How to Increase Conversions with Video Email, with Stephen Pacinelli [Episode 401]

In this episode, we talk to Stephen Pacinelli, CEO of BombBomb, about increasing sales conversions.

Key Takeaways

• Steve started in real estate technology, selling CRM and advertising systems to real estate agents. When he found BombBomb, he used it for his sales team to close sales over email, and he did it so well, that they offered him a job.
• BombBomb enables human-human communications, sooner and more often in the sales process, through video. The platform works in email, text, or messenger. There’s no download; it just streams.
• Video is the go-to asset when emotion is involved, or where you are building rapport or trust. It is much more personal than a text or email. The video is device-independent. Whatever the client uses for email, it will work with one click.
• It is necessary to open the email message and press play on the video. So, use a good subject line. The word “video” in the subject line will increase open rates. The video has an animated preview, so hold up their name written on a card!
• Steve cites Robert Cialdini’s reciprocity rule. You took the time to make a video for them; they’ll take the time to play it. BombBomb’s speed means you don’t take a long time to make a video. You just record and go. It is authentic, not produced.
• Steve notes a “shiny authenticity inversion.” The shinier a video is, the less authentic it feels. The more raw and organic a video is, the better it performs, because it connects.
• Some people don’t like the way they look and sound on camera. The client will meet you eventually, and you look and sound the same way in person, so, get to face-to-face, now. When you get your first response, you will see how it works.
• Some people “don’t know what to say.” This is not video marketing, that should be polished. This is video communication. Use it like a voice mail. Leave a message. Be human and relatable. Video allows you to build a connection.
• Record on your iPhone or Android. At the end, you have the option to email it, text it, or message it. Steve suggests a three-part framework to use it: empathy, point of value, and call-to-action. Steve has heard of a 20% reply rate.
• BombBomb is great for personalized messages. You can use it with video into a monthly newsletter email, but it greatly increases one-to-one. The client can video reply back, from PC, laptop, or phone, to continue the conversation.
• It’s possible to make video by other means, and link to it, but BombBomb brings ease-of-use to the process, with one-click simplicity. Best response rates come from videos under a minute. Customer service replies, record as needed.
• Steven has a favorite new BombBomb feature: Snippets, that link texts and library video clips. In email, you can select a Snippet and it drops in the video and text together. Steven sends about seven video emails a day.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul 0:35
Hi, I’m your host, Andy Paul. Join me as I host conversations with the leading experts in sales, marketing, sales, automation, sales process, leadership management, training, coaching, any resource that I believe to help you accelerate the growth of your sales, your business and most importantly, you. Hello and welcome to the Sales Enablement Podcast. I’m excited to talk with my guest today, joining me from the City of Brotherly Love. Steven Pacinellii. He’s the CMO of Bom Bom. Steven, welcome to Sales Enablement Podcast.

Stephen Pacinelli 1:10
Thank you for having me. Andy. I’m excited to be here.

Andy Paul 1:12
Well, my pleasure. My pleasure. We talked about it before we started this. I’m a big fan of what you guys are doing. So take a minute introduce yourself and then maybe tell us a little bit about Bom Bom.

Stephen Pacinelli 1:22
Yeah, sure. So my name is Steve Pacinelli and I am the CMO at Bom Bom. I initially started my career in real estate in real estate technology back in 2000. And over the past 17 almost 17 years. I moved from real estate and got too much gray hair for only that year. Yeah, no, it’s that’s that’s hereditary. Okay. Yeah, that’s not what am I my children? Of course, of course, right. Yeah, but I started my career in real estate technology and sold products to real estate agents, CRM systems, advertising systems. And had pretty much stayed in that industry for quite a while and stumbled upon a program called Bom Bom that I use for my sales team and we use that to close sales over you know over email so use it for mass email systems and use it and love it so much that they offer me a job.

Andy Paul 2:19
Like that old commercial I like the company so much I bought the company Yeah, except you’re right so just explain to people because I think there’s a lot of people still don’t understand what Bom Bom is and what it does. And it’s a pretty simple concept.

Stephen Pacinelli 2:37
Yeah. So we allow it to get face to face sooner and more often in the sales process through video. So sometimes you’re stuck communicating over email, which of course as we all know, has a lack of emotion tone and, and clarity. You know, it’s we’ve been communicating one way for our entire lives and since the beginning of mankind, and that was face to face and then 15 years ago, people said, Well, we’re going to say that we don’t like that. Yeah. So we want to humanize digital communication, not just email, but texting social as well through video, and we have a video platform that allows you to communicate more effectively.

