The Humanity of Video Messaging, with Tyler Lessard [Episode 856]

Tyler Lessard is the VP of Marketing and Chief Video Strategist at Vidyard. As you might expect, Tyler and I are going to spend most of our time talking about video messaging. However, before we get to that, Tyler and I talk about his time at Blackberry, and some of the lessons that he learned from that experience of seeing the king of the hill dethroned by smartphones. Then, we get into what it takes to get a sales team to embrace video messaging. Tyler share some compelling stats about why you’d want to use video messaging and his key tips on what sales teams need to think about when rolling out a ‘video’ program.

Podcast Transcript

Andy Paul: Tyler. Welcome to the show.

Tyler Lessard: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here, Andy.

Andy Paul: It’s a pleasure to have you, so where have you been hiding out during the pandemic?

Tyler Lessard: Yeah. I’ve been spending most of my time either in my home video studio slash home office, but we’ll talk about that a little bit later.

Andy Paul: Area?

Tyler Lessard: Yes, I’m based just outside of Toronto, I’m here enjoying the final throes right now of our summertime.

Andy Paul: Before snow starts.

Tyler Lessard: Yes exactly.

Andy Paul: 10 months of winter and two months of bad skating.

Tyler Lessard: We’re making the most that we can, and I’m very grateful to have had put in a swimming pool in recently, which has been incredible this year to keep my kids somewhat occupied. I’m trying to keep the engines going here. So that’s been a win for me.

Andy Paul: Yeah.  When school starts or hasn’t started, are they going to be back in the classroom or is it still remote?

Tyler Lessard: Yeah, my kids will be heading back to the classrooms. There’ll be wearing masks and doing all the precautions, but they are just chomping at the bit to go and see their friends. I don’t think they care about school one way or the other, but man, do they want to see their friends? So I’m excited for that.

It’s going to be great.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And so isn’t that the same for people wanting to get back to the office? Here, we’ve had this forced, work from anywhere environment, work from home, whatever you wanna call it. And yeah. All the prognosticators one say, yeah, it’s going to stay this way, but yeah, I think, yeah we’ve been socialized for several thousand years at this point to want to be together with people. I don’t think that automatically changes.

Tyler Lessard: I agree. I’ve seen news of organizations saying, they’re going fully remote now. And I remember thinking at first that sounds great. And then I thought about it more. And I said, what? If I were at a company that said, we’re all going to be remote, I would probably start looking for another organization, because I personally love the in-person interactions when we have those opportunities. And I think a lot of the folks on our teams absolutely do. And so I feel like we’ll land in this hybrid world where we all understand and support. The opportunity for people to work in a distributed environment. But that the opportunities are absolutely there for us to be in person because the intangibles of those relationships that we forge, the social capital that we create with people, that’s not going away and I’m with you there. I think we need to maintain that and in fact, grow it in the business world.

Andy Paul: Yeah, no, I speak from the perspective of somebody who’s spent the last 20 years working on my own. Yeah. I’m with my own business with one employee, it’s I think back to my work experience, I think of the customers. I have the clients I have, I work with now again, working with the company, it’s yeah. That’s, yeah, people have the options, but I think people are gonna not embrace quite frankly not everybody’s made. To be, a solo worker working remotely.

Tyler Lessard: No, absolutely not. And, there’s all those things that go into those relationships and it’s not just about, compassion and empathy and feeling connected to folks and having their back. But there’s all those fun elements that it’s hard to recreate when we are remote. All those little moments where we share laughter. We go out for a coffee together. We, chat about what’s happening in the organization and doing it, co located in space and having a shared experience around it. I think those are things that are, continue to be meaningful for people. And we’ve got to find room for that right now. We’re trying to do it digitally, but I think, I look forward to getting back to when we can do that. I R L in an analog way.

Andy Paul: It’s just not the same.

Tyler Lessard: Okay.

Andy Paul: I think people just have to come to grips with that. It’s not the same. It’s never going to be the same. It doesn’t mean it’s not great for some people. It’s not, I’ve been, it’s been great for me for 20 years. And before that, even though we didn’t have video yeah. Quite frankly, is selling to customers overseas.

