Transcript
Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teamsâŚteams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams.
Today is a momentous occasion for this podcast. It is our 100th episode. It takes three to get to the top 10%, I think, or so of podcasts globally and 20 or so to get to the top five. Right. The numbers, the bars are pretty low, but we have got to 100. And I am stoked and very grateful for those that are listening and the support weâve had along the way. But what I thought Iâd do today for a little celebration around these first 100 episodes is put together some of the best of and this episode is going to have three of my favorite guests coming on board to share some of the really memorable moments that I think weâve had along the journey.
Iâm going to jump straight into it because these guests are far more worthwhile hearing than I am. So letâs start with episode 49, which is Steve Plummer. Steve Plummer is an Australian based copywriter, incredibly intelligent man and unbelievably good with his words. In fact, we jump into this episode where we start to talk about words being spells. I was captivated. I hope you were listening too. Iâm going to throw straight into Steve Plummer from episode 49.
Ben Wright:
Youâve got this great one liner that I actually think will sum that up. I don't want to ruin it, because if I say it, I'll get it wrong. Can you share it? I think it really shows why you're good at what you do.
Steve Plummer:
Yeah, words are spells. Words are spells. And I think, oh, now this guy's really woo woo. Yeah, okay, fair enough. But it actually has a very pragmatic application in the real world. And what I mean by words are spells, is the words that we say to ourselves in our head. They create our reality. Right? If you are saying, oh, I'm down, I feel sick, I'm unwell, what are you going to get? Your energy is going to be low, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Whereas the opposite is also true. So I challenge everyone. If words are spells in your life, what are you spelling into your life? Starts with yourself, with your partner, with your kids, with your staff, with your clients, with your prospects. What words are you using to create the spells, if you like, to create success. So words are spells and that might be the only woo woo place we go to today, Ben. But it's a good start, right?
Ben Wright:
So when I first heard that, the first thing I thought once I got to an application at a professional level for salespeople was, we've all had them as Sales Leaders. We've had those people in our team that Just share too many words. They talk too much, they oversell, they open up an avenue of conversation that they probably shouldn't. In particular, I've seen salespeople quite regularly, actually try and talk about the problems their company has had and how they solved them proactively to try and get it out of the way. As if it'll help them move through that sales process, right? Which I think is a dangerous, dangerous track. But the word as spells piece, it comes down to not just how you use your words, but it also comes down to how many words you use, whether it's too little or too many. And I've seen you present, you're very good on stage at using your words to storytell in particular. But that's not something, that's not a skill that everyone has. So today, it's something I want to talk about, is we'll call it loosely copywriting. But I think more specifically, let's call it using your words as spells, right. Because you do get what you focus on. So I'd love to know a little bit more today, or we're going to focus on how that can be really impactful for Sales Leaders. So let's start on the negative side, right? Only for a minute. Then we'll go back to being positive. So what are some of the mistakes that you see businesses, and in particular Sales Leaders, making when they're writing their copy?
Steve Plummer:
Okay, so the key thing, I think, is that copywriting is about structure. It's not about being a good writer. Because here's the thing. You mentioned copywriting versus sales. All copywriting is salesmanship in print, right? That's an age-old saying. So really, they are exactly the same thing. They're just using a different media. One's on paper or on a screen, and the other one's face to face. Exactly the same thing. Right? And so the key thing for me and a lot of good salespeople can be good and are good copywriters, right. It's almost like verbally just saying what you would say to a client and putting it down and editing it, right. You could get something transcribed, and that could be a damn good blog post or a damn good sales script or whatever it might be. But it's important that the structure is right. And there are many formulae in copywriting to structure your argument. And I see it very much as a mental block for many people, too, Ben. They go, oh, I wasn't very good at English at school. I'm not a good writer, therefore. And that's the wrong words to spell, because here's the thing, right? 80% of what you'd learned in school in terms of writing, you can throw that out when it comes to the sales language, because we're taught in school to write to get a good grade. Now, the only good grade we get in business is whether we make the sale or not. Right? And so it's about learning those, I guess, the fundamentals, but also the structure of using words. And a good example you gave is that verbal diarrhea? And often the verbal diarrhea when you say too much, it's more about a self worth thing, if anything. You might get nervous. And I keep talking, because if I keep talking, but if I don't do that, then I've got some problems. And silence is a really powerful tool as well.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Could you call silence using your words? You almost could. Right. It's actually, it's not using them, certainly. And I think the piece you touched on there that really jumped on me is that copywriting, a lot of salespeople ago, I don't need to know how to copyright when it's actually critical, because it's the written equivalent, like you said, of your communication that you have face to face or on video or whoever else you're communicating with your customers. Right. So mistakes you're seeing, what are your top couple of mistakes you think you're seeing from sales leaders and salespeople around their copy?