Andy Paul 3:15
So, basically through a video email

Unknown Speaker 3:18
Yeah, video

Andy Paul 3:18
Just a video, email or video text

Stephen Pacinelli 3:21
Video. Video for social.

Andy Paul 3:23
Yeah. Okay. Excellent. So give an example how it works.

Stephen Pacinelli 3:28
So if you have a Gmail, Gmail client, it could be in your Gmail application or on your Android or on your iPhone, you don’t have to have Gmail. But it’s nice because if you’re already in an email system all day like Gmail, you don’t have to leave and and use a username and password somewhere else. So you simply just hit reply to an email like you would in your normal Gmail program. Click the record button and record your response. So if someone if someone’s asking a simple question to you over email, it makes sense to type it out or if you’re just listing out a few items, anytime A situation occurs where emotion is involved or you’re trying to build rapport or trust with someone. Video is your asset, you are your best sales asset and, and we allow you to record that video quickly and easily. You don’t need to worry about it being an attachment. Or if they’re going to be able to play that video because it streams to them, it automatically encodes and so no matter what device that they’re on, they’re going to be able to see and hear you and watch a video without saying buffering, you know, the whole time. So getting you there earlier more often in the sales process. And then also for your past clients communicating more effectively and bringing that emotion back to your digital communication.

Andy Paul 4:38
Well, yeah, so one of the assumptions, I think that Bom Bom talks about, which is that sort of the human element disappearing from sales. I mean, we’ve got sales development platforms with these automated cadences and power dialers and, you know, inundating our prospects with undifferentiated messages. So it’s really challenging. How do you break through?

Stephen Pacinelli 5:01
Yeah, so we’re like the automation nation, everything is automated. And the last thing should be automated all your relationships. And so we allow you to easily break through with a smiling face. And that’s the difference when customers use our product. And they’re reaching out to a prospect for the first time or they received an internet lead, and they filled out their email address and a fake name, you know, because they, they don’t want to be bothered, they have a perception of who you are right off the bat. And people don’t wake up in the morning and think I can’t wait to meet that new salesperson. And when they read the text on the screen, they’re envisioning you and they’re reading you and their own voice and it’s not a good one if they haven’t met you yet, because people in general put a wall up when they meet a salesperson. And a simple smile is amazing because of a simple smile. When they open up your email and they see you smiling on the screen and they hit that play button. The wall can be tumbled down much much faster because they can The things that you can do face to face like they can find commonalities and this is a terrible example because I have nothing in my background

Andy Paul 6:05
Yeah but I look at my bookshelf Yeah, there we go.

Stephen Pacinelli 6:08
Yeah, it’s gonna say cuz they can find oh yeah you like to read or you might have a poster or something else hanging up there’s so many intangibles that video brings back into your message because email removes the messenger from the message and that a lot of times is the most important part.

Andy Paul 6:24
So it seems like still one of the challenges though is that you could create this great video message but people still have to open the email

Stephen Pacinelli 6:31
Yeah correct so so it still comes down to the subject line and and you know if you’re using a pre header for mass and they still need to open up that email it’s interesting we’ve done quite a few studies though on subject lines and just using the word video in your subject line increases open rates as well. But once they do open , what’s nice is if you’re using something like you know, Bom Bom, we have animated previews. And so the video is starting to play inside either email inbox. And they see that animation and they see you beginning to talk in your video and what a lot of people will do. This will be a terrible, terrible example because we’re on video, I guess it’s Yeah, yeah, I could do it. I could say something like

Andy Paul 7:15
Like your kids are on the wall behind you.

Stephen Pacinelli 7:19
So, if I was going to record a video for Andy, and this is the first time we’re communicating over email, right? Someone’s name handwritten is a powerful psychological motivator to want to click the play button. And so in the first three seconds of my video, I would hold this up and I would say, hey, Andy, I just wanted to reach out to you. And that’s all you need to do in the first few seconds. Because when you receive that email, when you see your name, handwritten, you know, that didn’t go out to someone else, you know, that wasn’t a part of an automation, right?

Andy Paul 7:52
Proof of life? Yeah.