So I was selling most of them virtually. But yeah, people want to be together.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah, I think what’s really interesting is we’ve had this acceleration, like the future has gotten pulled forwards, thanks to the environment that we’re in. And we’re all starting to figure out this mode where. We can collaborate in this hybrid environment of, distributed in person.

We’re coming to terms with what that means. We’re starting to learn. We’re very early days, admittedly, of what does it mean to be a distributed workforce and how do we rethink the way that we do things. But also in terms of how we interact with our customers and externally. Again, this has been, I think, a great forcing function to, to make us all think about how is it that we evolve, how we communicate and connect with customers how we share information when we are truly forced to be digital first in our approach.

And it’s been interesting to be pulled that far over almost having to over index on it. And and I think you’re right now we’re seeing the cracks. We’re seeing what works, we’re seeing what doesn’t and I think we’re all going to be better for it.

Andy Paul: Yeah Gardner came out some quick research by a month or so ago about how 24% of CRO set that they were shifting permanently to virtual sales or something. And it’s like my first response to that was. All right. Let’s ask the question again in 12 months.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah, I feel, it’s sales reps are the ones that I personally. I feel the strongest for, because, as a marketer myself I’m head up the marketing team here at video yard. And, there’s a lot of things that, that I end up doing that are fairly isolated, specialized tasks.

Send a lot of people in our teams, our specialists who work in their bubbles, they love to socialize. They love to be with people. And you can say the same sort of thing for, the developers in our organization. A lot of the folks in operations, but sales is such a team sport and it is such a roller coaster.

From an emotional perspective in terms of,  how you’re working with customers. And my heart really goes out to sales. And I know a number of sales reps who they’re absolutely struggling because they’re not sitting in a team environment. They don’t have people next to them that they can high-five or that they can, again, go out for a coffee or a drink when something doesn’t ring the bell with.

Or to learn from, and I think those younger sales reps as well, if you’re in a completely distributed environment and, we can talk about this, but we can do all the training that we want virtually, but there’s just, there’s something about them being in that environment, overhearing other people’s conversations, being a part of those team discussions after a call went wrong or a call went, those things are difficult. And I would argue that I think sales is probably the most important function to try to get. Back into, physical proximity and having people working as closely together as possible to learn from each other.

Andy Paul: I agree. And I think that the member of the team that’s missing from that increasingly is the customer. It is, you have to when people say a sales is a team sport, I’d have to remind them that the most critical member of your team is your customer, is you are building them, especially if multiple stakeholders it’s I was just interviewing on the show or had it.

Episode just a week ago with Mike Robin, Sue writes a great book about building teams and it’s yeah, when you read it, it’s  yeah, this is exactly what you do to build a good team internally. You do the same steps to build a team with the stakeholders in the decision that you’re trying to get with with a potential prospect or a potential customer.

Excuse me. And that is always going to be facilitated, made easier if you can actually be in physical proximity to them as you talk about. But I think we’ve trained a generation of sellers because of technologists. I really that’s, it’s not that important. And I still believe that given the opportunity and you don’t say do it, I don’t think field salespeople need to be depending on the job.

Most of them, at least in the tech world. Don’t need to have every interaction with the customer in person, but there’s still times it’s really important. And I think we’ve got a generation of sellers that have basically been told not really, if you can do it remotely.

It’s Oh, there’s still moments, critical moments as you learn that you want to be there. And I spoke to a group of enterprise sellers over a year or so ago. And. Res had them raise their hands, how many sell something with a lifetime contract value over $200,000, a number of hands go up.

I said how many of you actually go visit the customer at some point during the sales process and no hands went up and I’m like, and I could tell they all. Come from Sasol farm with Wells and relatively low wind rates. And I just challenged them. I said, yeah, you don’t need to have every call, but I can tell you that if I was competing against you, I would be there at the critical moment and I would win all your deals.