Steve Plummer:
Yeah. Okay. I think the big one, it's probably not anyone's fault specifically, because you don't know unless you know or have been shown. But there was a study done, I think, in the early nineties from memory, of the top 100 most successful newspaper ads of all time. And what the people who did the study was, they pulled out the words from each of those successful ads and they compiled a list. And it's always fascinating to me that when I put this in front of Marketers and Businesses, they don't know it, because if you can add one of those words, it can often boost the power of a headline. So I'll tell you, I've got this next to my computer just because it's a trigger for me. Right. So the top words to use in a headline are, you and your, how, new, who, money, now, people, want, why. Now? If you've got a headline or a subject line, if you weave in the word you or your it changes it instantly or it makes it more personal. And yet people don't know that. And it's not the be all and end all. It's not a magic bullet. Nothing ever is in marketing and sales, as everyone would know. Sorry to burst the bubble, but there are no magic bullets, right? If there was, I would have found it by now. But even adding one or two of those trigger words can make a massive difference to how a headline lands on something, how a sales pitch lands on someone.
I'll read them out again. You, your, they're the two most powerful, they appeared the most number of times within those powerful headlines. How, new, who, money. If we're talking B2B instead of money, we'd say profit. That's a trigger word for business owners. Now, people, want and why. Now I try and weave a couple of those into most headlines that I write and then certainly into subject lines as well, if I can.
Ben Wright:
Well, I've just written them down. So for those who are listening, if you didn't get the chance to write those down, wonderful thing about podcasts, we can pause and rewind, go back and listen to those because that absolutely is going to extend into sales email headlines, it's going to extend into the first lines of emails. It's going to end into your social media posting we're doing. Text messages. A lot of salespeople use text messages. Right. So there's that there. And I'm going to actually extend that and say it will probably even work in your face to face engagements. Right. Those buzzwords, whether you hear them or read them, they still have the same impact. Great. Terrific. Right? So call that the anti mistake. It's use those words rather than don't use those words. I like it. So I'm going to start using them, Steve and, I'm going to tag you first post I do.
Steve Plummer:
Let me put a little nuance on that, see where you can use those words. Right. That's my default position. Of all the tens of thousands of words I've written, my default position is to start with that list and where can I use them in? So it's a nuanced thing, but I'd really encourage you. It's really good advice, Ben, I think.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, fantastic. Well, that is what this podcast is about. Chunky, real world, practical advice that's going to work for people. Okay. So let's say you're engaged with a company, a marketing team, or a sales team. Doesn't matter. What's the process that you go through when you're writing any type of content for a client?
Steve Plummer:
Yeah, Ben, look, the place I start is always with the customer. If you don't get to know them, their wants, their needs, their frustrations, their desires, their unspoken desires. If you don't start with that, I find the focus too much, just almost subconsciously is on the business and the product, and everyone sells product price. Right. That's kind of really surface level stuff. So my focus is always starting with the customer. And then I would look at the, I guess, the maturity of the market. So if I'm writing a headline for iPhones, I've just got to say iPhones 10% off. Why? Because iPhones are known, right. That there's no education needed. But not every business. In fact, most businesses are not Apple and iPhones. So depending on the maturity of the market, will also determine what is said in your copy, in your headline, and so forth. So, yeah, always start with the customer or the market and the maturity level or the stage of development of that market. They're probably the two key things.
Now, I'll flip that around. I'll go then to the end. So I do my research. I understand who I'm writing to. The first thing I will write is, then the offer. And that's kind of a little bit counterintuitive. And the reason I do that, if I start at the headline, that the offer can often determine what goes in the headline. So I want to be clear in my sales argument where I'm going. So once I've done all my research and stuff, it is very much the offer where I start, and then I go back and do whatever I feel like at the time. And that's the key thing, too, right? Copy is not written like a story. Once upon a time, the end. Copy is assembled. It doesn't have to be linear. And in fact, it probably shouldn't be linear because you should be chunking things down. And that's like, I start with the offer, then I go to the headline, then I might do the opening if I'm doing a sales package.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. We are not that dissimilar. I work off hook impact. So what's the hook? What's the impact that hook is going to have? What's your solution? And then what's your call to action? Right. Four things. Okay. So what I'm hearing from you is you start with the customer, and sometimes people roll their eyes. We put the customer first, I hear often tell me, âMr. Smith, why is your business so successful?â âWell, then we're passionate and we put the customer firstâ. And I sit there and go, awesome. But tell me now why you're successful. Because every business says that. But in practice, putting the customer first is really difficult. But what you're saying is actually thinking about the customer from your first engagement. That's super impactful. And I agree. And it's also very hard to do. It's a trained habit. Right? Training is knowledge sharing, but coaching is knowledge enhancement. And you really need to coach that into people. And the second piece you're talking about is you start with the offer. So if you're a Sales Leader, what's a couple of tips you could give to them right now? A couple of practical, chunky tips you could give them that will help them write great copy. And by copy, we're talking about sales communication, right? What's a couple of tips you have, Steve?
So we moved pretty quickly from Steve into a whole lot of different podcasts over the next 10 episodes or so before we got onto a man named Akeem Shannon, who is the owner of Flipstik. And Akeem really expanded on something that Steve had touched on, which was storytelling. And Akeem being a really, really exceptional presenter and someone who had had lots of experience pitching to investors in the big end of town, had some great perspectives around storytelling, which weâre going to jump into right now so we can hear about Akeemâs perspective on how we can tell great stories.