Stephen Pacinelli 7:56
Yeah, I’m here. I have something to say and you can use their name. A lot of times people will write something like congratulations if you’re reaching out to the VP of sales and there’s a company milestone you write the milestone event of some sort right? Yep. And there’s yours and you hold it up and that’s how he gets your video played. That’s how you get responses because then all the dynamics that Robert Cialdini goes over are reciprocity and everything else that you took the time out of your day for one to one message. They listened. They felt it took you a lot of time but it didn’t and that’s the benefit of Bom Bom is speed video.

Andy Paul 8:32
Okay, so people have these various hang ups about video. Yeah, oh, gosh, I’m on camera. I’m not ready. It has to be professional and has to be produced. And I’m wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Yes, and my uniform on my black t-shirt. So that’s not the case. I mean, we carry proof with you. It’s millions of YouTube videos and Facebook Live and so on that it’s really about their authenticity more than production value. So how do you work with people to sort of, like, overcome that first barrier to saying, Yeah, we want to, we should be using this but I’m scared of being on camera.

Stephen Pacinelli 9:12
I definitely want to answer but getting back to the first thing that you said authenticity you know, with your video, there’s, there’s actually a shiny authenticity inversion, and the shiny or that a video is less authentic, that video feels and we’ve been conditioned on commercials and things like that for our entire lives. t.\\ And so when someone holds up a phone and it’s a little bit shaky, maybe you don’t have the high end equipment cuz that’s one of the hang ups that people have. I don’t have the right equipment to record great video, I only have my webcam or my cell phone. And so that no longer is the case we’ve actually found the more raw and organic The video is, the better that it performs because there’s a connection Content Marketing Institute did a study and they were studying these major brands like Coca Cola Levi’s and they’re dumbing down their video marketing and their photography and, and making the camera shake a bit because they found that it provides a better connection. So in terms of the technology, we can get over that because we know that because of Snapchat and all these other video platforms, it made organic videos or these more raw videos I should say more than normal right now the other problem is as you mentioned, it’s I don’t want to I don’t like the way that I look on camera.

Andy Paul 10:28
I don’t like the way I sound.

Stephen Pacinelli 10:30
Yeah, I don’t like the way that I sound. And you know, it’s funny, I work. I still work a lot in the real estate industry and do seminars for real estate agents. And that’s a big, big thing for a lot of real estate agents out there. I just don’t like the way that I look on camera. But the thing is, they’re gonna meet you eventually in real life. And that’s the way that you look and sound in real life. So give them a heads up, you know, you don’t want them to open up the door and be like, Oh no, this photo on your business card isn’t right. But honestly, you can’t wait to get face to face sales. People can’t wait to get face to face because as I mentioned before, they’re their best asset, right? And so the type of video, another hang up that people have is so it’s technology, it’s I don’t like the way that I look. And that’s just practice to overcome that. And when you get your first result, when someone responds to you, you’re like, wow, okay, I should be doing this more, you know, more often. But the third, the third one that usually comes up that we hear is, you know, I don’t, I don’t know what to say. And if you think about videos for there’s two types of videos, you have video marketing, and then you have videos for communication, and they’re two totally different things. If video marketing is something that you will put on your website and you want a certain level of polish for something that has a wide audience of people visiting your website, you don’t want to have a shaky iPhone video and you want to sweat you know, a sweatshirt on the homepage of your website because that’s not the image that you want to promote. However, if you’re communicating one to one with other people through video Doesn’t matter the format, whether it’s a video, text, email, or if you’re using video through Facebook Messenger, that type of video, those videos are shorter and they’re more akin to a voicemail. And everyone knows what to say when the voicemail comes on and you’re calling someone almost that effective but yes, they do.

But they know what to say they know their message and that’s in the type of videos that we recommend salespeople send out marketing people send out are more akin to a voicemail, less of a commercial. So you don’t need to have a script. The best teleprompter is no teleprompter because the arms and the eyes as long as it’s not too too many. That’s what makes you human. That’s what makes your video relatable. That’s what makes your video real. And when you pause and he looks down to think for a second. That’s what we would do if we were face to face. That’s what we’re doing right now. And all those little human elements actually make your video better.

