Join us with Chris Bogue Part 2. Ever wondered how humor can amp up your sales videos? Chris, creator of “The Complete Guide to Selling on Video”, gives us the inside scoop. We delve into video’s role in post-Covid sales and the evolving world of B2B marketing. If you’re skeptical about video in sales, Chris might just change your mind. Listen in! 🎥🎙️
Transcript
[00:00:10] Kerry Barrett: Joining us for this episode is Chris Bogue. He is a video coach. He is a sketch comedian, a sketch comic. I’ll get it right one of these days. And he’s also the creator of the Complete Guide to Selling on Video.
Now, if you were lucky enough to catch Chris on the episode just before this, he spoke about the importance of incorporating humor into your sales videos and even some of the processes or where you might be talking to prospective clients. We’re talking now about how to use video and sales. So, I guess the question to begin with is how did you start this?
1.01 Chris realizes the importance of bringing sales & video together
[00:01:01] Kerry Barrett: How did you go down this path, realizing the importance of video and sales and bringing the two together, much like chocolate and peanut butter?
[00:01:11] Chris Bogue: Yeah, it was a total accident. Everything you see me doing on LinkedIn was a complete accident. Never thought I would be a sales trainer. Never thought I would be a video content creator. Never thought I would run my own business. It was one of those stars aligning, just right kind of moments. So I was selling education technology to universities when Covid struck, which is not funny.
I was not doing jokes. I was actually on a three-year creative dry spell. Thought I was never going to do comedy again. And the three best ways we had to reach our prospects were to call them in their office, visit them on campus, or visit them at an educational conference. So Covid happened, everybody left their office, all my trips were canceled, all the conferences were canceled, nobody was on campus, and I still had to hit my quota.
So I decided to get on video. I started getting on video and I quickly realized I was better at it than the sales reps on my team who were better than me at sales. There were these killers who could make their dials,
they could send off a hundred emails. They would make three or four videos in a week and I could make 25 videos in an afternoon.
I would just go make ’em back to back. I’d make 25 videos. It would set me five meetings and I realized this stuff is powerful. Video is incredibly powerful.
You have complete control over your message. It humanizes you, it builds trust, but there are not a whole lot of great resources about how to do it for sales. It’s not like calling or emailing or running a business presentation where there are books and scholarships and studies about this.
This is a pretty new frontier. And I also have this kind of double life background where I was writing and doing comedy at Chicago’s second city for all these years and during that time I was writing and directing shows that I was not in. I was up in the booth because I was the director, but I was directing a company of actors.
And, I’ve gotten pretty good at being able to get a good performance out of other people. And again, it was just this moment where I realized oh wow, if I just jumped fully into this now I think this is only going to become more important as time goes on and I feel vindicated. For the past two and a half years I’ve been doing this, you’ve just been seeing video is more important in B2B sales and marketing.
The people who are taking sales roles now are the Gen Z people who grew up on YouTube and TikTok. They are more comfortable on video. They have a closer relationship with video than their bosses do. And yeah, that’s why I wrote the Complete Guide. That’s why I’m writing a book that I’m hoping to publish this year because I have just jumped fully into it. And this has been my obsession for the past two and a half years.
[00:04:07] Kerry Barrett: So, it’s interesting because you mentioned the people who do have these skills and who can use them, they are going to be, you believe, the most valuable salespeople are members of the team. Regardless of how many cold calls somebody else is making and how the people who are good on video are, it’s like a hidden talent that is just beginning to explode.
4.33 Resistance from sales leaders
[00:04:33] Kerry Barrett: Why do you think there is so much resistance with, let’s say and I’m painting with a bit of a broad brush, but there is resistance and I’ve encountered it too with sales leaders and sales managers on my sales guys on video or my sales gals on video. They’re not YouTube influencers or that’s all they want to do.
You say, go for it and talk about that a little bit if you can.
[00:04:58] Chris Bogue: I honestly think the resistance comes from the fact that they are bad at it.
Okay.
They don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t know what to say, and they blame the concept of video. And to any sales leader who says that video does not work. I usually ask them, are you good at cold calling? And they always think they’re the best cold caller.
