Rehumanize Your Sales with Personal Video, with Ethan Beute [Episode 706]

Ethan Beute, VP of Marketing at BombBomb and co-author of the new book Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience, joins me on this episode.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Ethan shares how Conor McCluskey and Darin Dawson founded BombBomb. In 2006, they decided to build a better way to use video in email messages so they could be ‘face-to-face’ more with customers and prospects.
• Ethan shares use-case examples. Tens of thousands of customers today use BombBomb for one-to-one and group video messages. Personal videos are natural and unscripted. Video is more authentic than writing.
• You are your best sales asset. Recent BombBomb research shows we over-craft our emails and overestimate our ability to communicate clearly with email messages. Think of video more as a phone call.
• Ethan comments on a business movement toward being ourselves and treating others as humans, not prospects. To rehumanize your business is to return to the old ways of doing business.
• Faceless, digital communication has dehumanizing effects. Using video makes doing your job in sales more human for you and also shows the customer what it’s like to work with you, your service, and your company.
• Video is a good tool to show natural human qualities. Andy talks about there being room for the person in amongst the technology. Ethan says that each technology provides a moment to be personal within the process.
• Machines allow us to do ‘personalized’ mailings and also allow us to be more personal in sales and service. Ethan shares a hotel check-in anecdote from Joseph Jaffe.
• A BombBomb video has an animated “proof of life” thumbnail showing that it is a truly personalized message relevant to the recipient.
• Humans desire to be seen, heard, and understood as individuals. BombBomb has a screen-filming feature so you can put yourself into an inset on the customer’s own webpage, blog, or video page.
• Ethan suggests questions to consider when selecting recipients. The better you understand how your offer relates to them, the more personal you can make your video. Feature your call to action clearly.
• Ethan explains the layout of a video email. It’s best to keep a first-contact video under one minute. BombBomb videos are easy to forward. You might get multiple decision-makers viewing one sent email message.
• Video is best for prospecting, process updates, holidays/occasions, saying thanks, bad news/apologies, invitations, saying “It was great to meet you,” internal communications, recruiting, and checking in/nurturing.