Andy Paul 12:59
Okay, so let’s just back up just a little bit because you know the premises which let’s say it starts with a voicemail. So you’re making if you’re an SDR you’re making a bunch of calls during the day. You make the decision, am I leaving a voicemail or not? And that could be part of your cadence. You decide, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. But if you’re not uniformly leaving voicemails every time then this is a perfect way to use Bom Bom as a differentiator. I mean, it’s different on several levels. One is, as I preach, and as people follow me know, it’s, I think there’s such a slim difference between winning and losing between establishing the business and not getting it. And this can be one of the tools that I think video can separate you and can differentiate you. So you get a chance to convey your passion, you get a chance to actually convey value. Because one thing that’s really hard in a voicemail is people tend not to leave anything of value for the prospect, right? So why are they so good? Okay, why did I just listen to that voicemail? Whereas Yeah, if you’ve got 30 seconds or more somebody’s gonna watch, they’re not gonna listen to a 32 second voicemail. But they will watch a 32 second video.

Stephen Pacinelli 14:05
Especially if it has an interesting preview

Andy Paul 14:08
Yeah, that is the handwritten name. I think that’s brilliant. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s great. But I mean, beyond that, though, it’s you actually now have a chance because what I talked about is, you know, every time you interact with a prospect, there has to be an exchange of value they’re giving you time, what are you giving them in return? Well, now if you can leave a video message, a little more comprehensive shows your passion, you get a chance to make a point that they’re gonna listen to, you get a chance to separate yourself from the other people and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

Stephen Pacinelli 14:38
Yeah, absolutely. It’s, you know, it’s a synchronous form of communication that they can consume at their own time. The recipient, they get that they might not be ready now, but they’ll play it later. Especially as we mentioned, with the animated thumbnail there, and as long as you’re providing value, the rest of it is up to you to provide that value and I learned very early, I sold cars. In between summer semesters at Penn State

Andy Paul 15:04
What are you, what brands?

Stephen Pacinelli 15:06
Ford, Lincoln and Mercury is Ford Lincoln?

Andy Paul 15:10
Coming down the interstate? interstate 80 is right.

Stephen Pacinelli 15:15
Okay. And so the most important sales lesson I ever learned, you know, I learned at a very young age there was in between college semesters and I knew that most likely I wouldn’t get the job if I, you know, were to phone in and say, Hey, do you hire kids in between college semesters, but I knew they needed someone dressed up in my suit, went down there, got the job on the spot and said, Hey, I can work I work my butt off. I know everything about all your cars, and I studied all our cars for two days. And so the lesson came when I got it was one of the first people that I interacted with, and they were on the lot. And I kind of pushed them to get into this car and I don’t remember the car to be honest. I pushed them into this car to get a test drive and They really didn’t want the older couple to do it. And we were chatting back and forth. And I’m spouting off all the important data about the car that they would want to know. And like it does this and it does this. And finally he’s just like, Steve, I really like you. But I just want to tell you that my wife made me stop on our way to the Toyota down the road. I have no intention of buying, you know, buying this vehicle, right? We should just take this test drive and just just go home. And I was deflated, right? It was day two. So then we’re driving home and we just began chatting and they’re like, why are you doing this I’m like, because I’m trying to pay my way through college and they told me about their grandchildren. And we started making this you know, this connection right there when I thought the sale was over how naive and I thought we were done. He didn’t want the car. So we were chatting on the way back home and long story short or long story long. They ended up buying a different car from me. It was a Toyota just off our used car lot of buying from me and that’s when the sale occurred. And, so that wouldn’t have happened unless we were face to face. having that connection. You hear the stories and in an email when someone gets a plain text based email, especially in a prospecting email, they don’t see the person they see the signature on the screen and they see us they envision a salesperson. And in general, that’s not good. And that’s what video allows you to do to build that emotional connection with someone.

Andy Paul 17:17
Yeah, exactly. So I talked about how there’s an aha moment in every sales cycle, there’s an AR buying cycle, if you will, there’s an aha moment on the part of the buyer where they serve, saying, Yeah, I think this is who I want to do business with. And this happened hours before the deal happened in your case, or it could happen, you know, weeks before you get an order. But that’s the you’re you’re trying to get to that point. And you can’t predict when that’s going to happen as a salesperson. So why not bring as I say, bring your A game, to every sales interaction and if video enables you to elevate it, why not do it? Okay, it’s just that it’s just said it could be that 1% difference and I think it’s, you know, people really need to serve. Thank Okay, what do I do to really differentiate myself? If I’m just sending my email blasts? And I The other thing I think that’s great about video for reps to consider is that, you know, they can sort of hide behind a lot of the sort of standard emails that’s under prospects right now that they don’t research appropriately. They don’t, you know, they don’t dig in. It’s not personalized and beyond just the first name. And you really can’t hide with video. And so I think for people who want to test themselves, they want to challenge themselves. They do want to take that next level and elevate their game. Yeah, it’d be really exposed if you have to do a video. And it’s a good way you’re selling yourself. You’re selling yourself and that’s the easiest product you should have to sell.

