Bill McCormick on Being Social with Video.

Subhanjan Sarkar   

No, please carry on.

Bill McCormick   

Okay. So yeah, so we’re going to jump right in, and I just Hello, everyone, it’s great to be with you so I’m…

Subhanjan Sarkar   

I’ll take a minute to just do a little bit of introduction of yours and then I’ll give you the stage.

Bill McCormick    

Okay.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

Ok, so Bill is the founder of Digi-Sales, a digital selling training company, and soon to be the author of the book ‘All Selling is Social’. Bill first started using digital sales techniques after he and his wife Sue started their own promotional product business. By using social platforms, especially LinkedIn, they were able to build a very successful business. Bill then began to help other business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals how to use LinkedIn to increase sales. Bill has conducted training for companies worldwide and specializes in helping to make LinkedIn human, explaining the platform in easy-to-understand ways. Bill resides in upstate New York with his wife Sue and their pets while they enjoy golfing, kayaking, snowshoeing, and spending time with their kids and grandkids.

I mean,I have to talk to you about your snowshoeing one of these days talking about the session video outreach is the next shiny thing in sales, but are we considering who we are sending out messages to? Video is one channel of communication and while it has its strong points, it also has its weaknesses. In this session, Bill talks about the best practices for video with leads, prospects, and clients as I mentioned, and the role that trust plays and why it may or may not be a good idea to send that video. Bill, please take it away.

Bill McCormick    

Wonderful so thank you so much, it’s really great to be with everyone today. Subhanjan mentioned, I trained mainly folks on how to leverage LinkedIn for sales so if you think of a sales team, those that are in B2B sales as well as small businesses, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, I help all of that range of folks to create more relationships on LinkedIn. I’ve leveraged video pretty highly; in fact, I was kind of an early adopter for those of you that have been around for a while and using video if you remember there’s a company out there called One Mob that was the first video platform that I used, and so I’ll talk a little bit about that. But this is my LinkedIn profile. I would really enjoy connecting with you on LinkedIn, and just a word of training maybe if you’re not too familiar with LinkedIn. So this is how I see my profile. You see there with the blue button that says open to when you look at my profile if we’re not connected that button’s going to say follow. And so if you follow me that’s great but if you want to connect with me and be part of my network, if you jump over all the way to the right to the more button and click that and the drop-down it’ll say connect click connect. And when it says send a personal note, please send me a personal note telling me that you heard me here at the video prospecting summit I’ll be sure to connect with you but would really enjoy connecting with you on LinkedIn so my journey in sales kind of started again in 2013 when my wife and I started our own promotional print, promotional products company. And really quickly, I determined that I didn’t want to sell the way I had been trained to sell in the eighties and the nineties, which was a lot of cold calling, a lot of cold outreach. I didn’t want to do that. And so I look for different ways to engage my clients. LinkedIn was one way, definitely, but video also became another way that I tried to use. And I say tried. I’ve had success with it, but I’ve also had some kind of some pitfalls with it. And So what we’re going to talk about today is kind of that journey and the different ways that we can leverage video with our leads, prospects, and clients so I think the first thing we have to do though is talk a little bit about what do I mean by lead prospecting client. 

This is going to be different for everyone for the most part but for me, who is a lead, a lead is someone who could possibly be a prospect in the client. But we haven’t done any discovery yet and we haven’t qualified them yet. So they’re just kind of a lead, they just kind of sit there and then when we have some engagement with them we can determine whether okay, so we possibly could do business with this person. There are prospects and now we kind of move them over to the middle of the spectrum on the way to becoming a client, right so if you think about a line and it we start all the way over on one side with a lead, a lead is very cold. A client is very warm or even hot and so a lead is really cold. We haven’t done anything with them at all. Prospects kind of are in the middle and those are people who we’ve qualified, we’ve had some, we found out some information about them, we’ve done some research we found that they need our product or service that the challenges that we help people overcome, they’re facing those challenges. We’ve maybe even been introduced, maybe it’s been a referral. Hey, this person needs your service or this company could use what you have. They then become prospects, then we have to do some more, some more relationship building with them we have to have a meeting with them and then once we’ve sold to them, they become a client, right so they’ve moved that from that lead, which is so cold all the way over to a client, which is hot. And video can definitely help us do that. But one of the things we have to realize is as salespeople, people don’t trust us. It’s just no way to say it other than that we have a trust problem. And when, whoops, I think I went a little too far, There we go. So the question is, can they trust you? And they don’t know if they can because in general, salespeople are not trusted. I know I don’t, I don’t trust salespeople. Sorry about that but I just don’t. I’m very skeptical about salespeople. 

