Leveraging Video To Close More Contracts

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Sara Nay: Welcome to the agency spark podcast. This is your host, Sarah Nay, and I have challenged my guests to take what they would share in typically about 20 to 30 minutes and shorten it down to their most impactful points. So you can walk away with actionable items and get back to your busy day. Today. I have Mike Moll founder of market me a consulting firm, focused on helping entrepreneurs and business owners connect with the businesses who need them. So welcome to the show, Mike,

Mike Moll: Thanks so much for having me, Sarah.

Sara Nay: Yeah, I'm excited. You're here. And the topic I wanna dive into with you today is leveraging video to flows more contracts. So the show is yours. Let's share some quick and powerful insights.

Mike Moll: Absolutely. All right. To dive in. The reason I, I love video is one, the level of personal connection required to sell in general, outside of just video. I mean, most people buy when they feel confident and comfortable in the person that they're engaged with, the person that they're buying from. People don't care about the features and of what your product is. And, and even so much you can present it as an outcome, but if they don't trust you to deliver that outcome, you're really not in a good place to close a contract. And what I find is when we get into these either in a boardroom or in a coffee shop, or now I guess most people on zoom that's when that relationship is being built. What I like to do by leveraging video is to actually introduce that process way earlier, because you could get through a bunch of emails through a bunch of different types of cold calling or outreach methods, running ads.

Mike Moll: And that's all great, but you don't know now until the second or third step, whether it's the discovery call or the sales call itself, if that trust. And if that, that credibility is, is being felt by the other person. So the reason I really like video is it allows people to vet you a little bit ahead of the time, right? If they see something from you, it's very personalized your energy and your, uh, vocabulary and the way that you present it is there. They can make that immediate decision on if, if they think they even like you, which can save you a ton of time in following up and chasing people down for meetings, et cetera. So I really like it, cuz yeah, it just creates that relationship ahead of time and helps save you time and energy down funnel when you could have been reaching out to more people that connect with you rather than having more conversations with people that don't,

Sara Nay: I bet you'll get into it, but I'd love to hear some components that you typically recommend, including in a video like this.

Mike Moll: Yeah, absolutely easiest way to do it. In my opinion, is, uh, a social media platform. The reason I suggest that is because it does have the direct video built into it, whether it be LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook. So it's, I don't know if you've ever seen a video or an audio message pop up on either of those two platforms, but it's essentially a big picture of whatever you, whatever face you started with and a play button. And what's interesting about that instead of using copy or, or text is that they can't skim through it and decide they don't wanna move forward. In all likelihood. If you're reaching out to somebody in a P in, in a position to make business decisions, they're getting out, they're getting outreach a ton. They're probably getting between emails and calls and all these different things. And, and LinkedIn has become a little bit of a mess with that kind of stuff lately.

Mike Moll: But I know for me as the owner of an agency, I get between 15 and 30 a week give or take, and it's a lot pitching all kinds of different services. So the differentiator of having a, a video pop up is a really big difference, cuz you, you almost have to press play. You almost have to find out what is this actually gonna be? Is this gonna be weird? Is it gonna be interesting? But instead of having it just be text where it's easy to skim through and decide I'm too busy, I don't really care. So it gives you a little bit more of an a bat. And the reason I like doing it on social is there's not as much risk of it being a virus or a scam. So if you send it via email, even if you use loom, which is a really great tool and you post the link to your loom and your email, it populates a little shot of what it is and a link, but people receiving emails for the first time or not as likely to open a link as we've all looked at those things saying, I don't know if this is , I don't know if this is legitimate or not.

Mike Moll: And so you wanna eliminate that by going straight to, and then in terms of the way, the two ways that I do it is depending on the type of service that you offer is I either go, uh, direct to the person that would be buying from me. So establishing if you've got a buyer persona already great, if not, something to look into who is the decision maker, if I'm going after the head of content or the VP of sales, you gotta figure out who you're trying to reach out to. The beautiful thing about a LinkedIn for example, is it is accurate to what people's current job titles are. And if you use tools like LinkedIn sales navigator, you can actually see if they were active in the last 90 days to, to see if they're even using their profiles. So you can really narrow down the people that you're gonna reach out to.

Mike Moll: And I, I really like LinkedIn. So the two ways are going direct to the person. So who is my buyer? Let's send them a video or the way that I actually prefer to do it is to send it out, to be able to create partnerships. So for me as a marketer, I don't really want to go one to one. I'd rather have an agency who doesn't offer my service, where I'm complimentary to what they already offer. So maybe branding and web, maybe their content and social, and they don't necessarily have the paid marketing side of things. So I reach out to bigger scale companies to say, Hey, if you wanna add this on as a product or service that you're, or you know, something that you're already doing, something that you can make more revenue from, and this might be a great fit. And so those are two, um, methods that you can use in terms of deciding who you're gonna reach out to.