Tyler Lessard: And there’s also this aspect that I think we’ve seen. So there’s the in-person versus just remote, but then there’s also we’ve trained sellers that the two serve very different functions and are handled very differently. That in-person is your time for that connection and all those human elements. And then when you’re not there in person and you’re selling digitally, that means something different. And that’s the time when you’re, you’re almost hiding behind your keyboard and you’re focused on efficiency rather than, effectiveness and personalization and relationship building and all of those things. And that’s where I start to get really interested in thinking about this new landscape and say, how do we, how do those things blend together? Because, even if we can go and visit our customers, many of us, in many sellers, may not do that, may not do it that frequently.  And I think again, the time of hiding behind your keyboard and a PowerPoint and a one hour demo during your sales process, those aren’t going to win you the deals. So we need to be thinking about even when we’re digital, how do we create those connections with our customers. How do we think in the mindset that we would be when we’re in those in-person meetings? Cause I hear, I do a lot of work in the video space and I hear time and time again from sellers who say I’m not comfortable, getting on camera or, recording a video. And, my, my first reaction is usually you picked the wrong profession, my friend. This is your opportunity for your personality to shine for your passion, to come through for, to, to show the picture of the kids, to talk about . Sports team, right? This is your opportunity to do those things, to connect with people. And if you don’t see that as, as what it is as an opportunity, if you see it as an obstacle, you’ve got to start thinking about that very hard and figuring out how do I replicate or, get close to those in-person communications as possible when I’m digital. But that doesn’t mean that I’m on a zoom call. Every hour of every day. How do those things come together?  And so  it’s neat to see this stuff coalescing and this this hybrid of in-person digital and then this gray zone in the middle, which is personal digital. So we’ll see what happens.

Andy Paul: Yeah  it’s interesting because. Already, there’s been some research saying that actually a phone call is a better way to capture nuance in someone’s voice than a zoom call because there’s fewer distractions, to actually listening and actually paying attention and so on. So yeah it’s like sure.

We’ve embraced zoom for a good reason. And I. Generally prefer to have a zoom call as opposed to a phone call for a lot of the reasons you talked about. Just because, I feel like it’s a better chance for me to show me, but yeah, it’s not necessarily a given that it’s really the most effective tool.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah. And, we have so many different tools at our disposal now, and that’s part of what we’re competing with. Cause you all bring it back to something you said earlier. If you’re not there in person and one of your competitors is they have an immediate advantage and the same thing applies to how people and how sellers are using different forms of media today, because it is all, text social video. Audio podcasts, right? The list goes on that all these mediums are highly accessible to the other sellers you’re competing with. And they may or may not be using those as ways to engage those clients. And so I think the, the most strategic sellers are thinking about that.  And they’re thinking about this multi media universe of how they connect and it’s not just, we have an email, we have a zoom call or an in-person meeting, it’s no, there are all these different formats that you can be communicating with. Even on LinkedIn, I can send you a voice message. I can send you a quick video message. And a lot of reps don’t take advantage. Of those capabilities. Some don’t even know they exist and others just feel like, ah, it’s inefficient or it’s not part of the way I do things. That’s not how it works in my market. And

Andy Paul: Don’t like when I do that.

Tyler Lessard: No. Why? Why would, yeah, there’s no way they like it. I don’t like getting a voice, I don’t getting a voice message, so why would they, and, yeah. But there’s, yeah there’s all these things happening that I think there’s so much opportunity for people to just embrace this new media mode and think, geez, how can I connect with people with voice, with intonation, with body language, with all these different things and use these media and formats for what they’re really good for.