So Edelman is a company in the US, and they do this trust barometer every year where they ask thousands of people to rate on a scale of how trustworthy different occupations are. And if we were doing this live and you know in person I’d ask the audience, you know So what do you think is the most trusted profession? People always say doctors and they’re so close, so close. But in the US especially nurses actually are the most trusted profession followed usually by doctors. Here’s the thing. Salespeople are always at the bottom of that barometer, they’re rated the last few. And we’re keeping company down there at the bottom of the trust scale, with people like politicians and with lawyers. In fact, for a couple of years, salespeople actually ranked lower than lawyers in trust, which is just crazy. But it just goes to show you the challenge we have in developing trust with clients. I remember seeing one study from HubSpot where only 3 % of clients said they actually trusted their salespeople. We’ve got to do a better job. Video can definitely help with that, but it can actually also hurt with that because when you combine this distrust with the idea that a lot of email is there are phishing scams, right so there are links that you’re not supposed to click. And most cybersecurity people within companies will tell their employees not to click any links. I remember talking to one cybersecurity guy who said the most dangerous thing in any office is the index finger of an employee that’s going to click on a mouse, that’s going to click on a link that’s going to infect the whole system, right so we have to realize that when we’re using video outreach, this can be a little problematic because many times we’re sending links for people to click on to view, to view a video. And so this kind of compounds this trust issue that we have. And one of the points I skipped there was how people see us as salespeople. We say that we want to help and I do that in quotes we want to help. And what people really see that is, yeah, you want to help get my money. You want to help me sign a contract, You want to help me to buy what you’re selling. And so those are the things that we have to overcome and we can definitely do that with video, but we have to be very careful so what I’d like to do is kind of talk about how to use video with leads, prospects and clients and some of the success that I’ve seen in doing that now let me stop and give you a word of warning that I should have rate in the beginning. You’re probably hearing a lot of different techniques and strategies. You’re going to hear some of that from me. Here’s what you’re going to hear: what works for me, but what works for me might not work for you, right? You might sell to a different industry, you might sell in a different geography. You might sell to a different classification of people than that I sell to. And so take what I’m giving you, test it and try it for yourself and see what works for you because that’s the real important thing so Subhanjan mentioned I’m writing a book called All Selling Social right there it’s in my back banner and it’s all under the idea that there’s so many different sales methodologies. There’s no one that works all the time and there’s a social element to each one of them and that’s what we want to keep in mind as we’re moving through this and we’re talking about how we can leverage video for leads, prospects and clients. So how about leads so remember we said leads are all the way over here on the left-hand side, they’re way over on the cold side. This is real cold outreach. These people don’t know you. Very rarely do they know you. And so they’re going to be very skeptical of you. So here’s the question I would ask of you: when’s the last time that you received an email or a LinkedIn message or a message on one of the other social platforms that had a link to a video that somebody created for you and you clicked on it and watched it? I can tell you when the last time I did it was because I didn’t. There is no last time I don’t click links that I don’t recognize, even if it’s a loom video and I use loom as my video outreach. But I’ve never seen anything that’s compelled me enough to click on the link from somebody who’s reaching out to me cold. So keep that in mind that if you’re using video for leads to try to warm them up, will they click on the link? You know, if you are using video in that way and it’s working for you, that’s great

Here are a few tips. So first of all, don’t do a really long video. Don’t try to tell them everything about your company in one breath. I would keep it under a minute, actually just introducing yourself and being very personable and telling them that you’re looking forward to connecting with them in some way. Keep IT service-oriented. If you’re going to tell them anything about you and how you can help them, do it in a way that shows your value and the service that you can provide in value context. And then again, avoid using links. I say go native, and what I mean by that is finding a way to send a video natively, whether it’s through a social channel. In fact, we’re going to look at a way in a moment that on LinkedIn if you’re connected with someone you can actually send a video message. But I would avoid using links because I don’t think that they work. I don’t think that people will click on links if they don’t know you, if you haven’t established some kind of relationship with them.