And then I ask them, did you become a master of cold calling within your first 50 dials? No. Usually, it takes two or three years to get good at that skill, and so I say, okay, it took you three years and a lot of great coaching and a lot of trying, and a lot of failures and a lot of success to be able to get where you are as a cold caller.
Why do you think you’re going to master the video in the first week?
Most teams aren’t even sending out five videos a month. And they want to say that video doesn’t work. The simplest answer is you haven’t failed enough times yet. Video is more complicated than a phone call or an email. So I subtitle all my videos too, which we could have a whole conversation about that but I tell them it’s like video has so many moving parts. It is how you’re framed, it is the way you speak, it is the words you are saying, it is if you’re using subtitles, and video is a reading experience.
It’s thumbnails, it’s also subject lines and delivers. There are all these different factors that you don’t have to think about in a phone call. Why do you think this person is in an entry-level job with no playbooks or no guidance or no processes, why are you expecting them to figure it out on their own in under a month? That’s Thats just not reasonable.
[00:06:52] Kerry Barrett: I also think too, there’s like this expectation and this may or may not be your experience, but there is a, if you’re not in a traditionally, again, creative sort of environment, you think of video as almost like I found many people think of it as a virtual white paper.
I’m just reading off, product features and benefits and that’s not what it’s about. We’re all connecting with people who we may never in fact ever see in person. And the video is a way to A, make that connection, but also bring them on an experience.
7.29 Video Mindset shift from the traditional environment
[00:07:29] Kerry Barrett: Is that sort of mindset shift something you’ve experienced as well? Oh, wait. You’re telling me I’m not just supposed to say, and this product has blah, blah, blah, blah. Nobody’s listening to that or watching it.
[00:07:42] Chris Bogue: So I’m doing an event with Josh Braun next week. And it’s all about storytelling. And my thing is if you go out there and you lead with facts, it’s not going to work because the audience isn’t going to believe your facts until they believe your story. If you are not a credible storyteller, there’s no reason for them to believe anything you’re saying about how you’re going to 300x their income whatever.
They have to trust you before they’re willing to listen to you. And here’s the example I give there. So there’s a lot of things I think sales teams are doing wrong with video and again, including there’s this mistake that they make where they’re like, oh, I’m selling to serious people. I’m selling to the C-suite, and all they care about is numbers.
So I have to come in with this very serious presentation where I present numbers to them. And again, so here’s the example I’ll give, I want you to imagine two videos, Kerry. So, let’s say somebody’s selling their services as a personal trainer. I always know I’m going to be in trouble when someone sends me a sales video and the background, it’s them in a little bubble in the corner of the screen and it’s my website.
Anytime I see that I’m like, oh God, this person’s going to tell me how bad my website is.
[00:09:03] Kerry Barrett: I hate those messages, I get them too!
[00:09:05] Chris Bogue: Yes. Then that’s because again, it’s a salesperson who they’re not confident in what they’re saying, they’re not confident in their performance. So they’re showing you something and they’re talking about a PowerPoint or they’re talking about a screen share.
And again, think of these two videos. So video one, it’s a picture of me and they’re like, “Hey Chris, you don’t know me but I found this picture of you at the beach online and I’ve circled the parts of your body with excess fat and I want to talk to you about my proven weight loss system. I help founders lose up to 450 pounds. So let me know if you’d be interested in having a conversation about that.”
Versus video number two, which has no screen share, it has no pictures of me, and it’s somebody saying, “Hey Chris, you don’t know me, but I’m reaching out because I see that video content is a huge part of your business, and I understand that your image is very important to your success. And I wanted to ask you a question. Do you currently work with a personal trainer?
I ask this ’cause I know it can be hard to run your own business. I know sometimes fitness can take a backseat and my specialty is I help come up with meal plans and simple exercise routines that are going to fit in with your lifestyle.
So let me know if you’re open to a conversation about that. And thanks for watching.” I don’t think I need to tell you which video is easier to respond to.
[00:10:27] Kerry Barrett: Yep. 100%.