Andy Paul: Well, and I think the other thing though, too is that sellers don’t think about tools like the yard and these other channels of communication are valuable for is that, and I wrote about this in my second book is I graphed out what a sales process looks like, and it’s on X, Y axis. And you, it was like a series of small mountains, right? Where in terms of each one of those represented a point of interaction with the prospect but in between them. It drops. So you have this, almost, not necessarily a wave, but a little more sharp at the peaks, but yeah, when you interact with somebody, that’s a big moment. And so you build up to that, you deliver, I started the axes I had or nailed time and value, and you’re delivering, specific points of value, hopefully. But what happens as soon as you leave the meeting, whether it’s a virtual meeting or in-person meeting or whatever, they start forgetting about you. They forget about you. They forget what you said. And the trend line is down right until it reaches a bottom and you start building for the next interaction. And I think the value of a video card tool or these other channels is what happens in the gaps. Between interactions that’s when this becomes so powerful, because in the past that’s  yeah. Maybe exchange an email and preparation the next meeting, but there’s this gap, the silent period. And yeah, so let’s just also keep in mind, is that yeah. If you it’s, there’s like everybody. Yeah. We talked about when people will we trained sellers. Yeah. And they’re in the classroom and they take a. Yeah. Hear a lecture from the sales manager or a guest expert for an hour. And then we know from science, with the forgetting curve, then about 24 hours, I forgotten a good chunk of it.

Tyler Lessard: Yep. Yep.

Andy Paul: The exact same thing is happening with your prospects.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah, I love that perspective. And I think there’s a lot of insight there. One of the way that I’ve seen it and heard a lot of dialogue recently is that we as sellers have, traditionally thought about sales as a, again, it’s a meeting centric, synchronous process with our customers and we become too dependent and too reliant on the meeting or the call or the zoom call, where we’re going to tackle some big thing. And these are still important not to say that we shouldn’t be doing these. To your point, there’s,  there’s a lot of value that happens in those, but then after that it becomes, okay, when’s the next meeting? And then, two days before that next meeting is when we’ll prep and get things set up for that. And then by the way, you know what happens two hours before that next meeting, somebody has a conflict and they have to reschedule it for a week later and you lose yet another week in your sales process and even more time for them to forget what it is you last talked about. And so this this mental shift from what I think of as a. A meeting centric, synchronous selling world too. Not going to say an entirely meeting less because synchronous meetings still have their play. But think about that as the other extreme of a meeting lists, asynchronous selling world, where we are. Communicating content to our customers as we need it on demand, consistently we’re not waiting for that big meeting.

And then, an opportunity for them to share those ideas, to share that demo, to share that pricing overview asynchronously with others in their organization who may be on different time zones, who may not be able to get on that zoom call and be able to move decisions forward faster. Because a, yeah, they’re staying engaged and they’re not forgetting so they can actually process better.

But also we’re not leaving those time gaps. Oh yeah. Let’s find a time in everyone’s calendar and then dealing with cancellations. And so I think there’s something to be said about that idea. And I think the promised land is somewhere in the middle of those two. I don’t think it’s entirely meeting centric.

I don’t think that it’s entirely meeting less. But those reps who have that mentality to say, yep, those meetings are certainly a, a high point in this process, but each and every day I can be moving this forward by sharing some kind of information by updating them, by sending them a custom video that walks through that question.

They ask that they can watch it on their own time and I can get feedback from it the next day. Not when they happen to have 30 minutes in their calendar to hop on a live call.

Andy Paul: Yeah. One of the problems that most sellers have is they think that the thing they’re dealing with the buyer over this purchase is the only thing the buyer is doing. Okay. Yeah, that this is consumes eight hours a day. If the buyer’s time, as opposed to five minutes today and 10 minutes, two days from now and so on.

You’re just one thing on a list of long list of things they have to get done. And yeah, it might be depends on the strategic nature of it. It might be more important than to get a little more time, but generally, when you look at it, think about a sales process as being these series of peak events with valleys in between.

Yeah. You need to fill the valleys because the other problem with the Valley is, as you talk about, as you start being re-engaging with them a couple of days before the next scheduled meeting, really what you’re doing is you’re re-educating them about what you talked about the last time.

Tyler Lessard: Yes. Yeah. And we’d see, the sellers on our own team, I think, do this very well from what I’ve, from what I’ve seen in that, during the process, they are intentionally, dripping information into those accounts. Sometimes it is off the shelf. Information, it might be, Hey, I thought you might like this perspective on this topic we were discussing, and it was a recent blog post or an article or a video interview or a podcast episode.