Stephen Pacinelli 18:42
Yeah, yeah, that I mean, that’s what I learned. I wasn’t selling cars, real estate agents, they don’t sell houses, you know, they’re selling themselves and so the video is the perfect format to do that when you’re stuck relying on email, text, and even social and, you know, depending on how much you use social media business. I know probably a lot of your listeners. don’t really do that.

Andy Paul 19:03
Okay. Yeah, increasingly. Yeah, sure. I mean, you’re certainly texting increasingly, too. Yeah, absolutely. So you talked about how you can work with text messaging as well.

Stephen Pacinelli 19:12
Yeah, yeah. And so when you go through the process, if you’re recording from your iPhone or your Android device, you record your video, and I’ll say, do you want to email it or text it social, and then the new iOS 10 updates for Apple, they play the videos in the stream and they’re auto playing like the Facebook newsfeed how auto plays the videos. So it does the same thing. So when you record that video, and you send it out, that video is auto playing, they need to touch it for sound. So we’re really happy when you know when that happened there too, but it’s just It’s nice having all of your videos in the same place and not just you know, we’re talking about one to one off the cuff videos, but also your pre recorded videos because there’s a time and place for that as well.

Andy Paul 19:51
Right? So let’s talk about the practicality so I hope that somebody actually uses and implements it. So you have got a let’s say an SDR you know inside the sales team for a SaaS company or something. Now start the basic VIDEO MAIL vs voicemail. So, you know, is there a specific type of message, I should say, Okay, this is what we should use it for, because maybe they don’t want to use it for every, every, you know, in place of every voicemail that they might send. So what are you seeing in terms of people you work with are best practices for that.

Stephen Pacinelli 20:22
So we use it ourselves to reach out to new companies as well. But we have this little three part framework that we teach that works really well for 80% of messages. And it’s empathy, value call to action. And if you think about that short three part framework when you’re connecting with someone right off the bat, how can you empathize with them? What are they feeling at the time you know, is it someone that’s getting a lot of these types of messages, you know, how can you empathize with where they are not where you want them to be? And then what’s the point of value immediately after you empathize, you get into your point of value and so yeah, and again, I teach us a lot for realtors, right you know that empathy would be They received an internet lead. And they had just just had an email address and they’re reaching out and they say something to the effect of, Hey, Mike, thanks so much for visiting my website. You know, I know the home buying process can be difficult whether you’re looking to buy in two months or not for two years. I’m okay with that. And so that’s a way to empathize because most people aren’t ready to transact as soon as they show up online. And then you provide your value, you know, give them something that they can’t Google. What’s an element that’s hard to find online? What you know, what important detail would they like to know now? And then your clear cut, you know, we don’t go into this but clear cut call to action. And that that three part framework works really well, you know, with that whiteboard strategy or piece of paper strategy. And our guy Taylor, and Taylor just switched positions here to with me under marketing, but he was getting a 20% reply rate off of a cold email. So we have data and eyes, whose data is nice to find prospects and, and we reach out and he was averaging a 20% reply rate not open rate reply rate were people and a lot of times they said they were not interested, but he was getting a reply just because he was utilizing that same strategy.

Andy Paul 22:21
So as part of that sort of the novelty of the video itself. And so does that begin to wear off or? Yeah, I mean, sort of a steady state what what would you think people might so

Stephen Pacinelli 22:32
So right now, it’s like we’re in the Golden Age, right? The Golden Era because if you use video, just the novelty of video will get you more replies and responses, period, right? You don’t have to be good at video. Now, in two years, three years, one year when everyone’s starting to use video that novelty will wear off what do you have left? Well, you have you, you are still your differentiating factor, right? You know, it’s and people will say, Well, now you know what happens. Everyone’s using video. Well, you know what, you’re competing against other salespeople? What if they get another meeting with that same person as well, you’re going to utilize your assets and you have a better value proposition. And so right now you’re getting a, you know, a double boost, because it’s you. And it’s video, that video component that novelty won’t be there forever.

