functions of the tools. I'm hard pressed to name a "whole solution" provider, in the Geoffrey Moore sense.

Breakthrough comes when we re-engineer the process before we apply the new technology.

How have you changed the way you sell by using web and multimedia communications, beyond putting your transactional sales online as online catalogs?

How have you changed the way marketing support sales with new processes and content to support the use of these new technologies?

Are you looking at these as limited tactical tools providing efficiency benefits, or as strategic applications that can fundamentally alter selling, customer engagement and competitive advantage factors? I'm thinking of ways to make it the latter.