So this is using video with leads, and you see I don’t use video at all with leads. I want to qualify them and move them into the prospect category, and then from prospecting, then I can find a way that I can leverage video. So how do I leverage video with prospects? What I recognize is that video can bridge the trust gap. It can help to do that because now somebody can see my face, right? So you’re seeing my face, you know a little bit about me. I’m not just this two-dimensional picture that was a split second in time that’s on my LinkedIn profile or maybe you see on my website. That’s this perfect moment. Now you get to see me and hear me, and I get to you see how I express myself, you see that I use my hands a lot. And if you can’t tell, I’m from New York so I have two talking speeds, fast and faster. If we were in person, you’d know that I have two volumes when I talk, which is loud and louder. I’m a loud, fast talker. You find these things out about me, which starts to develop trust or it might push you away if you don’t like that, right? But at least it gives you a kind of more of a 360 ° view of who I am and you get to know me a little bit more. But similar to leads, prospects are also going to be skeptical, so you have to be careful so here I’ve got some don’ts and then on the next slide I’ll give you some do’s.

So some don’ts: don’t do a feature and benefit dump on them. And what do I mean by feature benefit dump? Don’t send them videos saying, “Hey George, I’m Bill from Digi Sales, and we help companies, and this is what we do for them and let me tell you everything about LinkedIn in 5 minutes,” and talk so fast that you go away with your head spinning or you just don’t even listen to it because, well, I don’t have 5 minutes to spare, right? So don’t do a feature and benefit dump. Don’t do, “Here’s what’s wrong with your video.” So this is what I’m seeing a lot, they’re either screen captures or they’re actually screen shares. And I get usually about one or two a week from either web designers who want to tell me everything that’s wrong with my website, SEO people that want to tell me either my website or my YouTube channel, why I’m not getting the reach I’m supposed to get or YouTube people like you. People who train how to better establish your YouTube channel, telling me the things that are wrong with my YouTube channel. I don’t think this works if this does work for you, that’s great. You know, that’s fantastic but for me, if somebody wants to start a relationship off, like a business relationship with telling me the things I’m doing wrong, that’s a real negative to me. Tell me a little bit about the value that you provide your clients, and then maybe share some insights around that. But I don’t recommend doing that. Don’t be overly friendly. So we see this a lot on LinkedIn, just with connection requests people want to tell me how great I am at what I do, but they don’t even know me. And so it’s kind of like, “Yeah, I bet you say that to all the people.” Don’t be disingenuous, but be honest and truthful. Be personable, be social. Don’t do, and I’ll say this towards the end especially, but don’t do something in a video that you wouldn’t do face to face with someone because that just doesn’t work. So those are a few of the don’ts, and I see somebody had put in there about animated GIFs that can be added and that’s true but I believe that the animated GIFs then click to a link also. I know they do on Loom which is what I use but that definitely is something that could help to get you clicked through to the video, definitely. So great point with that, and then here are the do’s with when we’re talking about video with prospects. You know, here’s how I leverage video with prospects. I’ll send a thank you video after a call or confirming a meeting so in other words maybe we’ve had some interaction on LinkedIn or we’ve had some interaction on email and we’ve scheduled the time to talk. I’ll then send a message, A video message says, “Hey Sally, so great that we were able to connect via email or via LinkedIn. I’m really looking forward to our time together on Tuesday, and just thought I’d send this short video to say thank you.” That’s it. Short and simple.