Andy Paul 23:18
Yeah. No, I think that’s important to people understanding is that ultimately, you still have to be the one that brings the value. But yeah, if you have the advantage now take advantage of it. Yeah, and it’s quite frankly, I mean, it’s you will look at sales practices in general, right, which we still struggle to get people to uniformly adopt best practices on emails and voicemails, and you know, how many times can you pick up you know, a sales blog today, you could go out today, they were recording it, which is two days before Thanksgiving. And you’d probably find conservatively 200 sales blogs writing articles about, you know, making it about the customer. Don’t talk about yourself first, blah, blah, blah. I mean, hey, we’ve been talking about that for 5060 years, right? So yeah, So if you’re gonna use the tools and use them well and you’re still gonna have an advantage. Yeah, people have access to them doesn’t mean they’re gonna use them.

Stephen Pacinelli 24:07
Yeah, and it’s not you know, it’s not if you’re using Bom Bom is not just about the video because there’s other sales tools. It’s the sales enablement tools, there’s tracking and scheduling and things like that, that are coupled together with video.

Andy Paul 24:17
Right? So I think it’s important to get into a little bit so one is people can use these in, you know, a mass mail mail merge type situation, right, so they could have a standard video message that they send out in place of maybe their cold email that they’re sending today.

Stephen Pacinelli 24:32
Yeah, yeah. And that’s initially I was a Bom Bom customer for four years. And so I signed up. I worked for a realtor and moved and I had a sales team. And I initially used it for my monthly since I had 30,000 realtors on a list and I would do some monthly technology training. And then when I had my sales team use it for one to one, and there’s two you know, the two phases you have your mass ends and your one to one cents. I was like wow, okay, this is much more effective. And I was getting Bigger response adding videos into my monthly newsletters and that was working. And it’s great, you know that you can do that. But the one to one sends and responds to these internet leads that we were getting for people that wanted to buy a $20,000 ad package or a $30,000 ad package. We were selling it to people that never talked to us over the phone and we just communicated through video. And that’s why I’m such a big proponent of it because I’ve lived it. I sold 30 $30,000 packages to someone that I never even talked to over the phone, which we had. We haven’t sold a single package. We didn’t sell a single package before the Bom Bom video email. Before we talked someone over the phone never happened.

Andy Paul 25:42
And so the customer is replying to Bom Bom. Well, they can do that.

Stephen Pacinelli 25:45
Yeah, so there’s a reply with a video button on the bottom and we have fancy little graphics to make it a little bit more accessible so they can reply to their questions in a video back. You can reply and you can have a conversation with someone through video through the email platform.

Andy Paul 26:00
That’s very cool. Yeah. Okay. I was not aware of that, I mean, so. Yeah. So it takes away some of the excuses you might have for, for saying, well, it’s purely asynchronous, you know, what’s the benefit? It’s like, Well, of course I can reply.

Stephen Pacinelli 26:17
Yeah. And so they don’t need anything special, you know, on their machine to do that. They can do it from their iPhone, their Android laptop or desktop goes back and forth. It’s also great for testimonials for salespeople, you send out an email to someone if a client is really happy, right? Can you just hit the reply with a video button, give us a quick testimonial. And then you get that nice. Again, that role is testimonial that it’s more believable than something that’s professionally lit with a high end DSLR we use that to grab all of our testimonials personally, and it works really well. Very interesting.

Andy Paul 26:47
Yeah. So where are things going from here? So I mean, what’s in terms of, what’s next with the technology, how’s it going to evolve? You know, what’s going to drive more uptake, quite frankly, in terms of people using it.

Stephen Pacinelli 27:00
Well you know a lot of times we were just like well I can send out video you know on my own and the answer is you know you can if someone can record without having Bom Bom or any of our tools you know someone can go online and record a video using Camtasia or whatever you know QuickTime or something like that go to YouTube, upload the video grab the URL, right and so what we focus on is the process no one does that frequently throughout the day the process takes too long and so we’re refining how quickly you can go in whether it be in Gmail or on our you know, on our app on your laptop or desktop computer. We want one click simplicity and creating that video and sending it out. We’re providing more details now around that video the length of the video as you saw when I sent you on and the animated preview there and then more feedback. So how long did the person watch the video? Do they watch the entire thing or do they only get halfway through? Well in the great question so what’s what are you finding sir optimal length. It’s up under a minute, and we try to push that by our timer that we have on the bottom of the videos that you’re sending. It’ll tell the person how long the video is. And anything over a minute, just says one minute, two minute, three minutes. And if it’s under a minute, it says 47 seconds, 36 seconds. And so that’s what we do to push people to speak their message in under a minute. Now, I’ve said plenty of video emails that were over a minute, when it was the right time reaching out to Yeah, reaching out to a new prospect under a minute, reaching out to someone you’ve been engaging with for a while answering their questions in full. You know, if someone emailed you and they’re upset about something and you don’t want to respond to misconstrue the intent of your email, right? Yeah, the three minute video message will show them that you care and that you know, you took the time to fix whatever their problem would be. And so those short messages are key, the less you know, someone the shorter the message should be.