[00:10:28] Chris Bogue: And yeah, if you’re a total stranger and you’re just rubbing your prospect’s flaws into their face, of course, they’re going to resist you.
And if you tell me that I’m going to make $3 million a month, I’m like, I don’t think you’re talking to the right. I don’t think I need to lose 450 pounds. Maybe you did that for somebody else, but that’s not really what my problem is, whereas that second video was about what I care about.
And I advise people if you’re going to go sell in there, start by talking about the values and the goals of the people that you’re selling to. You can find those usually on a company mission statement. You can find that in their social media posts, in their marketing posts. Again, it’s the difference between “Hey, here’s all the problems I found. Why don’t you come give me money because I’m so smart and I’m going to fix all your problems.”
Versus being like, “Hey, I see your company values diversity. I see that this is an initiative. I see you’re trying to be the leader here, I want to help you design a website that showcases that. It’s Its just a turn of phrase where you’re making the values of the buyer, the star of the show, not the flaws of the buyer.
[00:11:48] Kerry Barrett: And you touched on this a little bit ago, but I want to underscore and ask a follow-up because the way that you’re talking about, sending videos and sharing them and talking to potential clients or leads all of that makes sense.
12.04 Does the video sales strategy work with all sizes of organizations
[00:12:03] Kerry Barrett: Does that strategy work regardless of what size of organization you come from and the person with whom you’re trying to connect, also perhaps in a large organization? So I’ll give like an example. Let’s say you work as a salesperson, I’m going to pick two random big companies I have no affiliations with either.
Let’s say, you’re a salesperson at FedEx and you’re trying to land a huge account at Johnson and Johnson. I don’t know. Does that work, that sort of connection in those massive sort of decentralized places as well? Is video as effective because you’re still talking with one person, what are your thoughts?
I won’t put words in your mouth.
[00:12:51] Chris Bogue: Yeah, I mean it’s always a human being you’re selling to, right? Humans sell to other humans. If you’re doing enterprise-level sales, you’ve probably connected to other industries that are relevant to them, or you probably have some understanding of the team of buyers you’re having there.
The other thing I would say too is salespeople and entrepreneurs, they focus a lot on the top of the funnel because if you’re not adding to the top of the funnel, you’re not growing. But there are all these wonderful little moments within the buying cycle that video helps with.
And one example of that is if you’re doing high-level sales if you’re doing enterprise sales, it’s not just one-to-one. It is buying is a team experience. There is a team of buyers you need to influence. And one super effective method that I have found is using the video to get yourself in front of additional members of the team.
So, anybody who’s ever done selling on a committee level knows you have what’s called your champion. This is the person you’re talking to who is invested in you. They believe in you. They’re trying to sell their team on what you’re doing. I was always taught that you need to have an interactive presentation because even if you give the most dazzling, wonderful presentation on earth, the second you’re not in the room anymore, now your champion, has to do the selling for you.
So if they’re not bought in for their reasons, they’re not going to be able to make the case for you when you’re not there. And this is a great area where video can help. Where, let’s say I’m trying to sell into a bigger company. I had my initial meeting, it went well. Oftentimes the next step for me is I’m going to end the call.
You always, as a salesperson, want to set up the next meeting. That’s important. so I’m asking questions about, okay, who else is going to need to be involved in this decision? Who would feel left out if they were not included in these talks? And then I’m going to ask my champion, what do you think they’re going to say?
Is there any reason why you think they wouldn’t want to do this? And I’m trying to get them to what are the real objections going to be in there. And then that’s usually a pivot to me saying, okay, here’s usually what I do. When’s the next time you’re going to be meeting with that person?
Okay. You have a one-on-one with them every Thursday, great. Let’s chat again on Friday and how about I go ahead and I’ll just make a video summarizing the main points that you and I talked about today, would you be willing to send that on to them?
Which case they usually say. Sure. So at which point, as soon as the call is done, while it is all still fresh in my mind, I’m going to pop on that camera and I’m going to say something like, “Hey Kerry, really enjoyed speaking with you today.
We covered a lot, but here’s the main three areas of alignment that stuck out to me. I know you have this initiative coming up that you need to take care of before the end of the quarter. I know right now you’re looking to fill this position or you’re looking to do something to improve this process and here’s the areas where I think I can help you get there faster.