So they may be adding value as they go and keeping again, the conversation top of mind, or it may be in some cases where they are. Creating something custom and sharing it, which could be, it could be just an email, but more often than not, they are recording a quick video using just their webcam to deliver an update where they’re using a screen-share to walk through something.

And so they may be doing a quick recap of a certain. Feature function, benefit that struck a chord on that previous call. And they’re using that as a, as an excuse to touch base again, a couple of days later and say, Hey, I just wanted to to send you a quick summary of that feature that we talked about here, I’m actually going to quickly show you exactly what that looks like.

So that you’ve got a visual perspective on what we were talking about. And then they’ll spend two minutes doing a screen recording, actually showing that and then sending that over. And again, it’s like little things like that, can I think go a long way to continuing that conversation in those off hours, if you will keeping things top of mind, that stuff becomes super sharable.

And we, I think we, we underestimate the importance of giving our champions.  At these accounts, shareable content, shareable information for the others at their organization is you probably have no idea how many people are really involved in that buying decision. And so by arming them with those sorts of insights, content, whether it’s off the shelf or custom can go such a long way and sometimes farther than we even know to moving things forward faster.

And I think we need to make that just a part of how we sell and a part of our process.

Andy Paul: I think the other part of it too is, and this is again a perspective that most sellers don’t care. And I think one of the power or one of the powers of video messaging beyond the ones that you’re talking about already is that, For every stakeholder involved in decision, they operated two levels evaporate at a personal level and on a corporate level. And. And if you can use video to help you connect at both levels, whether it’s content that helps them with the specific priority they have for this project that they want to share their point of view. So you can customize something that, that, cause too often, sellers. Don’t really understand what the impact of this purchase is going to mean on the individual stakeholders.

If you really embrace this idea, you need to learn what that is. Then now you can start providing things that can share that align with what they’re advocating for, not just what, the bigger picture of what they’re advocating for. It helps immensely to be able to do that.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah. And I’ve heard stories from some sales reps, particularly those selling into larger accounts and doing larger deal sizes, who are, now what they’re actively doing is can building that. Web of who are all the people that I need to influence that are part of the decision process.

They may not be the signers, but they have some stake in this. And what they’re doing is they are getting as much insight as they can from their champion on what that individual might care about as part of a part of this process. And they are recording them a custom video, like for that individual. If I were selling to you, Andy, you might say, Andy, who is it?

On your finance team that is going to need to be a part of this decision or on your legal team or on your, here or your marketing team or whomever it is. And if you can help me, let me, help me help you. And, let me know what you think there. Biggest objections and biggest benefits are going to be, and I’m going to record a quick video for them introducing myself because they probably won’t actually get on a zoom call.

They’ll never meet me. They’ll help no connectedness to to myself as an individual. So I’m going to record three, maybe five minute if needed video that’s for them, where I’m going to introduce myself, I’m going to share a little bit about why it is. We’re so excited to do business with you guys, and I’m going to show them and explain clearly in their terms, how it is that I can help them or how it is I’m going to work with them in their team, in this process.

And I think that little effort, right? Which people say, Oh my gosh, I can’t. Produce a video for 10 different people in the buying committee. And I say if you take out the word produce and you just say capture right. And say, yeah. And it’s honestly, when you start doing this, it takes no longer than writing out that email and then obsessing over the wording and bullet points.

Andy Paul: I was gonna say probably the less time once you get practiced at it.

Tyler Lessard: It really does. And that added benefit of not only are you delivering the information, but then there’s that sort of inherent, human connection that’s happening there. And, time and time again, we see that where people, that they won’t ignore it as, as easily or readily when there’s a human face, staring at them on their screen of the individual, delivering that.

They’re more likely to show up for meetings when you’ve. Again, put yourself on camera prior to it. Cause there is again that, guilt is a powerful motivator for then when you, when somebody becomes a real person and a face and a voice, as opposed to just an email address, it’s it totally changes the conversation.