Andy Paul 28:57
Well, it’s like you have to earn the trust, right. You have to trust to get their time.

Stephen Pacinelli 29:00
Absolutely, yeah. And then with some of the other tools wrapped around that to what we’re working on, you know, scheduling reminders if they don’t, you know, open the email. But my favorite feature that we just added on though, and it really, really helps all of our salespeople, our salespeople are SDRs. And what they’re doing is our snippets, so it ties video together with pre written text. And so if you’re responding to a lead, you can type up your lead response, say, Hey, that looks pretty good. You click two buttons that are saved into a library for you, so you can access that later. And then you can also add a video on to that too. And there’s a lot of ways where you can create a video, as long as it’s event based, that the person might not know that that wasn’t created especially for them, right? Yeah. And so you create that video, you have the text and then when you’re in your Gmail account, or you’re on your mobile phone, you can go in and you can select that, that snippet and it drops in the video, the text all the Same time. And so we’re building that out a little bit more allowing sales managers to drop in those snippets into their agent or into their reps accounts automatically push videos down polished videos as well as of course, off the cuff videos.

Andy Paul 30:15
Yes off the cuff videos. So how many emails or how many suits or how many video mails are your SDR sending per day?

Stephen Pacinelli 30:24
Oh geez, I haven’t looked at that stay in a while but it’s it’s a lot because every time every time we get a new lead, which is a free trial, you know, for us they reach out to each person to try to confirm an appointment and we try to generate appointments you know, out of those. Right now we’re getting 2000 free trials a month so we try to generate appointments out of those 2000 free trials.

Andy Paul 30:48
Okay, so the first response probably standard is gonna be video messages at a standard video message of pre cut or is it one that is customizing?

Stephen Pacinelli 30:57
Okay, so the first one that goes out is like Hey, welcome to Bom Bom.

Thank you so much for giving our product a try, here’s what you’re going to be able to do with it to provide a little bit of training, screen capture. So we had those screen capture videos into the email. And so we try to provide quick tips. And then that’s going out through our marketing automation system. And then in between, we have our SDRs going out and right and doing the personalized message. That’s when they’re holding up. Hey, this one’s different rises in a marketing message. This is me, you’re gonna want to watch this.

Andy Paul 31:31
Yeah. so clever, but simple, very clever way to capture people’s attention. And then get yourself in your daily routine. I mean, you’re not obviously a frontline salesperson. But I mean, how many Bom Boms do you send out a day?

Stephen Pacinelli 31:43
Since I’ve been at the company, I said, I’ve sent out a few thousand. I send them out. A lot of times when, again, I’m trying to build a relationship with someone. If someone’s upset sometimes, you know, why are you sending me this email? You know, I’ll use a video sure to say, Hey, I really apologize. I didn’t mean that.

But yeah, I’d say I said on average, seven emails a day video emails a day or so, you know, you don’t want to use it to replace your standard email communication like a one sentence will do. You don’t want to overdo it as well, right? Because if you can list out a series of steps, and someone can just see the list, the list out the series of steps and you don’t you don’t need the video component. And so you want to be cognizant and aware of what the person’s thinking on the other end and your intent with the message and how they’re going to take it. Okay.

Andy Paul 32:41
All right, cool. So Steve, now in the last segment, I got some standard questions, I asked all my guests. And the first one is a hypothetical scenario in which you’ve just been hired as VP of sales at a company whose sales have stalled out time to hit the reset button, CEO board anxious to get things back on track quickly. So what two things Could you do in your first week on the job that could have the biggest impact?