Ben Wright:
It is so common for people that I meet with, and I work with a huge number of salespeople, sales teams, entrepreneurs. But to hear them having that moment in time where they realised they had an idea and they wanted to bring it to life, and it became a real pivotal moment for them in their life, where they actually changed everything. I've certainly been on that path or along that journey for me, in the businesses that I've had. But I love speaking to people who have also had that moment in time, because what has ended up as a result is that they've really doubled down into what they do and become experts at it.
So when we talk about Flipstik, you spoke about creating content, and I think I heard the word stories somewhere in those last few minutes. That's what we want to talk about today. And I think you are as well equipped as anyone that I've had on the show previously to talk about storytelling. Because you actually sell a product, your business embodies everything about storytelling. So tell me, please, for you, what does storytelling mean to you, and how did it help you with Shark Tank, with Snoop? With all those other type of big pitches that you've had to make.
Akeem Shannon:
You know, I think a lot of times when we think about sales, right, we're always thinking about, okay, well, let me talk about the features. Let me talk about the problems that it's going to solve for people. And sometimes we get so caught up in the technical aspects of why something is meant for someone that we forget the human connection there. And the human connection is the story behind the products. That is really just about, okay, well, what happens in someone's life when this variable changes? And I think, for me, prior to starting Flipstik, I had been in sales. I was actually the top sales rep at two Fortune 500 companies. So I'd always been good at sales, but I didn't know why. It just came natural to me. I like talking to people, so it always kind of just worked out in my favour. But when I started at Flipstik, the first thing that I went out to do to sell the product is I had a kiosk at our local mall, and I would stop every person that I saw and say, hey, have you heard of Flipstik? Because I knew they hadn't heard of Flipstik, right. So I knew that was an easy one to get. And then I'll present to ask them stories about their lives. What do you do? Do you have kids? You go on vacation? Do you watch videos? Do you use your phone to watch videos? And they start telling about their lives, and I start telling about what that story of their life would look like with a Flipstik.
Remember last Christmas when you wanted everyone in the photo, but grandma wasn't in the photo because she was taking the photo? Well, now that won't happen anymore. Now the story is going to be different. And I was able to sell Flipstik's one-to-one. And I thought at the time, yeah, I'm telling people a story about how their life will be different with the product, and that's why they're buying the product. But what I didn't realise was that that wasn't the only story that they were buying into, because, see, they were also buying into my story because they were seeing, here's this kid stopping me in the mall. It's Christmas. I'm just trying to get my shopping done, but he's really trying to go and do something. He has a pretty cool idea. And so, yeah, I'm buying this because I think it may work for me, but I'm also buying this because I want to be a part of his story, and I want to see where his story goes. And when I first started Flipstik, I didn't realise the power of that story, which I like to call. What is your founding story? Why did you get started doing whatever it is that you're doing? But that is a very powerful story. And I remember the first time I applied to be on Shark Tank. 40,000 people apply to get on the US version of Shark Tank every year. And out of 40,000, only 120 people get on the show each year. And so I went, I applied. I wasn't even a year into my business. I got down past 40,000, down past 10,000. It was the final 250 people. And I just knew, I'm like, I'm getting on the show, it's going to happen. I'm in here. And they called me up and they said, Akeem, you're not going to be on the show. We decided to go in another direction. And I was devastated. It really hurt me. And I didn't know, know. I thought the product was great. I thought it was fun. But what I didn't realise then, that I'd realise later when I would actually get on the show, is that there was no Story there. I was just telling them, here is the product. Here's the product. Here's the product. But people invest in people and they invest in a Story. And so when I was able to come back the next year, well, now there was a totally different story. It wasn't just that, hey, here's a product that allows you to stick your phone to surfaces. Now, it was, here's a kid who tried to get on Shark Tank, didn't make it onto the show, then convinced Sean Diddy Combs, via a rap, yes, a rap pitch, to invest into his business and buy product. Then he invited him to LA, then he convinced Snoop Dogg to be part of the product. And Snoop Dogg called Shark Tank and was like, you got to get this kid on Shark Tank. And now here, this kid comes with this great product, but he went through all these hoops in order to get right back here. That's a great story.
