A New Way of Selling?
Whenever we make a purchase we are making a decision to buy a certain item or service instead of the competitor's item or service. The decision making process involves research into products and services that may solve the customer's problem, the ease of use of the product and the benefits it will bring.For small items like stationery or food the decision making process is short – we are familiar with these items, we know what they do and we probably already have a preference for a particular brand or style.
For larger and high value items, like cars, a house or a laser printer for an office the decision making process is more involved. The financial outlay is larger and we're expecting to be using these items for a long period of time, so naturally we do more research and try to find out everything we can about the alternatives on offer.In normal circumstances we'd visit car showrooms to have a look at the models they have, take a couple of test drives and probably go back and forth on our shortlist trying to decide which car to go for.We could even go back to showrooms to check out the make-or-break features such as the boot size, ease of putting the seats down or even the ease of changing driving position. If we were buying a house we'd have several viewings, possibly multiple viewings on the same day, and we'd have a face-to-face meeting with a mortgage advisor to find out our financial position.If we were buying a laser printer a copier we'd expect to be able to have a product demonstration at a showroom.
At the moment, we can't do any of these things, so technology has had to enable different ways of getting the same outcome, and video is a great way to do this. Pre-made videos, such as house tours and product demonstrations are one way of providing the information that customers want in a no-contact method, and video conferences are another way of addressing concerns and answering questions specific to each customer. These options may become so commonplace that customers expect to be able to do the majority of their research from the sofa, so it is worth investigating this avenue even if you expect that life will return to normal soon enough.
There is a time saving benefit to using video to provide product demonstrations and tours, because each customer will have the opportunity to answer their basic questions without taking up the time of your sales team. Those customers who then contact you for more information are essentially pre-qualifying themselves as warm leads without you having to lift a finger. If businesses can reduce the number of customer interactions that don't result in a sale, you will have a more productive sales team who have the time to spend with customers who do intend to make a purchase. They'll also be happier because they're more likely to make a sale and earn that commission with the customers who have already decided they like your product.
Your product demonstration should include 360o views of the product, as well as the operation of the main features. In a car demonstration you need to show how the seats go down in the back, what the lights look like, the driving position, the location of the airbag, what you see as a driver and many more views that potential customers will be interested in. You might decide to make multiple videos for your cars, with one aimed at parents (where you would demonstrate any hands-free features, such as a self-opening boot and how easy it is to put child seats in) and one aimed at professionals (where you might demonstrate where to hang a suit, the hands-free car phone or even well placed cup-holders for coffee on the go.
Life may be back to normal within a year or two, but people will have adapted to a more distanced way of doing business and making purchases, and the benefits to both business and customer mean that video will remain an important part of the sales process.