Stephen Pacinelli 33:05
Two things I could do without knowing anything at all, that’s building trust with my sales team. And that would be the number one thing, by far is building a relationship with the people that are going to be working for you to show them that you can do what they’re being asked to do. And I always felt that was an important thing when someone is modeling behavior. They want to know that they can trust them in what you’re saying. And building that trust and rapport would be the number one thing that I would do. And number two, I would listen. Listen to them. You know, if I’m coming in and I’m the new guy, I want to listen to what they’re doing what they feel is working, what they’re afraid, what they’re afraid I might do what they’re afraid I might not do, you know in that role and get feedback because in the end, it all comes down to people right? It all comes down to your relationships and you might not have the most skilled closers on your team, but if they believe in you, and they believe in what you’re doing as a company, they’re still going to be fantastic. Right?

Andy Paul 34:10
Yeah. The buying and the commitments are really important. All right, good answer. All right. So sir, rapid fire questions. Okay, one word answers for what you want. The first one is when you, Steve, personality are outselling, what’s your most powerful sales attribute?

Stephen Pacinelli 34:25
A stage presence. So I had a 48 city tour. My last job at realtor.com as a national speaker for realtors was calm and I did 48 cities a year and did that every single year, year in and year out. I have a strong stage presence not as good on a podcast.

Andy Paul 34:45
The audience will see you. I think you’re doing a good job. So Alright, so who’s your sales role model?

Stephen Pacinelli 34:52
What sales role model? You know, an easy answer there is Steve Jobs, you know, just everything from his stage. And the way that he markets and positions his products, but also my father. Yeah.

Yeah, my father was in sales Long Term Care Insurance.

Andy Paul 35:13
Okay. Excellent. All right. So what’s one book you’d recommend every salesperson read?

Stephen Pacinelli 35:20
I don’t know if anybody may think this is like a new hot book.

Andy Paul 35:22
It doesn’t. It doesn’t even need to be a sales book. Just FYI. But go ahead.

Stephen Pacinelli 35:28
I’m still gonna go this way. So, yeah,, the new hot book pre-suasion. So Robert Cialdini’s written influence finally came out with a follow up to the book’s influence. I guess it’s two months old now, three months old, something like that. And so that’s absolutely fantastic. You know, I think it’s a great follow up to his influential book. And then the next one actually has to hear I’d recommend the conversion code and they’re two totally different styles of books. influences in the clouds conversion close. The conversion code by Chris Smith is in the dirt. And if you want step by step instructions on closing leads, like literally, the book is written step one, step two, step three, do this. And they are the polar opposites of writing. But there’s a place for both.

Andy Paul 36:17
Oh, sure. All right. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of the conversion code. I’ll put that on my list. I’ve got pre suasion queued up and ready to read. So, quite the last question for you. What music on your playlist?

Stephen Pacinelli 36:29
Oh, so the national. I love Let’s see if you heard of them or not. My favorite right now is Gregory Allen. He does a little bit like folky. Kind of a little funky music.

Andy Paul 36:47
Yeah. You don’t have to apologize.

Stephen Pacinelli 36:49
Yeah out of Colorado. He had just had an amazing tour with a full Symphony behind them. And it was the most amazing concert I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And if you want relaxing music, that you can just put on the background when you’re having a party and family over for the holidays or what have you. It’s killer

Andy Paul 37:06
Gregory Allen is a coffee guy that’s gone on the list as well. That’s a new one for me. Nice. All right. Well Steve, great to have you here. So thanks for being on the show. Let people know how they can find out more about Bom Bom and connect with you.

Stephen Pacinelli 37:16
Yeah, that’s easy. It’s just Bom Bom.com we’re launching a new website by the time everyone hears that the new website should be up come dive a little bit deeper into what we do. And yeah, you can follow me on social at Steve Pacinelli on Twitter, or Facebook.

Andy Paul 37:37
Alright. Well, thanks again for joining us. And thank you everybody for spending time with us. Remember to make it a part of your day every day to deliberately learn something new to help you with the success of your business. An easy way to do that is join my conversations with top business experts like my guest today, Steve Pacinelli, who shared his expertise about how to accelerate the growth of your business. If you enjoy the Sales Enablement Podcast in the value we’re delivering then please take a quick minute visit iTunes and leave us a review and your feedback. And if you do that very much, appreciate it. So this is Andy Paul. Until next time, good selling everyone. Thanks for listening to the show. If you like what you heard, and want to make sure you don’t miss any upcoming episodes, please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher comm for more information about today’s guests, visit my website at AndyPaul.com