And I’m very much looking forward to speaking with again on Friday. Hoping to hear from Michael. Let me know what he thinks and I’ll talk to you soon. And now I have a version, it is tailored to their priorities, it is tailored to what they care about. I can have my champion send that on through their email or their internal Slack channels, which means it’s more likely that it’s going to get read or watched rather
and if I’m watching my analytics and I see, wow, this video got watched 12 times, I know it got shared, it got forwarded onto the team. I know they watched it. I know they got the message. What was that message? It’s me, it is one minute long, it is talking about their priorities and why it’s going to be good for them, and now when we have that next meeting, I don’t have to bring ’em in from scratch.
They’ve got a little bit, they understand the problem I’m trying to solve. They understand the value that I think I can bring. Now in that next meeting, I can bring data, I can bring case studies, and I can ask them maybe some hard questions about what are they going to do to solve it, if not me.
I can ask questions that highlight that urgency. It’s not about the video, it’s just the video was the most convenient way for me to lay out my case succinctly in a way that going to resonate with my audience.
[00:17:12] Kerry Barrett: And it’s such an interesting point. You mentioned you talked about the champion and maybe the other people who also need to buy in not being in the room. They always talk about you have to have all the decision-makers, and sometimes, yes, that’s ideal, but not always. It doesn’t always happen.
And so one of the other great things as you’re saying this occurs to me is you could use a video like that to make sure that your champion isn’t miscommunicating or mistranslating what you are doing, offering, selling, suggesting to the other people who are part of that decision-making process?
[00:17:48] Chris Bogue: Exactly. Yeah. You are getting it out the way you want to get it out and again, video is the only format where you have a hundred percent control over everything. You could choose your words, you can show up looking professional. You could show up looking, invited, and interested in them.
You can show them that you’ve done your homework. You can use all your storytelling gifts, your tone of voice, your eye contact, and onscreen visuals and then they can experience you in an environment where they don’t have to defend themselves against you. Maybe they’re not a hundred percent convinced on what you’re saying, but they don’t have to sit there and argue with you. It’s more accommodating to them.
18.32 Chris’s sales video shooting process & sending
[00:18:30] Kerry Barrett: What is your process for, I’m going to ask you two technical questions. What is your process for shooting a video like that? Is it a matter of whether I open up Zoom or I turn on my phone and I send them a Dropbox or drive file? Or do you dress it up a little bit more than that, send it via LinkedIn.
What’s the process for sending out something like that?
[00:18:57] Chris Bogue: I just get my people wherever they are. I sell a lot on LinkedIn, so I do a lot of videos through LinkedIn. If we’re emailing I’ll do it through email.
I teach in my course. It’s like wanting to make them do as little work as possible. So yeah, ideally that message is not going to have a whole lot of text in there. It’s going to have one or two. And here’s another trick that I do that I’ve never heard sellers do. But it’s let’s say I send that video off and there are programs you could use. I use Sends Spark. I’m an advisor for Sends Spark. But there’s Loom, there’s BombBomb, there’s Vidia there’s all sorts of programs out there that’ll let you see whether or not they watched it.
So let’s say I send a video and it doesn’t get watched, right? That Friday meeting is coming up, I see nobody has watched it, nobody has clicked on it. That’s a signal that they might not show up to the meeting. So in that case, what I do is because I subtitle all my videos, I have a transcript available for each of them.
So I’ll follow up in a day or two and I will just send a screenshot of the transcript and I’ll say, “Hey Kerry, I just realized maybe it wasn’t convenient for you to watch a video, so here’s the transcript too.”
Looking forward to chatting with you on Friday and now maybe they didn’t want to watch it but they can see, they can read it.
Again, oftentimes the irony is if I send the transcript, then they go watch the video. But I’m always trying to get very lean on the wording and I’m trying to distill my message down to it’s what are the absolute most important things that I need to get them to understand before they have the next conversation with me? And it’s like I don’t care how they get the message as long as they get the
[00:20:42] Kerry Barrett: message. Yeah,
You just want it to be succinct and something that they have a better likelihood of watching. So the message, maybe it’s not scripted, but it’s planned. You’ve got your bullet points and you know exactly what you want to say.