 Now the person gets a sense of who I am. When I connect with them on LinkedIn, I send them a short video message. So on the video on the LinkedIn mobile app, if you’re a first-degree connection with someone, you can actually send them a video message with no other software other than your phone. And a lot of folks don’t know about this, so you notice I have a little asterisk next to where it says that in the resources link that you’re going to be provided, and actually, at the end of my presentation, I’ve got the web URL as well as a QR code you can scan to get to those resources. There’s actually a how-to video, which is another way that I leverage video is doing screen shares. I do a screen share and show you how to send one of those messages. I not only use these with prospects, I also use them with clients. If I have a prospect I’ve sent something to, and it seems like they’re ghosting me, video messages on LinkedIn are a great way to kind of break that because they don’t get a lot of them, so they tend to answer them. So it’s something that people go, “Whoa, how’d you do that?” So I definitely recommend this as a great way to follow up with someone after you’ve connected with them on LinkedIn.

And then hopefully you’re using video in your outreach, in your general posting, your content that you’re creating, whether it’s on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, LinkedIn, whatever platform you’re using. So I would leverage those videos also with prospects once you’ve had some meetings with them and they know what you do. You know, it could look something like you have a like with me, if I have a conversation with someone, then they talk about how they’re struggling to get traction with their LinkedIn company page. I might send them a training I did on company pages that’s really short about a new feature, right? So what can you provide to them that they’ve been interested in what kind of education? And then consider using videos in your proposal process, so I do this if I propose something with you, what I’ll do is on the call, and you say, “Hey, I’m interested in this, what’s the cost?” I’m like, “Well, I can put together a proposal for you,” “That’s great, thanks.” Then I’ll say to the person, I’ll put a proposal together and I’ll have it for you by Monday. But let’s schedule a meeting on Wednesday so that we can review it and we can follow up, right? So this gets away from the ghosting. I make them schedule that appointment. And then what I do is when I do the proposal, I then do a screen share of the proposal, and I highlight important parts of that proposal for the person that kind of mitigates the questions that are asked later. This has worked really well for me, and I’ve had many clients come back and say, “Wow, thanks so much for doing that it really helped move the process along.” Don’t do a long that I could try to keep these videos under 5 minutes sometimes that’s hard it really depends on the length of the proposal. But then I only highlight areas that I know have been questions in the past from people. So this is probably the biggest way that I use video and it’s been very successful.

So the very last part that we want to talk about is using video with clients, and understand that your clients are always your prospects, they never stop being your prospects. You know it’s kind of like if you have a spouse, you shouldn’t stop dating your spouse once you’re married with your clients, you should never stop treating them as prospects another way. In other words, continue to pursue them and give them value because I’ll tell you what, your competition’s already doing it, right? So I said before that if I had a company that I talked to that was struggling with the company page, I would send them a video that I’ve created on a new feature of company pages. The reason I had that video created is I already shared it with my prop with my clients right? I want them to have value first. Video works better with clients because you’ve already established the level of trust with them so they trust you. But also, video will help break up the communication cycle, so we have different mediums we can use to communicate with our clients, right email, direct messaging on social media, and the phone in person. Video is another one of them. Maybe they only use, maybe they don’t like using email, but they like receiving videos. So finding that out, so it breaks up the communication process and kind of breaks it up in a good way and that they’ll consider new things. And then when you are doing that, make sure you make the videos personable, short and relative, especially if your clients make them personal. Make it to your client, that client their name, don’t do a general one and send it to all your clients I wouldn’t do that I would do them specifically so that person, it makes them feel special. And then lastly, what you want to do is don’t forget to be social as I said, you know, I’m writing this book called Selling is Social and it’s the idea that we have all these different sales methodologies, email and copy, copywriting and the phone in person meetings I don’t think I’m forgetting what, oh, social selling, social selling in person meetings, video is another one of those but it doesn’t work for every situation. And I liken it to golf, to playing golf. So if you, if you’re playing golf, you have a regulation golf bag, it’s got 14 clubs in it. You’re never going to use just one club for every single shot. You’re going to use whatever club is right for that situation. And that’s the same with video. You want to use it for the right situation and figure out what works for you need to AB test this. I’ve used video a few times and nobody’s ever watched them right so I stopped using videos with those clients, you can’t just rely on video. And as I said before, don’t say or do anything on video that you wouldn’t do in person with someone. We want to treat people in the digital space the same way that we would treat them, as if we were face to face. And so this is my contact information so my email address and my website are there. A Bitly link there will take you to the resource as well as that QR code. If you scan that QR code with your phone, it’ll bring you there. And in the resources you’ll not only find this deck, but you’ll also find the video that shows you how to send a video to a connection on LinkedIn. And there’s also a calendar link there for a complimentary 15-minute LinkedIn profile review that I’m offering everyone from the Video Summit, so I’m really interested to hear if there are any questions.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

