How to Warm Up Cold Sales Leads with Video

As a salesperson, persistence is your greatest strength — especially when it comes to converting leads who simply need a nudge in the right direction. That said, persistence can only get you so far if you can’t get a lead to warm up to the conversation. But, don’t worry! Even if they’ve become a little well … cold, and you’ve already contacted them five (or 48!) times, we’ve got some creative and attention-grabbing tips to help you to turn up the heat in your sales process.

Reasons why leads go cold

Leads can become unresponsive for many reasons, and it’s important to try and learn more about why they’re dropping off — before you blast them with more cold communication. Here are a few reasons we think leads drop off, sorted from the top of the funnel to bottom:

• Interested: They got busy and forgot
• Considering: Follow-up wasn’t fast or frequently enough
• Considering: They don’t know where to start
• Deciding: They’re considering your competitors

When it comes to these drop-off points, it can be hard to gather data on exactly why they’re unresponsive, which makes it even harder to know what to do in the future. (Talk about cold!) That said, we believe in you, and we’ve got a few clues to look for in your CRM that can help you pinpoint patterns. Start here — with both cold leads and contacts you’ve closed:

1. Look at all of your conversational touch points.
2. See how long it’s been between contact.
3. Review the notes you have from your last conversation in detail.

This will take a bit of work, but you should be able to see a pattern between what actions seem to be losing leads, and what’s keeping them nice and cozy in your pipeline. And it’s this information that’ll help you make more strategic communication plans for the future.

Ways to unforgettably re-engage

Now that you’ve identified when leads are dropping off, here are some examples of how you can use video to address the common reasons for going cold:

Break through the “busy”

As we touched on earlier, if a lead doesn’t make it past the introduction stage, they may not be dismissing you — they’re probably just super busy. (Can you relate?) With that in mind, it’s a good idea to think of new ways that you can stand out in their inbox. Thanks to the data in your CRM, and your deep knowledge of your industry, you should already have an idea of their day-to-day responsibilities. So, use that to your advantage! Don’t be afraid to scour the Internet to research news on their company to inform your communication. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to stalk their social media profiles, but public news surrounding a recent company acquisition, title change, or general industry updates are all great ways to make a more personalized connection.

Check out this video from Katie on our Sales team. She uses a personalized message to help re-engage a cold lead.

Once you’ve figured out a topic, it’s easy to email this directly to the prospect, or even message them on LinkedIn, if that’s your jam. Just make sure the message is quick, personal, and targeted; leave the intense sales pitch for later. The goal here is to be warm, friendly, and personable to catch their attention before they drift off like a flurry of snowflakes.

Follow up faster

Once a new lead has given you their contact info, whether it was through your website, a referral, or an in-person meeting, you need to follow up — and fast. In your next contact, try leaving them a video voicemail. After a positive initial contact, a friendly follow-up video will maintain momentum and move the sale along. And to make the process even faster, you could set up some automation and workflows to ensure new leads aren’t slipping through the cracks into the chilly world outside your pipeline. To automate the process, as soon as you enter a contact into your CRM, you can schedule a prerecorded video voicemail to go out. This can be a short greeting saying how excited you are to work together and maybe includes a couple of facts about yourself for good measure. Now, making one video to send to a lot of leads might be less personalized than filming a new video every time, but we still think it’s a good way to make a big impact if you have a limited amount of time.

So, why should you send a video instead of a regular email? So glad you asked! Video voicemails encourage action more than voice calls and even image-heavy emails. In fact, when we tested video in sales emails, we found the presence of a video thumbnail increased click-through rates by at least 25%. Pretty cool, huh?

Generally speaking, unexpected sales calls can be disruptive, and long-winded emails create more work for your prospect. So, when you add to a lead’s to-do list, it can seem like even more work for them to send a response. That’s why watching a video makes a follow-up message seem less like a chore. It may take days or weeks to convert someone, but with a consistent follow-up engine working for you, you can regularly stay top-of-mind for your most promising leads.

Set up a starting point

Now that you’re beyond initial contact, if a lead was once enthusiastic but is now procrastinating on making a decision, it might be because they simply don’t know where to start. So, if you find that your leads have a ton of questions, a personalized sales video can help. Take note of all of their questions and put together a short, scripted demo to send later.

At Wistia, we use Soapbox to film brief walk-throughs of our product while highlighting important features — and our friendly faces. Here’s an example:

If you want to showcase your product, Soapbox videos are especially helpful because you can maintain the personal touch of a face-to-face interaction, even with a recording, while still showcasing functionality.

But it’s not enough to simply make these videos. You also have to make sure you’re sending them in a timely manner — benefiting your team in the short term, and creating a resource for your customer to watch over and over again when it’s convenient for them.

Clear up confusion

If your leads have questions about your product, then you know they have questions about how you compare to the competition. To clear up the confusion, and highlight how your company will help solve their problems, you can use video to create a product comparison. Now, these shouldn’t be used to put down other companies, but to clear up common confusion between companies and benefits. If you know a lead is considering other solutions or has mentioned your competitors in the past, address their considerations head-on and make sure you address their confusion in the video.

In this post, Phil from our team discusses key differences between Wistia and YouTube in an informative way. Watch both of the videos to see how he highlights what makes our company shine. When you give a balanced explanation (like Phil’s) without negative judgment, you help build trust with your potential customers. Plus, clarifying what makes your product unique will set you up for higher quality conversions, too, because when they choose you despite a balanced analysis, you know you’ve won them over for good.

Personalized communication is the key

At the end of the day, those chilly leads might not be cold at all; they were just waiting for the right communication and personal attention to bring ‘em back around. And the more interactions you have with lost leads, the more you can learn about how to improve your funnel. By listening to what went wrong, you can learn how to make it right for all of your future customers — talk about a warm and friendly way to approach sales!