Speaker 1: Welcome to the INSIDE Inside Sales Podcast with your host, Darryl Praill. Join us every week as we interview industry leaders and experts to uncover the ways they're finding sales success today. Tune in as Darryl brings you actionable strategies and tactics that can immediately increase your sales and success.

Darryl Praill: Oh, it's another week here folks, it's another week. You know what I've got on my hand? Honest to goodness. I've got a wonderful McDonald's coffee. What reaction did that just elicit from you? Did you go, Oh, McDonald's? Or, did you go, McDonald's! It's amazing how polarizing such a choice of beverage could be. It was funny. I was on a call, a zoom call, a video call, the other day. And I was talking to some people I hadn't met before, but they knew who I was and I knew who they were. And there was a few of us on there and we were getting to know one another, and it was funny because this one individual said, the topic of coffee came up and at the time they had no idea, they just saw me on screen. They didn't know what was going on and they said," Darryl, you strike me as a Starbucks fellow. That's what you, I don't know why, you just strike me as a Starbucks fellow." And sure enough, I leaned over at my desk and I pulled a cup out of frame, into frame and what was it? But a Starbucks cup. So there you go. I drink Starbucks. I drink McDonald's, and for all you Canadians out there, I reluctantly, on occasion, will also drink a Tim Horton's. What's your favorite beverage of choice that fuels you through the day? It's funny. The reason coffee is so critical to any success I have is because a lot of what I do involves talking to people like you. Involves talking to press or analysts or other influencers. And when you do that, and folks, you're in sales, you get this, you've got to have a certain energy level. I hate it when I get on a call or get on a video or a zoom or what have you and there's just like no energy. It's just blah. Just, I'm sitting there, quiet. And it's like one word answers, aha, aha, and I'm like, wake up! Life is way too short to be boring. So my coffee helps me be excited, or as my wife might like to say, excitable. So that's my secret to any kind of meeting success. But it's especially my secret to video success. You must have energy on video. Why? Because on video it's not just your voice. It's not like an old fashioned phone call. No, they see your body language. They see how you look, they see how you feel. They see how you express yourself. And what's amazing about video, is what you convey, what you communicate that is completely in your control and it is totally causing people to judge you, for which 99% of you do absolutely nothing to affect a positive outcome. What am I talking about? I'm talking about stupid stuff, like, do you have a quality mic? Do you have decent lighting? What's behind you. How do you tidy it up a little bit? How do you look? Did you groom yourself? Are you fresh off the baseball diamond with your hat on backwards, dripping sweat, some of you like that look. Others see that and they think you just didn't care enough to prep for me. So my question for you, this is the question I've had over and over and over again over the years as video has gotten more and more prolific, is what are you doing to maximize your results. Now, you will often then tell me," Darryl, it's about being authentic. It's about being authentic, you know, if my video shakes, if I am disheveled, if my room is not properly organized, that's okay. That's who I am. I want them to connect with me." And yet, you see, I look at that and I shake my head and I go, really? Really? Let me just walk this through. For a living, you do sales. That means for a living your whole raise on death threat, the reason you get up in the morning, is to influence people to choose your solution, especially in a competitive sales, like a versus anybody else's solution. Your whole reason for living is to be the most influential. We study how to do objection handling, open- ended questions, close- ended questions, how to do discovery. We close, we close and close and close over again, one on another in our practice sessions. It's all about influence. We work with different personas, different ICPs. We have our three by three grid, who are the three lowest people in the sales opportunity, who are the three mid- level people, who the three VIP's vetoes. Are we talking to them? Are we getting them on board? How do we talk to them? How do I influence results? That's what sales is all about, isn't it? At the end of the day, it's influence. And yet you're sitting here and you're doing one of two things. Either one, you're not using video because you're scared. You're uncertain. You're vain. You're insecure. You have pride, whatever, you insert your excuse here. You're not using video, which is killing your ability to influence them, to watch the reactions, to connect, to get those sudden silent cues that you just don't come across in an email or over the phone, but you can see it on their facial expressions. So you're not using video, or you're using video and you're half- assing it. You're half- assing it. Now you may not like what I say, you may say, Darryl, you're stupid. That's fair. I get it. My kids tell me the same thing. My dog tells me the same thing, but you know what? Video has been a large part of my success. And anybody I talk to says, video is huge. I was on Thursday night sales. Guess what? On Thursday night. And the whole conversation of video came up and it wasn't like, are you doing it, it was, are you not doing it? Because if you're not doing it, you are dead in the water. We've talked about video before here, folks. We haven't talked about it in a really, really long time. You know what? It's time we do it again. So who do we do? Who do we talk to when you want to talk about video? Well, that's my guest, as you might imagine. Who are the big video players? You think about them, right? If you said BombBomb, you're right. And that's why I brought on Ethan Beute, Who's the chief evangelist at BombBomb. It's a software company that helps working professionals re humanize their business. Ethan, you're all smiles. How're you doing, sir?

