Sales Prospecting in 2021: Replace Text With Video

Sales prospecting in 2021 is all about the transition from text to video. While text isn’t going away anytime soon, companies of all shapes and sizes are finding that video is a much better medium to find new customers. Whether you work for a small, medium, or large business, video is the tool that can help you accomplish your sales goals.

Because of this, I want to spend this post further discussing this dramatic change to sales prospecting in 2021. This replacement of text with video can have so many positive consequences for your business. Whether you are trying to promote a new product or service or simply want to build better relationships with your prospect or customers, video can help you get the job done. 

There Are Two Schools of Thought

When you are looking at the sales world, it is easy to see that there are two schools of thought. These two schools aren’t necessarily opposed to each other, but they have some major differences that can affect the pursuit of your sales goals.

One school of thought is all about sending pre-recorded, asynchronous video content. Those that subscribe to this school believe that these asynchronous videos add a human element to their communication. They believe that it is extremely powerful to speak to others in a visual way, as it adds a human element to their communication. 

There are plenty of applications here. For instance, pre-recorded, asynchronous video communication can help you communicate with individual prospects. If there is a key prospect that is close to purchasing your product or service, subscribers to this school of thought simply send a high-quality, personalized video to that prospect. But pre-recorded, asynchronous videos aren’t just for one-to-one videos. You can create a solid one-to-many asynchronous video that provides tremendous value to your audience. This can be everything from the announcement of a new product or service or the announcement of an important new hire at your organization. Pre-recorded, asynchronous video content can even be helpful if you are communicating amongst your team. Instead of having constant back-to-back meetings throughout your day, you can send off quick, asynchronous videos whenever you’d like. 

Ultimately, this first school of thought makes it much easier to build trust. And with that built-in trust, subscribers to this school of thought move people down a value path. They are able to consistently build trust and good feelings with their desired audience, which will consistently pay off in spades. Not only that, but pre-recorded, asynchronous videos let recipients consume them on their own time. It is more convenient than finding a mutual time on your schedule and simultaneously sitting down for a meeting. 

The second school of thought doesn’t take pre-recorded, asynchronous videos that seriously. This school of thought is all about calling and emailing. Members of this school believe in the old-school way of selling and marketing. It is all about volume. They need to start with a list of prospects, disrupt their prospects’ during their workdays, see if there is any interest in their product or service, and go from there. 

As you can probably guess, the first school of thought is more effective in today’s world. The simple reality is that cold calling has become much more difficult. Things like spam calls and robocalls are really turning off prospects. No one is answering their phones anymore, so cold calling has become immensely more difficult.

Text email has also become more competitive. You need to do fancier things to stand out in your target’s inbox. I’m not saying that it’s impossible. That being said, the world of text email marketing has become dramatically more crowded. Not only are there more people leveraging this important marketing strategy, but consumers have less and less time. Your pitch and/or strategy needs to be really good to grasp your audience’s attention and move them down your sales funnel.  

Along with this, cold calling does have its place. It isn’t completely ineffective. You can get some clients or customers this way. However, many of our clients have told us that they are completely replacing their cold calling efforts with video.

Things like cold calls and text emails aren’t going to go away anytime soon. They are here to stay. That being said, video is an extremely powerful tool that can make your sales work substantially easier. 

The Real Benefits of This Migration From Text to Video

So how does replacing text with video make your sales work substantially easier? After all, sales prospecting in 2021 is all about this migration from text to video. Why is video so effective for all types of businesses?

To start off, video lets you show off your personality. Watching a video, your prospect can physically see you, can hear your tone of voice, and can hear your inflection. It may seem like a little thing, but seeing all of these things can add up really quickly. They help you build trust with your prospect, which dramatically increases your chances of making a final sale. 

This is a benefit that you can’t find with cold calling or text emails. While prospects can obviously hear your voice in a cold call, they aren’t able to physically see you. They can’t see your face and see the microexpressions that you are naturally exhibiting. It is even truer in text emails. Text doesn’t let your prospect see you or hear your voice, which makes your trust-building work much more difficult. On the other hand, every video that you create is an incredible opportunity to show off your personality and build more trust with your audience.