Thank you, Bill, that was a wonderful presentation. I think people are quite excited that you touched up on a lot of stuff which we talk about but don’t get time to actually discuss and we tend to treat all channels equally right. So unfortunately they’re not the same and as you rightly said everything can’t be treated with the same lens looked at with the same lens and thereby done like again this mass outreach kind of bit right so I’m while we wait for questions to come there is one question which we saw being asked when people were signing up what is the right kind of cadence in reaching out on LinkedIn I mean you have spoken about people you know pitch-slapping you the moment you accept a connection requested I think it has happened to everybody and with generate can vary for personalization and all that So for you from your perspective what is the best way of doing that on LinkedIn.

Bill McCormick    

Yeah, I So what I believe is that we have to warm up the relationship so we find if I find someone that I’m interested in connecting with, they fit my ideal client profile or I just see them as someone that I want to be connected with. I always say you have to find context to connect with them. Blind connections can work, but they don’t always work. And So what I’ll do is I’ll visit their profile all right, so that’s a touch right there because they’re going to get a notification that I viewed their profile. I’m going to look through content that they have to see if it’s relevant and that I can authentically engage with it, whether it’s giving it a like but A comments are really specifically the best way to do it. But many people might not have content to do that with then I’ll look for work experience. I’ll look for anything that we might share and have in common that will give me an opportunity to reach out to them, to connect. I’ll follow them because again that’ll be another touch they’ll get a notification that I followed them and then if they follow me back that gives me an opportunity to do it. What I’m looking for is an opportunity to start a conversation and that’s the connection request. That’s the ‘hi, how are you? I’m Bill and so but I want to do it in such a way that says hi Subhanjan and I saw the post you did on video in on LinkedIn and it was a really great post I’d like to see more of your posts take a look at my profile if you think it makes sense, let’s connect. That’s kind of the cadence that I would use. If they have a lot of content, I might comment on content over several days and then come back with a connection request.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

And obviously, I mean a connection request is only the first step and that doesn’t mean you start selling him anything at all.

Bill McCormick   

No once you make the connection request and they’ve accepted it, then the next, now you’re really going to really start the conversation is now thanking them, hey, thanks so much for connecting with me, for becoming part of my network on LinkedIn. And this is something I might do on video. And then it’s looking for an opportunity to start a conversation. Hey, I see you’ve been working at Pitchlink for the last three years. What’s the best thing about working there or at this time of year what’s really good to ask people is say is it like I’ll say to sales leaders is I see you’ve been in sales for quite a long time we’re just coming to the end of 2023 I’m real curious what’s your biggest goal for 2024 And what I’m looking to do is take the conversation from the digital space to the face to face, whether it’s on zoom or on a phone or in person is I’m looking for an opportunity to have a conversation with them that it’s synchronous rather than asynchronous, right so asynchronous is when you send a message and you wait for somebody to reply. Synchronous is what you and I are doing right now. So I’m looking to have a synchronous conversation where it’s a give and take and I can find out more about them and build that relationship to see if there’s some way that we can maybe work together.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

This is one question which came, I mean it is from a gentleman called Puneet Lamba and this is what we should be aware of in terms of cross-platform strategies like LinkedIn versus email versus twitter or if you’re using all of them in an Omni channel kind of approach?