Ethan Beute: Great. I love that introduction, it's really fun to listen to. And just the way you delivered it, obviously, you've done a ton of video, which I already knew, but it comes through. And so for people that see you on video and say, man, I just don't know that I can do what Darryl's doing or what some other friend or acquaintance or influencer that I see online is doing, I'm just not there. This was an iterative process. Correct? How long have you been doing video, Darryl?

Darryl Praill: I've been doing video for decades. Literally decades, but you're right, iterative is the right word. Here's the question: Did I do video on social? When did I start doing video on social? I started doing video on social three years ago. So only on social have I been doing it. In social video or sales video, same thing. You've kind of got like a minute at a time, exact same premise. Before that I was doing the long form stuff. So video is huge and you only get added... you get better with practice, but here's the thing about video, and this is what kills me with sales reps. When you tell me, exactly your point, Ethan, that it's hard, not everybody can be Darryl or Ethan or what have you. And so it's a mindset. So you understand sales reps that, when it comes to selling, you're going to get rejection. You're going to get yelled at and you know that I need to have the right mindset for that rejection. How is it you can give yourself permission to have that mindset for rejection, but you won't give yourself permission to have the mindset for video. How much of this do you see Ethan, in people's heads? I've got to ask you that. Their reason for not doing it is, it's based on fear or concern, or insecurity. I mean, what do you see?

Ethan Beute: I think that's the vast majority. I think one problem is, when do I do it? What do I say? How long should it be? Something like the basic practical technical stuff. But I think the bigger problems, the one that you already spoke to, and I call this, especially, in terms of like simple, casual, conversational webcam videos, or smartphone videos, for the purpose of connecting or communicating with one or two or three people at a time, for that specific style of video, I often talk about the paradox of vulnerability and the paradox is that what makes this style of video so effective, that it is a little bit more casual, it is a little bit more conversational. It's not for thousands of anonymous viewers. It's just for one or two people. So that gives me permission to do some things I might not do in a mass video or high production video, or however you want to describe that. The reason the style of video is so effective, is the exact same reason that it's so difficult to get going with and that is vulnerability. It's this emotional exposure, it's this fear of judgment and rejection. So even kind of the bad- ass, type A BDRs and SDRs listening, you fear judgment and rejection, just the same as everybody else does. You may not experience it the exact same way, but that fear of judgment and rejection is deeply, deeply human. And so this idea of kind of dropping our guard a little bit and being more of who we are, relinquishing some of the control that we traditionally have over every single touch that we make, is uncomfortable for a lot of people. And so the answer to your question is yes, I think that is the biggest impediment to the growth of video, especially from the BDRSDRC, but really from any seat in any organization.

Darryl Praill: So how many are here right now, listening to the show, are going," Yeah, that's me." I've got a little bit of fear. I'm a little bit, I've got a persona I put on, shall we say, I may put on my mask because that's who I have to be, but my mask is really designed to protect me, right. To make sure I don't embarrass myself. I don't have a bad reputation because, heaven forbid if that should happen. I will share something with you, and Ethan nailed it. I get asked often," How is it that you have success on video, Darryl?" And it's so funny because Ethan and I, we've not compared notes before this show. This is a hundred percent live. And the answer I give people over and over again is, I use the word, I use two words, I use, I am transparent and I am vulnerable. So meaning, I am transparent with my issues. Yeah, I suck here. Yeah, I have a problem there. Yeah, I know I am at this level in the organization and you would think I have this knowledge and this skillset, but I don't and I need your help. And you see how I'm moving from transparency into vulnerability. I need your help. Vulnerability says I am prepared to be judged. So what's interesting about that, think about that for a second. How much of you live your daily lives saying, this is who I am as a person. I know many people will say, I'm gay, I'm trans, I love playing chess, whatever it might be. And any one of those situations opens yourself up for judgment, for mockery, for ridicule, for isolation. Yet we do that because that is who we are. We want people to like us. So that's like we're okay in our own skin doing that outside of the office, but when we get into the office, we're not okay doing that. Yet the reality is, it's the vulnerability, it's truly that vulnerability that makes people want to connect with you. It seems so counterintuitive. Ethan's nodding his head, yes. Have you had this conversation Ethan before with sales reps and what has their reaction been when you've said, just be more vulnerable?