Sometimes people forget what we look like when we email them. It’s all too natural. Our prospects have extremely busy lives, whether they have very demanding jobs or have busy personal lives. It is difficult to expect them to remember what we look or sound like if we are constantly sending them text emails or text messages. With video, however, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. By being your authentic self and being laser-focused on connecting with your audience, you will find that video lets you build extremely strong relationships with essentially anyone. 

Along with showing off your personality, video is a much quicker way to communicate with your prospects. Whether you are contacting a single prospect or a much larger group of prospects, it is often much faster to shoot a quick video than draft out a lengthy email. Comparing video with cold calling, you will also notice that video lets you deliver a high-quality pitch at scale. You don’t have to individually call prospects and read off of a script. Instead, you can quickly record a video and then send it off to as many people as you like.

If you are fully all-in with video, you can even exchange video replies with members of your audience. Using a tool like Dubb, you can easily add a “reply with video” call to action below your video. This makes it seamless for a viewer to quickly react to your initial video. You can even use those initial reactions as video testimonials in future video content. Whatever the case may be, by making the transition from email to video content, you will find that you are saving yourself a significant amount of time. You can then use that time to better serve your customers, develop closer relationships with your colleagues, or something else. 

Finally, video is so powerful because it is an outstanding way to share personal stories. Granted, you can share stories through cold calls or through text emails. Some of the greatest stories of the world were solely written down. However, the awesome thing about video is that you are storytelling through a visual medium. Not only does your audience get to see your face and the expressions that you are using when telling a story, but you can enhance your storytelling through visuals. This includes everything from adding video testimonials from other satisfied customers to recording your video on your morning walk. 

This visual nature of video is often underrated. Most people think that they are limited to recording video content in their office. However, if you want to tell compelling personal stories to your audience, seriously consider recording video in different environments. When recording, make sure that you are adding value and that you are being yourself. Through practice, you will become a master storyteller and a stellar content creator. 

Moreover, when you are telling stories, make sure that they are real-life stories. Real-life stories are great because they make people feel something. This is true whether the stories are of your triumphs or your downfalls. Ultimately, stories are engaging and can teach your audience something about the world. They give meaning to our lives and can inspire others to take some action to improve their lives. 

Using Dubb to Leverage the Power of Video

Those were just some of the ways that sales prospecting in 2021 has dramatically changed. Instead of relying on those pesky cold calls or lengthy text emails, you can quickly shoot awesome video content and distribute it to your prospects. In effect, it lets you create higher quality content and reach more people at the same time. 

While there are many tools to help you leverage the power of video in your sales work, I believe that Dubb offers you the best tools to help you sign more prospects and grow your business. 

A Simple Example

A simple example shows you how Dubb can help you capitalize on sales prospecting in 2021. Let’s pretend that you are targeting an important prospect. You believe that she is a prime candidate for purchasing your new product or service. Because of this, you want to leverage the power of video in trying to close this particular prospect. 

Using Dubb, you can easily click record and start recording a personalized video for that prospect. You have plenty of recording options. You can record your face, your face and your screen, or your screen only. As just one example, you can maximize your screen and tell your prospect that you want to show her something really cool. From there, you can share your screen and show how your product or service can provide real value to her life. 

At the tail end of that video, you can also tell your prospect that you and your team created another video right after this one. This is leveraging Dubb’s playlist feature, which lets you select videos that will play after your initial video. Asking your prospect for her thoughts on that next video can entice her to keep watching, which helps you build trust and a closer relationship with that prospect. 

When you upload that video, Dubb will complete that next step of the workflow. That step can be everything from following up with that prospect in a few days or something else. The bottom line is that you can put in a minimal amount of effort (say, 10 or 15 seconds) and Dubb will build an entire video action page for that prospect. That action page is the central hub for your video content and can make it more likely that you build a strong relationship with your prospects and generate more sales. 

Features That You Can Find on Dubb

Through that simple example, you can see how Dubb can help you accelerate your sales prospecting in 2021. Whether you work for a small or large business, Dubb will let you easily replace text with video. 