And so I really neat

Andy Paul: Yeah. Sorry. I think it does that because again, you’re giving people a taste of who you are and the unknown is a great de-motivator right. I don’t know whether it’s worth my time. I don’t know who this person is. Eh, yeah, man, I don’t want to go to that one, but if I’ve seen Tyler on video or I’ve seen Andy a short video and yeah.

And I responded to it and I think that’s the other thing that’s at least in my experience using video messaging is just that the response rates are so much better that when people respond, then yeah, they’re more likely to follow up, come to a meeting.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah. There’s there’s a lot to peel back in that with respect to just those nuances of how it again, creates that, that personal connection and the other piece of it, which, I think a lot about is the value that we are delivering to those prospects or clients and how it is that we are best.

Respecting their time and making them feel productive and helped and so on. And, because there’s a lot of times where I’ll say, I know what I’m sold to. I’m often having people send me, Hey, read this guide that will explain this. And I’m like, I don’t, I’m not going to read your 30 page guide, it’s just not gonna happen.

And if that’s the most efficient way for me to get this information, then you know, this is probably not going to go very far. But if you say that, the neat thing about things like video are that, we can convey, it starts with the simple, old adage, that, picture’s worth a thousand words and.

How much does a video worth. But the reason that we say that is, as we all know, we are, people are generally visual learners. There’s so much more information that we can take in from visuals, from people’s voice. As you noted earlier from body language, from pictures, then we can, written text and static information.

And so if I can. Deliver. It’s not just about, Hey, it’s Tyler, I’m sending you this. Introduce myself. It’s, Hey, I wanted to show you exactly what I meant by this. Or I wanted to talk you through the sales proposal, so you can clearly understand how this relates to what we talked about. And as I’m walking you through a line item, I’ll skip over to another tab on my screen to show you again, that specific feature or function.

That you’re buying. And so you can remember what it looks like, what it feels like and using those visuals as a way to deliver more value, to educate them in a shorter period of time and which ultimately then, better respects their time. You can also use video to waste people’s time if you don’t use it effectively.

There’s lots of ways in which you can record a 10 minute long video talking about something that could have been summarized much more quickly. So with Greg power comes great responsibility. But yeah, I think there’s a lot of those nuances, both personalizing humanizing, but also adding value and helping people visually learn, which I think a lot of people will appreciate in the buying process.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I’m a huge believer that you know, a lot of the decision. I’m actually, data bears us out as, the majority, supposedly going to challenge our sale and other studies of a buyers decisions based on their buying experience, right? The experience I felt through the journey and you as the individual are the first exemplification of that.

And you want people to be able to experience you because. You barely become one of those key differentiators, you as a seller compared to the competition, because you don’t operate from a premise of that, especially increasingly. So these days that, but it’s always been the case to a large degree is yeah, products are pretty much interchangeable. There are products that come along that are, you have real distinct capabilities over others, but by and large, we’re hung about marginal differences. And I always like to ask the question to groups when I’m speaking is, so tell me how much did you win your last deal by, were you, did you win by 10%, not talking about price?

How much did you win by? What was your margin of victory? And, people really can’t quantify that. Wow. How do I quantify margin of victory on deal? And I tell them you have to presume it’s 1%.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah.

Andy Paul: You said 1% better. So that 1% could be just how a faster to your point, how effectively you engaged and communicated with people throughout the process.

And do your point, did you give them a 38 page white paper to read about what you did as part of your content strategy or which is basically asking them to do work or did you make it easy for them? With Hey, more bite-size insights and providing throughout the process questions. I may be prodding you with the may.

We didn’t ask as part of discovery, but still things that you need to think about, perspectives, all these things that can be accomplished very effectively using video. Sure.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah, one of my best experiences as a buyer recently was, and you don’t say that often, as a buyer had this great experience, it’s so few and far between where we say that these days, but I had a great experience not that long ago with an organization that was selling to me and through the process.