Ethan Beute: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, personally, I'm very pleased at words like vulnerability, authenticity, these types of words that feel kind of soft to some people have bubbled up into popular mainstream business culture. I do think that this vulnerability that you talk about, a lot of people will react to the word itself, but I think when you get into it and describe it as you did, I think most people are willing to entertain that idea and say, Oh yeah, okay. I think I understand what is meant by this now. And I have experienced it. So manifest immediately in the context of what we're talking about, it's turning on your camera, seeing yourself and going, Oh, I don't know about this. And then recording the video and then watching it, even if it's only 25 seconds and ultimately spending 25 minutes doing a 25 second video, because you did it 25 times and played the entire video back and judged every single second of it over and over and over again, like you are your own harshest critic. And so that's what a discomfort in the face of emotional exposure is, that is your discomfort in vulnerability. But exactly as you said, Darryl, your ability to live in that and to honor it or to behave in the face of it. And we do it all the time, right? Brene Brown defines vulnerability as the feeling of a risk, uncertainty and emotional exposure, right. Risk, uncertainty and emotional exposure. So another way I kind of walk people through this is, think about your whole life, right? And so in a BDRSDR role, in sales in general, you typically have people that are competitive on average, right? And so at some point you went out to make the varsity team. And if you didn't make it, then you worked your tail off and made it the next year. And when you're on the varsity team or you're on the track and field team or whatever, you're going out for a personal record or a personal best, you know what, if you don't make it, you've told your friends you're going to break the record or all these things. Think about people that are in a committed relationship, when you propose to take that relationship to the next level, you opened yourself up, you faced risk, uncertainty and emotional exposure. If you have had a child and you find out you're going to have a child for the first time, when your first child is born, risk, uncertainty, emotional exposure, Oh my gosh, am I ready? This is transformative, et cetera. All of the best moments in our lives are defined by this quality. And so when we experience it in the context of something simple like this, which is, how can I generate more replies and responses? How can I let the people I'm reaching out to know that I've actually done the research and this isn't just like variable slug data into a personalized message, that this is a truly personal message where I'm going to reach out and use my full self to communicate to you that I see you, I hear you. I understand you. I appreciate you. I have an opportunity for you. And here's the next step, Would you like to talk about that? Right? So this idea that our whole life, all the best things are characterized by this. And yet we, in some chosen moments, like getting comfortable on video, which everyone I talk to who is deeply into it, including you, Darryl has said, this has been transformative to my career. And you might even say, I've heard this a number of times, this has been transformative for my life, right? I've had opportunities opened up to me. I've built relationships, like this, just getting comfortable on camera has changed my whole life. And so now when I broaden it out in that way, I think it further resonates with people.