Bill McCormick    

So I don’t do Omni channel. Linkedin is my main platform. That’s how I connect with people and that’s how I and that’s how I engage with them. I will use email to then follow up with them. I don’t use Twitter, I don’t use Facebook, I don’t use Instagram or Tiktok, right so I’m strictly a business to business guy and I know that Instagram and some of the others can work well for that, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t for me. Here’s the thing I would do in terms of cross-platform is change it up to meet that platform. I wouldn’t use the same message across everything. I’m getting a lot of, I’m getting a lot of spam email right now that says, oh hey Bill, I looked at your LinkedIn profile and they and they scrape some information like my business name and stuff and it’s very inauthentic, right. If you saw my LinkedIn profile reach out to me on LinkedIn, why didn’t you? Well, probably because you it’s that system that they’re that they’re using. So I think if you’re doing cross-platform do what works for that platform, you know for and again, that’s going to be different for every person, for what they’re selling and for the clients that you’re selling to.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

And the other thing also I think we should mention when people ask this question what I normally say and one of the speakers did mention it somewhere that you need to also understand what is the platform of preference for your prospect. And each is different. Some of us are engaged more on LinkedIn some of us will engage on Facebook or on mail or on phone or whatever. But yes what works for the particular person? We need to figure that out.

Bill McCormick    

Yes, because here’s the thing you may do so I like one channel like LinkedIn. If you want to reach me, Linkedin’s the place. But for my clients, I find out what works for them. I sent one of my clients a WhatsApp message today because that’s what he uses. I have another client who wants to do just regular text messages. That’s what he does. I have another one. He says, hey, if you want to reach me, send me, call me. Just pick up the phone and call me if you send me an email, I’m not going to see it. If you were if I’m your client and you want to know what’s the best way to contact you, bill LinkedIn and email. The two ways that I think this is the difference between the golden rule and the Platinum rule, right so everyone knows the Golden Rule you treat others the way that you want to be treated. Well, that works great until it doesn’t because if you treat me, if I treat you the way that I want to be treated, I’m sending you an email. And if you don’t do email, right then it doesn’t work. But the platinum rule says that I treat people the way that they want to be treated. And so this is where we come into client relationships and getting to know our clients to the point where we know, Okay, so my friend Chris, who’s a client of mine, text message, if I want to get a hold of Chris, I can send an email, but then I have to text them, you know, with my friend Eugene, who’s in another country, I send him a WhatsApp message. That’s how I’m going to do business with him, right. And so that’s a great point that you point out figuring out the way that you’re that’s actually going to be read the means of communication that’s going to be answered by your client that’s going to give you the best possible way of having success with that.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

Thank you Bill I think this is a great session before you go, I’ll just play one Feedback not feedback, but an opinion piece from Peter Cohan to wrap this up. We actually reached out to experts and we requested them for some feedback in terms of what they thought we should be doing. So I’ll just play one for the audience. I think you may need to stop presenting for me to be able to play this.

Bill McCormick    

There we go, Yeah.

(VIDEO PLAYING)

Subhanjan Sarkar    

The foremost experts and practitioners on video prospecting are coming together to present best practices, ideas and insights at the Pitch Link Video Prospecting Summit 2023 As a run up to the Pitch Link Video Prospecting Summit, we reached out to renowned experts for their insights on leveraging video for sales.

Peter Cohan    

Hi everyone, delighted to have this opportunity. There are two ideas I would like to suggest: one is mechanical and the other is strategic. The mechanical idea has to do with this thing right here, and I’m pointing of course at the webcam camera. And those of us, those of you who learn to engage by looking at that camera will find they have an advantage over folks that are staring at something else that is not the prospect or the customer. So a mechanical idea. Focus as if you were in a conversation directly with your prospects, using the webcam as their eyes. Topic number, two strategic idea, it’s all about your prospect, it’s all about the customer. It’s not about your end of quarter, it’s about their critical date, their critical event, their timing for example. So changing from a mindset of what do I need to do to close this business to a mindset of how can I help my prospect or customer purchase the technology, the product that they are looking for. That’s the perspective that I would recommend. So mechanically, remember to focus on your webcam as if it is yours, your prospects and customers eyes. And the idea number two, it’s all about your prospect, it’s all about your customer. Thanks, I hope you found this useful.

Subhanjan Sarkar   

Actually because you mentioned about, you know why I played this, right, because you mentioned exactly that you need to understand what your customer is trying to do. I think that should be the focus once you’ve figured that out, the conversation and eventually the sale, will become easier.

Bill McCormick    

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Subhanjan Sarkar    

Bill, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us today and we’ll be in touch. There’s much to talk about.

Bill McCormick   

Great thank you so much everyone. It’s great talking with you all and thanks for having me.

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