A lot of the validation and support they provided was through other stories of other customers that they worked with. And, but they did they, they took something a little bit further than usual. They serve enough shared like a link to their case study and, the usual quotes and which we all know, it’s yep, I get it right. Everybody’s got quotes and everybody’s got testimonials. But what they did is they actually took it a little bit further. And recorded a video, showing how that customer had actually done what they had done. So they actually, in their case, because it was a software related solution, they were able to, without showing anything confidential bring up examples of what that organization had tactically done using their service.

And they actually walked through it. So it was like, Hey, go read the case, study lots of beautiful quotes in there. Lots of big stats, but I want to actually show you what they actually did to get those results. So you can see tactically how that manifested and then you have a reference point for Oh, I could do that.

Because when I look at the case study, I’m like 50% increase in such-and-such and I’m like, I don’t know if I can do that.

Maybe I don’t know. I don’t know. But when I actually see the example and they walk me through and say, so then they did this and then here’s how this happened in this.

And I’m like, Oh, I can do that. I know I can do those things. And so if that’s what I need to do to get to that result, it clicks for me now. And so just walking through those and in my terms, so again, it wasn’t just a generic video. It was like, here’s how this relates to what you’re thinking about.

And yeah, it took them a little bit more time to record those, but it was so helpful. And for me that was like, the best 10 minutes I spent watching those videos. Because it really armed me with the confidence I needed, the knowledge I needed. And then as we moved further down the process just before we were about to make the decision, they sent over another video, which was a montage of the different people on their team that we would be interacting with introducing themselves and explaining their role in helping us.

So it was, this don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves, but I wanted to introduce, you see the different people that you’d be working with. If you do come on board and then it cuts to, it’s the CFO and it’s like, Hey, I’m Dennis, the CFO here really hope to work with you guys, I’ll take care of all the blah, blah, blah.

And then it’s the, the COO and then it’s the actual support rep that we would be assigned. And they’re each just 20 seconds of them introducing themselves. Some of them it’s something personal. Like I like long walks on beaches and, I listened to heavy metal, punk music, whatever it is.

And and I still remember getting that video and going, Oh, this is terrific. Both because I’m a video guy, but it was like, I immediately met all these people and I was like, all right, like I’m in like I, these people I can tell they’re into it. They care. And and I felt connected and it was, and I said, you know what?

I can see myself doing business with these people. And that was like the closing. That was their close.

Andy Paul: That is  the moment, right though. Is this thought that I can see myself doing business with these people?

Tyler Lessard: Yep.

Andy Paul: It starts with one person . And so if you have that viewer rep that, get comfortable with the video, you use it effectively, which also is time effective for and time efficient for the buyer. But their perception of working with the company is based on the perception of working with you. Yes, the video of all those is great, but based on what you said before it had been done so well, your impression of that company is really formed by the videos you’re getting from that one individual

Tyler Lessard: Yeah. , I think that’s absolutely right. And then it was reinforced through the montage video. But again, even in that case that That helped me trust the rep that I was working with because they took the time to go out and get those videos made for me and all of that. Yeah. Again, I think, I wish I had the scanner hooked up to my brain, is that all happened so we could see it light up in different areas and we can, Oh, that’s what happened.

I can’t tell you exactly what happened. I can know, but what I can tell you is that it was memorable. And it, sparked a, To the confidence that sparked trust. And it made me smile and like all those things, in today’s business world, because such a long way, when everybody’s got the same features, specs speeds, feeds testimonials.

So those intangibles became so important. And yeah, I encourage you all to think about doing similar kinds of things.

Andy Paul: Yeah, absolutely. So we don’t have a lot of time left here, but let’s just talk about that as is. Quickly, it was,  the major barriers to adoption because this technology’s been out there, video messaging for awhile. It’s, the stats I’ve seen is that, improved open rates I’ve experienced when I’ve used it myself on consistent basis, as response rates very high.