Darryl Praill: Did I mention, folks, that Ethan is an author. And as you listen to what he just said, he, along with his co- author, Steve Patchinelly, authored the book, Rehumanize your Business. So you think if the discomfort thing is something he's winging, it's not. Check out the book, go and find it, read it. That's the first you should be doing, by the way. By now, you will have pulled Ethan up on LinkedIn, Ethan Beute at BombBomb, and you will be following him. I love what you had to say there, Ethan, about the whole idea about discomfort, meaning risk, uncertainty and emotional exposure. One of the things we do in our sales career is we face that every day, right, folks? When we're on the phone, we're sending emails. When we're recording our calls to hear how we sounded. People like gong and chorus, am I talking 45% of the time, or I'm talking 60% of the time. Am I talking 150 words a minute? Am I talking 80 words a minute. I'm using a lot of filler words or not filler words, did I miss opportunities? All of this is so that we can improve our performance, but you're heard Ethan say, have you played back a video of yourself to critique yourself? You'll do it on a sales call. Are you doing it with your videos? One of the things that people have come to associate with my videos and I was very intentional about this, is a stupid red curtain that's well lit behind me. That's part of a trademark. That's part of me making sure I set the stage. Are you setting the stage so you can have the most success? We have whole sales enablement teams to equip you. Make sure you have the skillsets. You go and read books and watch YouTube videos, whether it be Mark Hunter or Keenan or Tony Hughes or [ inaudible 00:16: 42 ] or Joanne Black or Deb Calvert, all because you want to get better. Are you getting better using video? Because it's one of the most important channels ever. We're going to go away for quick commercial break and when we come back, I'm going to hit Ethan up on a lot of fast and furious, rapid fire questions about how you can up your video game. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1: CRM was designed for managing relationships. Sales engagement is designed for starting them. Current stats indicate the sales reps only contact new leads about 50% of the time, make less than two attempts to contact them and are only about 35% productive. CRM is the wrong tool to engage sales prospects. Vanilla Soft is a sales engagement platform. It allows you to rapidly turn marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads. According to user reviews, Vanilla Soft will increase your pipeline and productivity by three times or more, blow your quota out of the water. How? By ensuring each new sales lead is engaged within seconds, persistently and with the cadence that is optimal for your prospects. Don't let your sales leads fall into a black hole. Take your lead engagement in sales qualification out of your CRM. Try Vanilla Soft for free at vanillasoft. com.

Darryl Praill: All right, rapid fire time here, Ethan. If I want to be better at video, what are the top three things I can do immediately? Go.

Ethan Beute: Practice, and by practice, I don't mean act like you're recording a video or record a video and don't send it. You have to record and send these videos and close that feedback loop, you're going to get replies and responses that validate it. You already mentioned a couple in your setup. Turn on as many lights as possible. Most problems I see from a technical standpoint around video, they just want more light. Like if you're having camera problems or anything, light will solve those things. And I guess the last one is, and you mentioned this one too, just pay attention to your background. We don't need to see an exercise bike and a basket of dirty laundry behind [ inaudible 00:18: 50 ], basically tidy, and it is okay to have personal effects. This invites conversation. This allows you to say things about yourself without saying them verbally. So just tidy to your background a little bit and make it easy to focus on you and your eyes, and your face because that's what the video is really all about.

Darryl Praill: True story, folks. The first thing I do whenever I hire anybody that is customer facing, whether they're in customer success, they're in support, they're in sales, pre- sales, solution engineer. It doesn't matter the role. If they're customer prospect facing, I get them a high- end webcam, I get them a high- end dynamic USB based mic, I get them a boom arm. They don't need to use it, but the whole point is, you want to sound good. So I would add a fourth one, which is, invest in the audio. And the reason for the high end webcam is so you don't look like you're a pixelated version of a 360P on YouTube when the internet bandwidth is really, really slow. And it sucks. You don't want that. Also, put the video camera at your eye or slightly higher. No one wants to look up your nostrils. Total trick, there you go. All right. So those are some of the best practices. How do I connect with my prospect who doesn't know me? And I've got maybe 60 seconds, 90 at the outside, to make an impression. So if that's the case, what do I do? My delivery, my message, my pace, my cadence, what? Go.

Ethan Beute: I would keep your initial touch under 40 seconds or less. You have a couple of goals. One is to put a face with the name. And the act of using video alone is completely differentiating at this point, because not enough people are doing it. And so the act alone, referring to other touches that you've made, whether it's third touching your sequence or your cadence, or whether it's the second one or the first one, refer to the other touch points to make it easier to connect you and your face and your name with those other touch points and reinforce the simple call to action. And this is the most important one of all, I guess, besides putting your face with the name, which is you're typically doing some basic research, and this is your opportunity to communicate that in a full way that cannot be faked. It can not be, you can't do it as a bot. You can't slug in variable data. You looking someone in the eye and communicating with some basic level of sincerity, and ideally some enthusiasm, that you're reaching out to them for a particular reason, with a particular opportunity. I don't, the goal is simply to generate a reply or to get someone to take you up on that initial, lightweight call to action. It's not to sell them the product or service. So I don't think that initial touch even needs to be 90 seconds long, unless you have an awesome personal story, that's really about them. And it kind of ties into this personalization or personal aspect, rather, personalization is not necessarily personal. So that'd be the only reason I would go long is if you have a really compelling, interesting, fun, highly relevant, highly personal thing to add to the message.

