Take Your Best Customer with You on Your Next Sales Call

Take Your Best Customer with You on Your Next Sales Call

Written By Jeffrey Gitomer
@GITOMER

KING OF SALES, The author of seventeen best-selling books including The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, and The Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude. His live coaching program, Sales Mastery, is available at gitomer.me.

 

Take your best customer with you on your next sales call.

Who is the most powerful member of your sales team? A satisfied customer.

They can outsell, outbrag, and out prove anyone in your company including the CEO. Why? They’re your testimonial. They are living proof your product or service is the best.

Want to take your best customers with you on a sales call? You can if you videotape their satisfaction. Sound too simple to be true? Well, there is a small hitch. It has to be a quality video. One that reflects your image, and one that tells your story in a scripted and meaningful way. A video with direction and style.

“We bring our prospects and customers to the awareness of the underlying theme and objective of using a video as part of a sales presentation: ‘What do you want to happen when the video is removed from the VCR?'” challenges Tim Butler, Vice President and Sales Manager at Sunbelt Video in Charlotte, NC,. “The answer to that question is the little-known secret of a successful video.”

“Too many businesses don’t know the elements of a successful video, or they make videos for the wrong reasons,” Butler adds. “Video will lead you to a sale, but it won’t make the sale that’s the job of the salesperson. There must be a smooth transition from ‘end of video’ to ‘next step in the sales cycle.’ Our success has come by making videos ‘on purpose’ ‘for a purpose’ ‘to achieve a predetermined objective.'”

You’ve heard the expression it’s the next best thing to being there. Well, a sales video may be the best thing to being there. Here’s why. Videos don’t forget. Videos never have a bad day and, videos always ask for the sale (if you tell them to). BUT the video is the message, the salesperson is the messenger. Both must be present for maximum results.

 

Selected production tips for making your video:

High quality is worth it spend the money to make it right.

The video is what you put in it you can create any message you want.

Less is more 58 minutes is optimum run time.

Before you begin yours, watch other peoples videos several get an idea of what you want and what you don’t want.

Make your video real. Be relaxed and animated.

Preselect which parts (sales segments) you want to include, and write a script before you start. And the biggest secret:  What is said about you is ten thousand times more powerful than you saying it. Let your satisfied customers tell as much of your story as you can.

 

Here’s another expression you’ve heard a picture is worth a thousand words here’s the 21st century version of that expression a video picture is worth a sale.

 

What’s a video worth? Ask yourself these four questions, and the answer becomes self-evident:

  1. How much is your image worth?
  2. What’s one new customer worth?
  3. What’s a consistent sales message worth?
  4. How much is a trained sales force worth?

 

I hear companies having budget fights about whether they should have a video sales tool or not. What a joke. A bunch of non-salespeople trying to dictate the future of the company, and omitting a vital tool that will carry them to success. It’s like saying “Let’s buy that big boat over there but, ah, let’s not get the engine, it costs too much.” DUH. If a video is not in your budget, gag (or fire) the bean counters, cut your own pay, or go into debt for it. It’s that valuable.

Take your best customer with you on your next sales call (take them on video).

Author’s note: I made my first sales video two years ago. It cost more money than I had. Over the last 24 months it has helped me make more sales than I could count. This year I’m making a new one, and spending four times more than I spent on the first one, that I couldn’t afford. And (thanks to my first video) this year, I can afford it.

 

Go to www.gitomer.com, click Access GitBit, register if you’re a first time user and enter the word “VIDEO” in the search box.