And that's a story we want to be a part of that. We want to help propel forward into the stratosphere. And so once I started to realise, like, wow, yes, there's the story of the product and what it can do in someone's life, but there's also the story of why I'm here. And some people may buy it because of the product, but some people may buy it because of me and because of what they see that I'm doing. And that was like the first time I realized the power of that story, it wouldn't be the last, and it wouldn't be even the most profound story. But it really went to show me that that human connection that you create with people is far more important than any set of features that are out there. And that's why, when you see Apple advertise their product, it's never about, oh, here's the battery life, and here's how loud it is, and here's how large the screen is, and here's the pixel density of the screen. They're not talking about that, right? They tell you the story about how a man was hiking in the mountains, and he'd lost signal for his phone. He was another country. He had no signal, and he had a little bit of battery life. He left. And then he remembered his iPhone had a feature called SOS that could connect directly to the satellites. And he makes a phone call, and that phone saves his life. 99.99% of people never going to be in that situation. That applies to practically no one. Yet. I remember the commercial, and so does everyone else who saw it, because they think about, wow, what if my loved one was in that situation? What if I was in that situation? What if it was my kid, my grandmother? I'd want them to have this phone, and Apple knows that. And they're master at storytelling. And they really showed me the piece that I was missing in the beginning. When I first started telling stories to make sales for Flipstik, it was always about why we got started, why I did it. Here's my journey. But the real powerful moment that came out for us is when we started using those customer stories, because then people really connected because they saw themselves in other customers.
Ben Wright:
So powerful. The art of storytelling. I talk a lot about presence with salespeople. So that's having presence in front of a customer. You can be the best technical, most diligent, most convincing person on this planet. But if you don't connect with the other side of the table or the phone or the video call or the other side of the world, as we're doing now, then these salespeople, they don't cut through. And when you don't cut through and build that relationship, you don't actually generate sales. A common response that I get, a really common response around storytelling is, Ben, I just don't have it. And we take you, for example. You present well. You've got a great personal story. You've got the hair, you've got the confidence. You've got everything about you to get in front of someone and say, here's my story, listen up. And quite commonly I'll get the response that says, I just don't have that in my Persona. I'm just not likable like Akeem or whoever it may be. And to an extent I understand that. But I look at it more that they haven't trained themselves to become really good at stories. It's like riding a bike. No one knew how to ride a bike when you first started that. No one knew how to sell a product, no one knew how to write, no one knew how to talk, no one knew a lot of things in this world. So when you're working with your team members around stories, what do you do to help them become better at telling stories and engaging with people?
Akeem Shannon:
Yeah, I often like to equate it to a movie trailer. I'm like, everyone knows we've seen movie trailers. The trailer is incredible. We go see the movie, itâs terrible. Okay, but why are trailers great? Why do trailers make almost every movie seem incredible? It's like you have to take all of the excitement and the sadness and the fast paced moments and the slow paced moments and the love and the joy and the hurt and the pain, and you got to pack it all into two minutes, 2 hours worth of story, tell it in two minutes.
And I think that when you do that, when you take all that content and you put it in something really tight, a really small package, it's very hard not to tell a good story. It's very difficult. And I think that if more people looked at their case studies as story studies, where instead of it being, hey, let me tell you how we went in and this person did this and this is how it changed. If instead you wipe that off and you just started talking about who are these people whose lives were changed because their chance encounter with you and the product or service that you sell and how it was different, to me, it becomes a lot easier to tell that story. And I'll give you a quick example. I was running not even a sales training, it was a pitch training. And this gentleman had a product, and this product was an innovation for doctors and nurses, for stethoscopes. And he starts talking about the stethoscope and it's technical and it has all these features and it's better and it's more compact, you can take it places. And he goes through this whole thing and the audience is there and I'm like, okay, that's cool. And I said, why did you create this stethoscope? And the first thing out of his mouth, he's like, well, my colleague almost died because she got strangled by a regular stethoscope. The whole crowd went, what? And I was like, wait a minute. Where was that story? That's what I want to hear about, because I had no idea that the doctors are getting strangled by stethoscopes.
And you just told me you created this after that happened. If you start off telling me anything about this product, I'm not a doctor. I could care less about this product. But if you start off telling me the story of what it was like, turned out he was an ER nurse. He's an emergency nurse. And I was like, if you tell me what it was like in that emergency room that night when that moment happened and the way you felt in that moment when you saw your colleague almost lose their life from a tool that's supposed to save people's life and how that inspired you to create a product. Now, it doesn't matter what I know or what I do. I believe in that product already just because the story you told me of how you came to the concept of it. And so here you have a guy, right, who. Not a storyteller, right? He's in the medical field, really not what he does. But I'm like, just because you're not a storyteller doesn't mean you don't have stories to tell. And you got a story to tell. And I think for each person, it really just comes down to identifying what the good stories are that they have to tell, because everyone can tell you that story about their butt, their college buddy, and the crazy thing they did on their honeymoon or the trouble they got into with their sibling when they were young. And they get animated and they get excited and they're reliving the experience. And that's really what you want to create when you're having these sales story conversations, it's got to have that same emotion and that same feeling. Like I said, like it's a movie trailer. Because if you don't have that, if you're not interested, if it's not exciting, the person on the other end is definitely going to sense the fact that it's just not genuine, right? And they're not going to listen from the jump.
Ben Wright:
And last but not least is Nick Capozzi. Nick is a terrific man. I really enjoy listening to Nick. He has this tone and this pitch in his voice that is just so easy to listen to. Heâs a man based out of Phoenix, Arizona, and has had some terrific experience around not just sales, but also the art of videos and in essence, using words as spells and telling stories. Both Steve and Akeemâs messages through the art of video.