It’s Okay. If you’re a seller and you’re trying to reach out to people, it’s just, take it right at the beginning. Or you’re trying to reach out, grab someone’s attention to open the door to a conversation. Why wouldn’t you be doing this now? There are some teams that uniformly I’ve gotten with the program and others that, I sometimes feel like the managers think yeah, if we do that, we can’t make our 50 calls a day and it’s  but if you’re being much more effective and get better response rates, do 30 a day video messages, they don’t need to do 50.

Tyler Lessard: Yeah, I think for a lot of folks, for the individuals, as well as the managers, part of it is simply the fear of the unknown. And, is this going to work it’s new, right? I don’t know. Like I’ve never. Incorporated recording and sending video messages as part of our prospecting. I, I have done lots of emails, done, lots of phone calls.

I can tell you exactly what our conversion rates are on those programs. And I can, it’s predictable, but I think that’s part of the challenge as with any new approach or new technology or new methodology is that inherent, unknown that comes with it. And so I think for a lot of people, now is the time to just start to.

Experiment with this, because if you rewind a couple of years ago, this whole idea of recording and sending somebody a video, wasn’t even feasible without jumping through serious hoops and posting a video to YouTube. And, but the reality now, for those of you that, this is a new idea.

What we’re talking about here is. There’s tools like Vidyard and others, that it’s literally one click in your Chrome browser or Gmail or outlook to record a video using your web cameras screen-share and then one click that it will drop the thumbnail image of that video into a message could be an email.

It could be a social message and that hyperlinks out to a page to watch that video and you send it off. So it’s literally as easy as click to record. Click to send. And when somebody clicks to watch it, they go to a dedicated page. They watch that quick video and they move on. And so I think for a lot of people, it’s just starting to understand that of Oh wow, we can try this out.

It’s easy. It’s free. I can just get going. So let’s start experimenting with it. But then where we also start to see people fail is that either they, they try it a few times, right? Like a lot of different things. They tried a few times. It doesn’t have the immediate response. And then they’re like, Oh, it didn’t work.

Let’s try something else. It’s like cold calling, right? If you made five cold calls and didn’t book a meeting, would you give up on it? Probably not. You’d probably, keep at it. You’d learn as you go and you’d start to master it and learn it. And I think video is the same way that right now we just got to think about, how do we try it?

How do we put it through its proper paces, but also how do we use it in different ways? Creatively, because that’s also where a lot of people get blocked is okay, I get it. I can record a video and send it, but. I don’t even know, like when does that fit into my sales process? Why would I do that? And I think that’s just where you’ve got to put it through the lens of the people on your team or your own role and say if I’m prospecting, if I’m doing outbound prospecting for new business, the role of video becomes getting people’s attention and getting them to respond.

So now it’s a tool to stand out by mixing it up and not just sending an email or a phone call, but sending a message with a video. That’s okay. Bright that’s visual that gives them a chance to respond in a bigger way and boost your response rates. So that’s like the role it can play in prospecting.

If you’re talking to account executives who they’re not trying to get noticed, they’re trying to move deals forward and build those relationships and shorten their deal cycles and increase their close rates. And then you start to say, Oh in that case, video becomes a tool now to maintain that personal rapport, to your point with.

Periodic video messages to keep the conversation going. It also becomes a way to educate people faster by delivering them richer, content that they can see, not just hear what it is you’re talking about. And so it becomes a way to build the relationship and to shorten deal cycles by accelerating their knowledge, accelerating their education.

And so I think, we just gotta keep that in mind of there’s lots of ways we can use it. Video is in a separate. Thing. It’s another way to communicate with your customers and try to achieve your goals. It just so happens that you’re looking into a camera instead of looking at your keyboard.

Andy Paul: Right. No, I love it. I love it. All right. Tyler we’ve unfortunately run out of time, but it’s been great having here.

Tyler Lessard: Thank you so much. That was a terrific conversation. I really appreciate hearing your insights as well. I think this is a really neat time for all of us and a time to try new ideas. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

Andy Paul: Tyler. Thank you so much.

Tyler Lessard: Thank you.