Ultimately, you can click here to find a comprehensive list of features on the Dubb platform. Having said this, here are some of the more notable features that can help you replace text with video.

First, there is the Dubb mobile app. Available on both iOS and Android devices, the Dubb mobile app lets you create high-quality video wherever you are. Once you are finished recording your video content, you can take advantage of plenty of awesome editing features, including the ability to splice multiple clips together, add emojis, add a soundtrack, and more. Dubb also makes it extremely easy to upload your creation to a Dubb action page.

Speaking of, Dubb action pages are extremely powerful ways to increase sales prospecting in 2021. You can think of Dubb action pages as the central hub for all of your video content. Dubb action pages have your video at the top of the page and can be customized any way that you’d like. For instance, you can include things like your logo, your brand’s font and/or colors, and more. Once you have designed your template action page, you can use it as a preset for all of your future Dubb videos. This means that you can quickly and easily have a beautiful Dubb action page automatically generated for every single piece of video content.

On your Dubb action pages, you can leverage a long list of calls to action. Like I referenced above, a call to action is a great way to increase audience engagement and lead particular prospects down your sales funnels. Dubb offers plenty of different calls to action for your Dubb action pages. They include things like filling out a form, scheduling a call on your calendar, communicating via Facebook Messenger, replying to your video with a video of their own, following a link somewhere else, or making a purchase. Whatever you’d like to do, you’re sure to find a call to action on our menu.

Along with calls to action is the Dubb playlist feature. I alluded to it above, but basically, it is a way to program video content that will play after your initial video. You can use the playlist feature in a powerful number of ways. For instance, you can create a quick, hyper-personalized, 30-second video for one of your prospects. At the end of the video, you can suggest that he or she watch a well-produced, more generalized video about your product, service, or company. Compared to a platform like YouTube (which doesn’t let you suggest subsequent videos), the Dubb playlist feature is a game-changer in helping you build stronger relationships with members of your audience. 

From the playlist feature, you will find plenty of integrations on Dubb. One of the best things about Dubb is that you can leverage all of its features on different platforms. You can find more information about our integrations here. As you can see, we offer integrations for many of the most popular social networks, email platforms, CRMs, and more. Whether you choose Salesforce for your CRM or Microsoft Office for your email platform, you can be confident that there is an integration waiting for you. In the end, these integrations can make you more productive and help you create stellar video content on virtually any platform. 

Closely tied with integrations is the Dubb Chrome extension. The Chrome extension, which you can find by clicking here, lets you easily record and upload videos in the Chrome browser. Upon adding the Dubb Chrome extension, you will see a mini Dubb icon in tools like Gmail and Microsoft Office. Clicking on that icon, you can quickly record a video, select a video from your library, and more. Once again, it makes you more productive and efficient as you are completing your work.

Finally, Dubb offers a wealth of data and analytics. Once you distribute your video content, you will certainly want to track the performance of that video. In an ideal world, that video will be highly engaging and will entice your viewers to learn more about your company. However, in other circumstances, the video will fall flat. In either scenario, you need cold, hard facts about how your videos are performing.

Dubb can give you those cold, hard facts. Along with generalized data about watch rates and viewing time, you can get even more granular data. You can even see how specific prospects are engaging with your videos. If there is a key prospect that you’re targeting, for instance, you can see whether they have opened your video, how much of that video they have watched, and whether they have responded to one of your calls to action. 

This sort of data can be a huge advantage as you are working to generate more sales. You can double down on what is working and avoid what is not working. In the end, following the data lets you make more effective videos. Gathering data from those videos lets you create even more effective videos, and then the cycle continues. 

Adopting This New Strategy

Sales prospecting in 2021 is all about the transition from text to video. Whether you are trying to hit your sales quota or simply want to build better relationships with your prospects, you should definitely invest in the power of video. It can provide so much value to your organization and can help you accomplish your business goals. What’s not to like?

If you would like to learn more about how Dubb can help you adopt this new sales strategy, click here. You can also click here for a free seven-day trial of Dubb’s premium plans.