[00:20:54] Chris Bogue: Yeah, and maybe I have marketing materials, maybe I have PDFs. Maybe I have videos on my website where it’s like, hey, if they want to go learn about me in depth. Here are links that I’ve made easy to find on my website or maybe they’re in the signature of my email and maybe they’re going to go watch those, but I can’t assume they’re going to go do all that work on my behalf before I have introduced myself to them.
And the video sets up this sense of reciprocity, where it’s I have put my face out there, I have learned about them. I have done my homework. I have prepared something short and professional and tailored to them as the first step. It’s not that hard to watch it if it’s only 45 seconds long.
And it’s that idea they say of give give give, take. Most people will just throw out a thousand cold emails from their automated program and expect you to set a meeting in return. I have gone through more work to show up, being more curious about you, more professional than the rest of your inbox, and more educated on where it is your organization is trying to go and what your values are. And now I’m just asking for a simple reply, I’m just setting myself up to make it easier for that person to give it to me.
22.18 Chris’s strategy for distribution
[00:22:16] Kerry Barrett: I love it. One more question. You mentioned at the very beginning of this conversation, you can knock out 25 videos a day, you have a workflow and you have a process. How are you using them? Are they similar to videos like this? What is your strategy for distribution?
Are they responding? Are they outreach? Are they, heck, are they LinkedIn posts? What’s the strategy for using all of that for sales or does it vary?
[00:22:46] Chris Bogue: So I don’t tell people to do 25 anymore. That was a job where I was making a hundred cold calls a day minimum. So like volume is much more important, especially if you’re a founder, I say start with five.
If you’re going to make one, you might as well make five. And if five is too much, you can make three. But the idea is a couple of things. One, it helps if the people on that list, so you should be sitting down with a list of people you want to make videos for. And it helps if they all have something in common.
Let’s say I’m reaching out to sales leaders, if they’re five sales leaders all in the same industry or they’re five sales leaders all with the same personality type, or they’re five sales leaders of organizations of all roughly the same size, what I say from video to video is probably not going to change very much. I’m going to throw one or two different facts out about them based on the specifics around their company, but I can bang those messages out because they’re pretty similar.
The other example that I give is the easiest thing for any sales professional to do. So if you’re an SDR, a sales development representative, that means your job is cold calling and cold emailing and trying to set meetings and you probably don’t get compensated or you don’t get to hit your quota unless the people who you set the meetings with actually show
up.
up And this is what salespeople hate because they spend all this time trying to set the meeting and then the person ghosts on them and it doesn’t count towards their quota.
So I say if you’ve been calling and emailing and working long hours just to get these meetings on the calendar, On Friday, before you go home for the week, pull up your calendar, look at every single person who needs to show up next week, and you make a 15-second video to them saying, “Hey, Kerry, looking forward to our chat next week.
Here’s one thing I want you to keep in mind before the call and I’ll talk to you Tuesday at 9:00 AM Eastern time.
That little reminder makes them significantly more likely to take the meeting. And again, you don’t have to set up a green screen and a screen share and introduce your case study. It’s a friendly little, hey, I’ll see you next week and it just makes them much more likely to not reschedule or not ghost on you.
Last note, I’m going to leave you on here just because I feel it’s very important. So I classify my leads as either green, yellow, or red. A green lead is somebody who is more than 50% likely to go to the next step with me.
So these are people I already have a relationship with. These are people who have expressed interest in me. Yeah, I’m looking to hire a video coach, yeah, we just got a video program, and we’re looking to ramp up our team. Green leads always get videos throughout the process because these are the people who are most likely to close. Yellow is a coin flip.
Honestly, they fit my ideal customer profile, I have not collected any signals from them, whether they go one way or another, they get a video.
The red leads, you could probably assume are a less than 50% chance. These are people who are dodging my meetings. These are people who’ve told me no in the past.