Darryl Praill: Oh, okay. A few things there because we hit up on sincerity and enthusiasm, which is, we began the whole conversation about coffee, having that energy-

Ethan Beute: If you're not sincere, by the way, don't use video.

Darryl Praill: I agree. Totally agree.

Ethan Beute: Because humans, like this is deep, deep human stuff. The same as our fear of judgment and rejection, like that would get us killed a thousand years ago. If we were judged and rejected by our people, we would die out in the desert or on the mountain side or wherever we live. And so, same thing here. We need to be really, really clear about what we're trying to do for people. And the sincerity behind that is something people can feel and when there's a discrepancy between our words and the meaning and the spirit behind the words, it comes through. Now, of course you have like FBI profilers and some of these other like hardcore interrogation people that are amazing, they highly attune their ability to read micro- expressions but all humans can read micro- expressions, something's off about that guy. I don't know about her, or man, I really like that guy, or man, she is just really on point. I really like everything I know about her in the first 10 seconds of meeting her, right? These are the little small judgements of integrity, I guess. Is it like word and deed, are they in sync? Is this person who they say they are? Are they who they portray themselves as? Do they actually mean what they're saying to me? And so if you are sincere, there's nothing better you can do than get on video because that'll come through loud and clear and humans get that at an intuitive level but if you're insincere, that will be revealed as well.

Darryl Praill: So what did Ethan just do there? He tied back what we talked about earlier, about, why would you not influence your likelihood of success? And he's saying, if you're sincere people pick up on those micro expressions and then they actually want to hear more from you and then they'll listen to the whole thing. So that brevity is important. But the other part he made, he had a call to action in there. The other part he talked most personalizing it, all right, so you have to personalize and there's lots of ways you can do it. I love bringing up, I do a screen share, split screen, me and whatever. And I have their LinkedIn profile up there or a blog or a post or a website or something and say, dude, I so love this about you and that's why I'm calling. So they see that there's a little bit of effort that has gone into that. Now the other day, I will admit to being flummoxed, when I had someone say to me, they were actually looking for the next job. And they're like, how do I get my next job? And it was a whole, it was a webinar. And we were taking Q and A. And I said, when you send your videos out to HR and hiring managers, I'm sorry, your emails out to say, Hey, hire me, you got to put video in. You've got to be part of a cadence. And their response back to me was, I'm not doing that. That's a gimmick, I'm better than that. And I was like, boom, are you stupid? I'm like, okay, Hey, if you like unemployment, then just keep on doing what you're doing. But I do hear that. I hear the word gimmick. So is it a gimmick? Is this a moment in time and then we won't be doing it anymore because we'll get tired of it? Like what?

Ethan Beute: It's a gimmick if you make it a gimmick. I think it certainly, it's new. I think that the standards and best practices aren't yet figured out. I mean, BombBomb has been at this for a decade now and we've seen, just even in the last three or four years, a lot of competition move into this space. So it's still a fast moving space. There aren't a lot of norms yet. And certainly, just like any other tool, right? You know this, whether it's email, whether it's CRM, whether it's some of these tools like SalesLoft or outreach, they can be used very, very effectively as a compliment to things that are going on, or they can be abused and they can be misused and they can leave people with a bad taste. And so I think if you approach it as a gimmick and the only thing you're looking for is attention, you're going to get exactly out of it, what you expect to get out of it. And really, that's going to be reflected in terms of what you put into it. The way we see it is, we believe in you. We believe that you, as a listener, you as a BDR or an SDR are your own best sales asset, right? You said it in the beginning, Darryl, it's all about influence, right? Whether you think about it in that term or not, you're looking to influence and persuade people, you're looking to connect and communicate more effectively. We know that we do this better in person. You already talked about some of the things you look for when you hire people and the way you equip them, which is just so smart. I see so many organizations fail to do what you already described, Darryl, which is, you hire these customer facing people for their ability to connect and communicate, essentially, to influence and persuade because of who they are and how they carry themselves and present themselves. And then most organizations are equipping them to sit behind a cloak of digital anonymity, behind faceless voicemails, behind faceless emails, behind faceless LinkedIn messages. A lot of it is automated and lacking some personality and lacking some personalization. And it's just a shame and so, if you see video as a way to lead with your best sales asset, and to equip your team to lead with who they are, then you're going to be in a position to make this a long- term add to the mix, right? Video doesn't take everything over. It's part of the mix. It belongs in there with your phone calls. It belongs in there with your LinkedIn messages. It belongs in there with your zoom calls. It belongs in there with all these other things that we're doing, whether you're using a gifting service, you're handwriting postcards, or notes or whatever you're doing, this belongs in the mix. And I think if you see it that way, it can be a long- term sustainable dramatic benefit to the way that your team is building relationships to the people who matter most to your success.