Mike Moll: They obviously come with pros and cons, right? When you're going through another company, you're a little bit beholden to the way that they manage their customers, the way that they do things strategically, if you're very picky, or if you're not really aligned with them, it can be a bit of a problem. And then on the direct one, obviously it doesn't scale as well because you're just going, you know, one to one, but when those land, then they are yours and you can take charge on, uh, how you wanna run that account. Now your next question is gonna be, it's gonna be great. So I found these people and I know what I, I know who I wanna reach. So what do I actually say on these things? So I think there's three really important facets to this. Um, one is that you have to remember what your goal of the outreach looks like.

Mike Moll: So I think a lot of people jump the gun and they get really far ahead saying, Hey, we do all these things and this is how it works. And you should, you should be interested in our service, but the truth is this person has no idea who you are. You're just some random person who popped up in their inbox. So I think number one is setting the goal and that goal should just be to get them to the next step. And what is that? Typically it's a discovery call, uh, um, or just a next steps conversation. Maybe it's you sending them a, a, you know, video that explains what you do or a brochure, whatever the case may be. Just remember that all you're doing in that call is just selling them on the next step. So you wanna keep these videos pretty short between 40 seconds and a minute and 20 seconds, then all again, all you're trying to do is just get them to the next step.

Mike Moll: And then in terms of how I bring it up or so I, I, and I've sent several thousand of these. And my response rate is about 70%, which is pretty crazy. Now. Not all 70 are interested, but people do reach back out saying, oh my goodness, I can't believe you took the time. And you sent this video mine mind alone. It's not for me, but that's really cool, but still having 70% of your outreach come back to you and say something is, is pretty great. So here's the six things that I do when I'm doing a video. So number one is just be friendly, right? Address them by their name. Thank them for connecting. If it's on social or thank them for watching the video, then what I'd like to do is I like to disarm the situation because typically somebody receiving all this type of outreach are used to people just trying to force a sale down their throat right away.

Mike Moll: So I like to say, I'm sure you get a ton of automated messages or different messages like this. And so I want it to stand out by sending video and often that's what people will respond to. They're like, yeah, this actually really did stand out. This video is really, and then what you wanna do is you wanna tell them that you understand little bit about their company, so that you've done a bit of research. Now you don't have to go super far down the rabbit hole, but you should know that what you're offering to them is something that they need. So I usually say, I know that you offer X service, or I know that you are involved in selling this type of thing just as a, a preference. Are they the right person to be speaking to? You're just validating to them that you, you have looked them up in what they offer.

Mike Moll: And then the next thing is obviously what you can actually do to help give like a one to two sentence synopsis. We help businesses like yours, or we insert the industry or insert the type of product. We help them generate more leads. We help them increase their Shopify sales. We help them lower their cost per acquisition, whatever the case may be. But again, just a one to two sentence explaining very specifically what you do. And then that's all the content about you and your product and service you're now, uh, fo solely focused on them. So the last two pieces of this are giving the am a reason to say yes to the next call. For me, it's usually about I we've got experience in this field and what we can typically offer is, um, we make most of our customers really happy, or we have great relationships with our customers and they tend to be really happy to work with us.

Mike Moll: So that's just that, that credibility piece, you're not gonna drop any statistics. You're not gonna bring in a test, but just say, Hey, we have done this before. People trust us to do this. And the final thing you wanna do is you wanna ask them for a meeting. And when I, the reason I say ask is because people don't like being told what to do, none of us do we go into this rebellious state when someone tries to tell us what we need to be doing, even as adults, I think it happens to me anyway. So this whole idea of trying to close, Hey, are you available at this time? Or this time, or being really forceful with telling them they need to talk to, I think is the wrong answer. Um, everyone has their, their thoughts and opinions on it, but I like to say, Hey, I'd love to hear back from you. If you think this is a great fit, I'd love to continue the conversation. So you you're giving them the autonomy to say whether, and it could be, I don't think this is a good fit, which you can then answer again and ask more questions on, but it just gives them, um, the permission and, and the autonomy to make that decision for themselves. And if they wanna actually continue that conversation,

Sara Nay: I love it so valuable. I took a bunch of notes in that short time talking, but to summarize, in a nutshell, it comes down to, it sounds like focusing on social, identifying your personas or who you're actually gonna target, and then recording your videos, following the very valuable kind of steps that you outline there. So I really appreciate you sharing everything today. Mike, if people wanna connect with you online, besides sending you a video on LinkedIn, where can they find you? Yeah.

Mike Moll: Uh, I'm probably the most active on Instagram, uh, at the Mike mall. Or you could find me on, uh, LinkedIn as well at Mike mall. Awesome.

Sara Nay: I appreciate it. Thank you all for listening to the agency spark podcast. This is your host, Sarah, you see you next time!

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