These are people who avoid my calls, who get angry when I call them. I do not make custom videos for the red leads. B2B does the exact opposite of me. They’re green and yellow leads. They send them automated communications all the time and when they do dare to get on video, they are chasing after these long-shot leads that don’t want to talk to them in the first place.
So, when in doubt, I tell my clients, I never want you to create a video that does not get watched. You have a better chance of using video to accelerate the deals that are already in your pipeline to improve your show rates to get people to show up that already have a little bit of interest in you than you are trying to do all sorts of crazy things to get in front of somebody who already doesn’t want to talk to you.
So again, if you’ve got the green leads, you’ve got the yellow leads, you’ve grouped them five videos a day, we’ll get you 25 videos a week, which is a hundred videos in a month, which is way more than any sellers are doing. If you’re a pro and you can get 10 out a day, that’s 200 videos a month.
That’s very good. But again, even with three videos a day, you will be far ahead of what 99.9% of sellers are doing out there on video.
27.07 Sales video element client closing rate
[00:27:06] Kerry Barrett: And I’m going to ask you one last question. What has this video done, what has including this element in your sales process done for, in terms of your close rate and for your client’s close rate?
[00:27:20] Chris Bogue: it’s amazing. Every time I think I’m too good to have to do it, all my metrics dive. dive Anytime I’m like, I’m Chris Bogue, I’m so funny. I’ll just send, a little DM being like, oh, see you tomorrow. They say, hey, something came up. Let’s push this back. I still use video throughout my entire sales process.
I have not automated that. There are things I’ll automate, I’ll automate the data collection part of it. There’s The auto transcriptions are a great way to utilize automation, but if somebody’s important and I can get a five-figure consulting deal from them and they’ve got a little bit of interest in me, I am I’m two or three times more likely to move that deal to a close by just, throwing in a couple of strategic videos throughout the process and I can’t quit it.
It just works so much more effectively than sending off just text emails or text DMs and there’s a rule for that. Maybe that cold email campaign or that cold DM campaign, that’s going to go to the red leads, right? Because I can send hundreds of those out and that starts up a couple of conversations, then I can move it to video.
But the only reason I’m doing this, the only reason why I went all in on video is ’cause it works.
[00:28:35] Kerry Barrett: It does. Chris, it was amazing to talk to you. Thank you so much for sharing, not just your time, but also an enormous amount of knowledge as to how to use this strategically throughout the process. If people are interested in finding you and purchasing your course, where should they go to learn more about you and potentially work with you?
[00:28:55] Chris Bogue: So the easiest way is to connect with me on LinkedIn. Go ahead and ring the bell. I put content out there every day. Some of it’s funny. It’s usually about video. How to get on video, how to be more confident on video, how to sell on video, and how to create video content that’s going to act as a lead magnet. If you want to get my course, you can go to chrisbogue.io.
It’s called The Complete Guide to Selling On Video. It’s about two and a half hours worth of original content, it’s about the length of a Marvel movie. But yeah, we go deep into every single segment of this. It starts with the on-camera performance. Where do you put the lights? Where do you put the camera?
It goes into the script writing for every section of your pipeline. There’s a little bit of LinkedIn growth strategy in there. We go into editing, we go into filming, we go into subtitling and we close out by sending it out on LinkedIn and Gmail. If you don’t know how to get started, take the course. By the end of it, you will be able to produce your first batch of 25 sales videos for your business.
[00:29:46] Kerry Barrett: Nice. And you’ll have a strategy to use them as well from this too.
[00:29:50] Chris Bogue: Yeah, and I guess you could also listen to my podcast. I forgot to mention, I do have a podcast. If you go on Spotify or Apple or any place where you get podcasts Chris sells his soul. The conversations about how to monetize creativity and monetize your creative skills. You can listen to episodes there if you get more knowledge for free.
[00:30:08] Kerry Barrett: That’s fantastic. Chris, thank you so much. It was great talking with you.
[00:30:12] Chris Bogue: Thanks for having me, Kerry.
[00:30:13] Kerry Barrett: Absolutely.
Connect with Chris
Website: chrisbogue.io
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chris-bogue/Podcast: spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/ESmeqjLPABb