Darryl Praill: That's gold. Now how, many people listening, when Ethan said, SalesLoft or outreach said, Oh, screw them. It's all about Vanilla Soft. Vanilla Soft is a sales engagement platform you want, with the video you need. There we go. I love it. Last off, truly rapid fire. We're almost out of time here. Ethan, what are the right KPIs? How do I measure my success so I know my video is actually working for me, as opposed to against me?

Ethan Beute: Yeah. I mean, obviously, it's all the same things you're doing now and so if you are on the fence and you're kind of a non- believer and let's say you're running a team of six or 12 BDRs or SDRs. Pick a few of them that want to go down this road and just AB test it, take the emails that you're already using now, add some videos to them and look at the difference in, open rate, I don't think is the right metric, although it matters. And there's certainly some research that says, if you had the word video to a subject line it's more likely to be opened. I've seen some ridiculous numbers there. And I've seen some more realistic ones. When we analyze 20 million emails that came out of our platform, there's like a 12% open rate lift, but it really, it's in the video play rate is one to look at, for sure. Another really, really important one is reply and response rate. Certainly, that suggests not only did I experience you in person, but it was sufficiently compelling to reply. And we've seen increases in our reply and response rates. I would also add that that video play rate, any platform you're using should be able to tell you the video play duration. And so this is interesting, right? You can look at an open rate and say, Oh cool, 47% of people open this email, but did they open it for two seconds or did they open it and actually read it, right? Short of the reply you'll never know, but on a video situation you know that they watched on average, the 40 to 47% of the people who opened it, 41% of them played the video. And on average, they watched it 87% of the way through, right? And so these are things that let you know that you are creating something that we measure across our team accounts, which is face to face time. We think this matters. We think it's a transcendent metric because it captures all kind of the sub metrics roll up into the amount of face- to- face time at each of your reps in your team in general are creating with the people that you're trying to connect and communicate with. And so video play rate, response rate, video play duration, face- to- face timeless or handful.

Darryl Praill: There you go. It's been awesome. So video, right? It's all about the paradox of vulnerability, your emotional exposure, your fear of rejection, can all be channeled. Take that discomfort, recognize the risk, recognize the uncertainty, recognize the emotional exposure, and instead use it for influence. Use it to connect and engage with your prospect. You can measure how connected, how engaged they are with you based on what they do with it. You can see their intent based on how they look at it over and over again. There's so much you can do. It's all about your success. If you liked Ethan, he is with BombBomb. He is the King of video, been doing it forever. Check them out. bombbomb. com, B O M B B O M b. com. And if you like this, then you need to listen to his podcast, The Customer Experience Podcast. Finally, like I always like to say, follow him on LinkedIn. And if you haven't, you should follow this show and share it with all your friends and colleagues. Send this episode to them. It's a two for one. My name is Darryl Praill. We're done here, folks. We'll talk to you next week. You take care. Bye bye.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another episode of the INSIDE Inside Sales Podcast with your host, Darryl Praill. We hope you enjoyed the show. And if you did, we would greatly appreciate you taking a moment to leave us a review on the platform you're listening to the show from today. Also, please feel free to share this program with your friends and colleagues. Thank you. Darryl will be back again next week.