So weâre going to jump in and listen to Nick. Itâs a great little section here from Nickâs podcast that I really enjoyed myself as well. So happy listening as we flow into Nick Capozzi
Ben Wright:
Yeah, a great saying that I heard from, actually Akeem Shannon, who I interviewed. He owns Flipstik. So recently we spoke around storytelling, and not everyone's necessarily good at storytelling, but everyone has stories to tell, and I think that encapsulates that really nicely. So today we're going to talk about video, but before we do. So, I think it's worth rewinding, certainly, to let's pick a time five years ago and having a look at how we've connected socially in very different ways since that mark of, say, five years ago. So what have you seen? Change in how we're actually connecting as individuals, as peers, and as businesses over that journey.
Nick Capozzi:
So I think what's interesting is that when I say I was in luxury goods, I was actually in the cruise business, because my territory was the Caribbean and it was such a multicultural crew. I remember one Royal Caribbean ship I was on, there was more than 100 different nationalities represented in the crew. So we had this kind of global mindset. I had less friends in Canada, where I grew up, and more friends in Johannesburg or Serbia just because of I spent so long. That's where my people were. And when Zoom happened, when the pandemic happened and we all jumped to Zoom. I think the rest of the world caught up to a way of thinking that I already had was there are no borders anymore, at least in terms of doing business and building relationships and meeting new people. And I'll tell you, as a guy who, you know, generally made a lot of great friends internationally over all those years, some of the friends I've made in the last three, four years from LinkedIn, post pandemic, when everyone was just scrambling to figure out, you know, what we're all doing together, have really become some of my closest friends, truly. And, you know, if I can, at 47, be making new friends because of the Internet, as weird as that sounds, you know, that tells me, what are the business opportunities? What are the opportunities to engage people cross culturally, cross border? Growing up in Canada, that's very in our wheelhouse, but I think the rest of the world is just catching up to that opportunity.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, well, from people who have evolved in the era of dial up to now, everything that's come from that, I think that is a really nice point to say. Even I'm 41, you're 47. The way we're embracing tech and how we actually engage outside of the traditional certainly says that it's achievable for so many. And to quote Derek Zoolander, you've chosen to be really, really good at video. Why video? What made you jump into that?
Nick Capozzi:
I always thought as a kid I was going to work in radio, like at eight years old, I thought I was going to be a hockey play by play commentator. I thought that was my future. And all through high school, that's what I did was to get into this one radio program. So I think I always had that media lens that I looked through. And then when I got to cruise ships. So my first cruise ship was in 2000. And if you cruised in North America in 2000, you had three television stations on the in cabin television. One was CNN International, which Americans weren't watching. Second was ESPN de Portes, which was just soccer in Spanish. So the Americans weren't watching. And the last thing was this sizzle reel channel for these brands. So we were a media company working on the cruise ship, and these brands paid for this product placement. But the thing was, the videos were terrible. So my second contract, I went down with a camcorder and I started filming all my own content. And I went from getting 150 people to my presentations to like a thousand. And what I did was I took advantage of the cultural norm for Americans, or, you know, North Americans, which is hey, I'm getting dressed or I'm getting out of the shop. Let me turn the tv on. That's just very part of the culture. So there was no other channels except, you know, boring news or soccer. So they're like, oh, let me watch this guy. What's he talking about? And when I started doing that, my sales numbers went insane. So everyone was like, Nick, what are you doing different?
And what I was doing was what we would call DemandGen today, I was doing by creating demand with these videos. So I always saw that opportunity. The second thing I did was I had to build a personal brand, because if you're going to cruise in the winter and you're coming from somewhere cold in North America, you're thinking, okay, if I'm thinking about the ship first, the port second, the food third. But if I am going to think about a revenue department, it's going to be the cool ones, the casino or the spa, not the duty free shopping. So we had to use guerrilla marketing techniques all over the ship in the first 18 hours to drive as many people to these presentations as possible. And then they were in your wheelhouse, and then you could work with them through the rest of the week. But we were not an interesting department, so we had to create awareness with video and with omnipresence. And the way that I replicate that now in tech, there's two ways. Whether I'm selling for Splice Video, almost every single outbound I have, I send out has a loom video of me with a customised message to the recipient, because it's faster for me to do that in a video than it is to type up the email. And then the other thing is, you know, when we first started Splice Video, I'll never forget this, I had a conversion rate optimisation CEO come to me, and he said, Nick, you can't help me. And I said, why? He said, because everyone in my space is on LinkedIn. And I said, that's interesting. I said, okay, give me your top ten competitors. I'll never forget this. He gave me seven, and I did a Loom video screen recording. And I went LinkedIn business page by LinkedIn business page of his competitors. No post, no video. No post, no video. No post, no video. So what I realiSed was he was drinking his own algorithmic Kool Aid because of who he follows and who he connects to, who he's connected to, the algorithm thinks he needs to see everything In conversion optimisation. The reality is very little there. And the more we dug into this, the more we were showing these people like, there was one gap in cybersecurity. We said, you can take over cybersecurity in six months as a daily news show on YouTube, if you're consistent with content. So we kept finding these gaps because most businesses aren't great at using the Internet for marketing, or all they're doing is gatekeeping with, you know, paid ads, Google and stuff. But with cookies changing, at least in North America, that's changed a lot. So people are scrambling. And the reality is, social media was always treated as, let's give it to the intern. But the reality is, is that so many companies, and B2C is the example I take from this, they're building their funnel with social media, with organic social media. So long answer to your question. But, you know, I think there's so many ways, from a sales or marketing perspective, to leverage video today in ways that people just aren't thinking about.
