Hey Drift! You Forgot About Video!

Here at Vidyard we’re big fans of Drift – we use it ourselves, and you have probably seen a hello message from one of our many Vidyard Concierges offering to give you a hand. We also love their blog, and recently came across this post, 3 Things Every Sales Team Needs to Be Thinking About in 2017. Staying on top of new sales trends is something we’re all about!

The post is great – it breaks down the biggest trends sales teams are missing out on into 3 categories:

• Why sales needs to integrate messaging into their core workflow
• Why BDR processes need to be adjusted
• And why ABM practices aren’t keeping up with current tech

But there’s one key piece of sales technology that Drift is missing in this post. I’ll give you a hint – they used one to get their point across:

Video & Messaging – A BDR’s Dream Team

Drift really focuses on how BDR’s can take advantage of messaging, from adding it to high-value pages and starting small, straight through to integrating messaging into systems you may already be using like Slack. And messaging works great for prospects that are already on your website – but what about folks that haven’t landed there yet?

That’s where video kicks in – what messaging does for personalized, one-to-one outreach on your website, video can do for your outbound emails. Successful BDRs are using personalized video instead of voicemails, and driving higher engagement and click-throughs on their emails because of it. What messaging can do for your website, video can do for your outreach. And the combo of the two is unstoppable.

Account Based Video

It’s not a secret that most companies aren’t doing account-based marketing as well as they could. There are some outliers – like Marketo – but overall businesses are either dipping their toes into ABM and starting small, or going all-out and still trying to prove that it works.

Drift makes a really solid case for replacing most of the ABM process with AI and bots, using the in-person shopping analogy: “If your best lead walked into your store, would you give them a pen and a clipboard with a form to fill out before you started talking to them? Or would you treat them like a human and start talking to them right away?” It’s a great point, but even this new methodology has one step missing. Before a prospect lands on your website, they still need to know that you exist. And that’s where video excels.

New advances in personalized video technology make it easy to customize a single video for multiple industries, companies, or even individual people. Adding a company logo to a video changes that content from a one-size-fits-all video to something truly special, and for prospects that may not have heard of your company, it’s a game changer. If you’re targeting a list of individual users, you can take it a step further, adding contact details directly to the video. Receiving a nurture email with your name on the splash screen is a much more compelling offer than just seeing your name in the subject line.

Once users are on your website, then Drift nails it. Messaging allows you to replace the cumbersome nurture email and lead qualification process typically associated with account-based marketing with a simplified messaging cadence that connects your prospects with the right person to solve their problem.

Whether it’s a one-to-one outreach from a BDR, or a targeted batch email, personalized video is an unbeatable tool for getting leads back to your website. And messaging is a great way to get them where they need to be to move from prospect to customer.

Adding Video to your Sales Process

Much like adding a messaging program to your website, adding video to your sales process can seem like a daunting task. Staff need to be educated on video best practices, systems need to be in place to handle the video, and leadership needs to set goals around video usage. No easy feat, right?

Times have changed, and video is easier to use than ever. Free tools like ViewedIt mean your sales team can create, send and track videos directly from Google Chrome, and video analytics tools integrate directly with CRM systems like Salesforce so you can track the success of every video back to closed revenue.

To help companies get the most out of video for their sales team, we created the Video Selling Institute. These five lessons take you from understanding why video is a powerful tool for prospecting all the way through to tracking results, and setting your sales team up for success. And the best part? It’s free!

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