Ben Wright:
What I'm hearing come out loud and clear is a level of personalisation is possible in video, that it's not necessarily possible elsewhere. So we talk about Loom videos, and I'm a big proponent of that as well. Big proponent.
Nick Capozzi:
We can definitely talk about that, but, and let's circle back to that, because what I think the answer is, I think people are either they don't know what to talk about, or they're intimidated to actually click record. And what do I look like and how do I sound? I realised most of my job for my clients this year was just kind of making it easy for them to get in front of a camera, as opposed to me thinking, well, wait, I'm used to this, right? Just flip the camera, just go. So I think the biggest barrier to entry is yourself. And, you know, you and I have talked about video, and I say a couple key things. I say light yourself with natural lighting. So stand in your kitchen with your iPhone. If you have a bay window in your kitchen and look into your phone and have the sunlight coming in through your kitchen window, and look how good you look. That's the best you're gonna look. Natural lighting from a kitchen window is gonna make you look as good as possible. So start with good lighting. If you feel you look good, you're gonna be more comfortable. And then the other thing is, I think people, when it comes to video, they wanna get everything out there. And what I always encourage people to do is just give little tidbits, little actual insights. What are things I can do to stop this video and go and apply immediately right now, that's where I got traction. And people I've worked with have, using that similar model, gotten traction. But back to the personalisation, there is no question. I don't know, you know, in the rest of the world, but I think email is very quickly dying, at least from a sales. My emails, no matter. I get a new email address and I'm full of spam within three weeks, four weeks. So I think personalised video to the point where even in the subject line of an email, I'll put in brackets personal video now in B2B tech. You know, North America, people have been seeing that for two, three years, but so many businesses, people have never seen that. If I was selling cars, I would be sending a personalised video to everyone who just left. Right. I think especially in business to consumer, there's so much more opportunity with video. We just see hip companies selling with social. But there's all these gaps where you can take over and be a massive influence, you know, giving actual insights or other tips and tricks that buyer is ultimately looking for.
Ben Wright:
You hit on something really important for me that I communicate around when I'm talking to sales teams, and that's that there is a huge untapped potential around video, Video selling, video communications, whatever you want to call it, in both, I think, the b two B2B two c space. And for me, it actually comes back to people not being comfortable on video. So what happens is that sales teams, sales people, sales leaders are encouraging all the traditional forms of contact over video because it's easier, it's more comfortable, which means that there's nowhere near the amount of video out in the market that it could be. So to your prospects, your customers, your partners, they're not seeing this very often. And it's not because they don't want to. It's not because people don't recognize how great video can be. It's because they're not comfortable. They don't understand how to do it, and they're not practice in getting it out there. And for me, I think that will change in time. Certainly with businesses like Splice Video around, it will. Can I ask if we really simplify the complex here, what do you think of the key benefits from a sales relationship point of view for using video?
Nick Capozzi:
It's humanising. So the first thing is, if someone sends me a video and in bracket it says personal video, how do I not watch that? Truly, right? Like, I think there's, on a human level, when someone has gone to that much effort, even in a sales function, it's hard to not watch it. So then they'll watch it. And because I did it with Loom, I have no affiliation with Loom. It's just my favourite tool. It'll track how much of that video they watch. So do they watch the first 22%, or did they watch the whole thing? Because that's going to change my next step in the sequence. So that humanising element, the second thing. This is a great story. I learned this, actually from Zoe Hartsfield, who's a great influencer on LinkedIn in sales and marketing. And she used to work at a company called Bombbomb, which is a competitor for Loom and Vidyard. And what she did was she gave me this tip. She said, hey, listen, if you're having trouble holding meetings, do a quick little video in between and see what results you get. So I did that. I was VP of sales for a company at that time. And what was happening, we were selling to doctors, and they were coming in by Instagram through our funnel for this tech for doctors. And what was happening was it was attached to their personal emails because it was on Instagram. So their work email was not getting the meeting hold. So our hold rate was 42%. So that means of 100 people booking a meeting, 42 showed up. What I did 48 hours in advance. âHey, doctor Ben, it's Nick from blank. I'm super excited to talk to you at 09:00 a.m. Eastern on Thursday about our company. Just want to let you know, if you have any questions in advance, just go ahead and let me know. I'll make sure we cover those. Otherwise, I'll see you Thursday at 09:00 a.m.â Our hold rate went from 42% to over 80%. We were doubling our bites at the Apple by this twelve-second video that I did literally 48 hours in advance. Because once they saw that video, one, they remembered. Two, I confirmed the time, but three, they saw me, and then they were like, how do I now No Show this guy⌠changed everything. And then finally, what was also happening was maybe ten or 15% of them, anecdotally, were replying with their questions, right? So now I went from, this is a semi-warm lead because they saw some videos on Instagram, and now they're coming into our funnel to, oh, my God, this saved me, you know, 50% of my discovery time, and I can go in with all this new information and really tailor it to what they're looking to do. So just one example.
Oh, here's another great example. This is one of my favorites. Again, because I use Loom, I can track how many individual users, I always send a proposal recap. So Ben, if I'm sending you a proposal, it's all there, beautiful on the PDF, but I'm gonna send a quick 45 second video. Hey Ben, I'm just including this video just to do a very high level of what we talked about and what's in this PDF. Boom, boom, boom, 60 seconds just to recap. And if you have any questions, let me know. I once went viral inside a company. I had 40 individual users watch that recap video. So what happened now was I multi-threaded with people I didn't know I needed to multithread with, because now all these people are watching this video and they're like, oh, this makes sense. Oh, I get it. So do we close that deal? Absolutely. But it just shows the power of, never mind just the day-to-day incremental wins by video, but when something takes off, it really takes off and can change the whole dynamic of an entire deal.
Ben Wright:
I think you've hit two of the most topical areas around selling at the moment that teams are challenging to work through. One is how do you get to the explosion of decision makers that are involved in deals or projects? The number of decision-makers involved has doubled since pre-COVID times. How do you also then get out to those decision-makers? So we now have more decision-makers who are needing more touchpoints before they make a decision. That has also doubled. So pre-COVID, we're talking two to three decision-makers and five to six touch points, 15 or so touch points in total. Post-COVID, we're talking five to seven decision makers and eleven to 13 touch points. So we're talking 50. Right. A three times growth in how often you need to be getting out to people. So the use of video, the example around the doctor's surgery, what that's doing is that's building a relationship quickly, so it's actually starting the relationship before you get in the door. The second area, your needs analysis work, is becoming easier to cut through and to get a real answer, a real need, a real problem, a real opportunity, because you're using video to give the other side time to think about their considered answer and time to trust you. And the third one, the cross-threading piece. Diaries are closely watched these days. People don't let you in, different. I've got a great guerrilla marketing tactic that I use at trade shows, but certainly in the general day-to-day business world, it's hard to get diary time. So everything you're doing there through the cross-threading priest is if that video can just get out to the five or six decision-makers, forget going forward.
Nick Capozzi:
I'll even say, hey, this 22-second video explains why. So not only like I wasn't even getting the press play, I was like, I only need 26 seconds of your time and I'll update you on all this. But what I used to do for the multi-threading, or I still do, I would do either a stock persona-based video or I'll still customise it and I'll say, âHey Ben, I noticed you're the CFO at ben.com.. You know, I've been talking to HR, but these are the top three things that CFO's when procuring are tech usually ask, I'm just going to send this to you.
Just, it's 26 seconds. Just give you a highlight of like the three most common questions might be helpful.â
Ben Wright:
Absolutely. It's always helpful. So, you know, again, it depends on where you are as a seasoned seller in your company too, right? Do I actually know how to read where I'm at in the process? Like, I'll tell you this, now that I've been in tech for three, three and a half years, I feel like at 47, I never sold properly before because they're so process driven, which is amazing because you can bring that process to other businesses. We're talking about the top 1% of businesses use process like tech. However, that also creates an opportunity for if everyone is zigging how to zag, right. And how to be different. And I'll tell you, there's hyper-personalisation of an email works. I have a friend of mine, he made, I'm going to tell you how much he made, but he made a lot of money last year and all he did was send ten emails a day. But they were beautiful, right? âHey, Ben, you know, I'm reaching out. I had to reach out because I saw this article linked where you said this and it got me thinking this. And then I thought, what about that?â The open rates, insane. The reply rates, insane. Now, this doesn't work for every company, right? Listen, there's lots of people that, you know, it's a volume game or one hyper-personalisation. If I'm trying to get in touch with one person, if it's an account based strategy or whatever it is, the more personalised you get, the better it is. And it doesn't take long. Google someone's name, right? Google someone's name and their company and then click news. âOh, Ben, I saw you had an article in Forbes, Ben, I saw you on this podcast I had to listen.â So and again listen, this is interesting. Let's take a quick side note because I'm originally Canadian and authenticity is very important to me. And you know when I was on cruise ships, how could I connect with the cruise guests because I was there selling something, right they're headed to the buffet. How do I slow them down, right so I would find interesting things about what they were wearing or something about them and I would just start a conversation, right genuine things, right like if they were wearing, you know I'm a Carlton fan now in the AFL because you sent me that jersey. But if they were wearing a Sydney Swans jumper, okay, I cant say wow, that's a beautiful jumper. I can't say that. But I could make a joke, a little tongue in cheek joke about oh it was great last year when my club beat your club. Right but finding those connection points, that was table stakes on cruise ships because again there were so many other departments vying for your attention plus the fact they were on vacation. You really had to get in front of people but in clever creative ways and was always hyper-personalisation. And what's so interesting now as I look back at all these things we do, these processes in tech, we did them on cruise ships. We just called them different things. So it's just interesting watching that continue to evolve.
Ben Wright:
So Nick, we love the creative on this podcast, but there's one thing on this podcast that we love even more and that's real world practical and chunky advice. So if you had to pick your top five things that you could suggest to people to get them forward, moving along that journey towards becoming really, really good at video, what would they be?
Nick Capozzi:
So I'm going to make this easy for your audience, Ben. I'm going to put all five into one exercise that you can do in 90 minutes on a Saturday morning to see if you like this. So the first thing is I'm going to say, Ben, what do you want to talk about? You want to talk about x? So that's step one. Just having an idea of what you want to talk about. And to be clear, when it comes to making video, you don't have to be an expert. If you're a new salesperson who's never sold, if you're coming from working at, you know, Hungry Jacks, if you're working Hungry Jacks and you have your first sales job, someone wants to read the story of you learning how to sell because there's a million other people new to sales across the globe. So wherever you are, there's an audience for you. But step one, what do you want to talk about? So, Ben, if I asked you, could you talk about footy for 30 minutes? Is that something you could talk about?
Ben Wright:
You could be confident. The answer is yes. Yes.
Nick Capozzi:
Okay, so the step two is, I'm going to say talk about that for 30 minutes, put on a timer, open up a word document and click dictate. Just talk into the screen, but talk for 30 minutes about footy. And then what I want you to do is I want you to take that list. Step three, I want you to take that list and start finding some short, unique, interesting thoughts. Because when you do this exercise, you're going to say, you know what? In every training, I always say this. Okay? So let's take that 15 to 45-second thought. And now we're going to put it on a teleprompter app, which is step four. I have no affiliation, but I love BigVu. B I G V U, tv. There's a free version, I think I pay $9 a month without the watermark. And on my laptop, I'm now going to take those actual insights, those little ideas from step three. I'm going to take them, put them into the web version, and then I'm going to push that to my phone. It's very easy to do this. So I'm four steps in. What do I want to talk about? How to actually get it into a document and start finding those little actual insights, those little nuggets of gold. Now we are pulling them out and we're putting them into BIGVU. Actually, this is six steps. Sorry. The next step is going to be now actually getting in front of the camera with BIGVU. And the beautiful thing about BIGVU is when you look at the camera, the way that it's placed on the screen, the words, your eyes don't look like they're moving. So now all you do is just talk at that actual insight. âHey, you know, Ben, every time that I cook salmon, I always cook it in a cast iron skillet because the iron gives me a uniform heat. Crispiest salmon skin you've ever had. So I'll take the fillet, olive oil and salt both sides, skin side down first for three minutes, flip for three minutes, take it off for three minutes. Let it rest. Best salmon you've ever hadâ. That's an 18 second actual insight. That's a video. That's one tip on how to cook salmon. So now we've got that in BIGVU. I'm going to record and I'm going to say that exact thing and then I'm just going to export it as a video and it's done. It's that simple.
So step one, what do you want to talk about? Step two, dictate it into a Word document. Step three, start finding those actual insights. You're going to have eight pages of single space copy from a 30 minutes brain ideation. The next step is put it on BIGVU, record it and then export it and you've got a video that is ready to go. The best tip I can give someone, I already gave it to kitchen window, natural lighting and then frame yourself. So what you want, ideally is kind of your torso and shoulders. You want to have a little, you know, maybe five to 10% of the screen on either side from your shoulders and then just from navel up and then the same type of distance above your head. You really want to crowd that screen. You want people are standing at the back, you want to be in the screen. And it's okay to use body language and talk, but having that teleprompter as a North Star is going to make you comfortable with dictating the text. And then eventually you won't need that anymore. But it's that easy. If you did that consistently for an hour a week, once you got into a rhythm, you're going to have, you know, two to three to four videos a week. You can drop across social and position yourself as a subject matter expert, which you already are. You're just highlighting it to the world.
Ben Wright:
Love it. So there's a little bit of beginner stuff in there around framing, sound, lighting. Excellent to get you started. Then there's a little bit more around how you actually go about pulling that content out that you already have, the stories that are there to tell and making it a little bit easier for you to actually.
Okay, thatâs a wrap. I really hope you enjoyed the best of for our 100th episode, they were three fantastic guests who if you look back through episode 49 for Steve Plummer, episode 58 for Akeem Shannon, and episode 59 for Nick Capozzi, you can find more details about them, but I hope you enjoyed today, our 100th episode. Weâre planning on another hundred more so buckle up, itâs going to be a great ride and please keep living in a world of possibility and youâll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.
E100 Our Top 3 Episodes Re-packaged into the Best of the Best podcast
