What is SDR Video Prospecting? with Chet Lovegren (Episode 111)

Chris Schwager 0:38

Hello, Video Marketing Professionals are welcome to the podcast that takes the mystery out of producing videos. I'm your host, Chris Schwager. And today our guest is Chet Lovegren from Los Angeles. He's the Director of Sales Development at Pavilion, which is a career enablement platform designed to help go-to-market teams with top talent provide skill, training, certification and career support. He also has his own show the Sales RX Podcast, which provides education for people looking to remedy their revenue problems. Chet's going to tell us how his Sales Development Representatives or SDR's are getting amazing results using videos in the prospecting phase of their business. And so I'm super, super excited to get some hacks that we can use in our business. So to give us more insights, here's our chat with Chet Lovegren.

Chris Schwager 1:31
All right, big guy. Tell me about yourself.

Chet Lovegren 1:33
I've been a sales professional for almost a decade now. Also, the last three years I've kind of spent in sales management was always kind of a full cycle rep. So when I actually jumped into software in 2019, it was kind of weird to me that there was this role called SDR. And I was an account executive, which was somebody responsible for closing deals. I said, Well, what's an SDR? And they're like, oh, that's the person that does all the outreach for you and books, the appointment. And I said, all the stuff I was doing before, I was walking door to door, knocking on doors, cold calling people, cold emailing them, sending them brochures, that's done for me now? Like, I just get people that want to talk about what I can do for them? And they're like, Yeah, that's what a sales development rep is. That's in your SDR and I'm like, Okay, well, this is great. But what do I do with these, you know, six years of sales experience where I've been a full cycle rep. And I've been doing all that top of funnel stuff, and I didn't have marketing to rely on it. I was out there, you know, pounding the streets and hitting the pavement, knocking on doors. So what made me really successful as an individual contributor was I continued doing that stuff. And more importantly, I found other things that worked, which was for me, video.

Chet Lovegren 2:30
Video was a big part of my sales process as an individual contributor was something that was really important to me, because I noticed there was a big gap after presentations or demos, when you would send a proposal or you would send pricing or you would send some sort of presentation template, and you would get ghosted. Now, there were things I could do in discovery that would help prevent that from happening. But more importantly, I noticed that I was sending these presentations or these decks that have these immaculate, awesome looking marketing branded decks, with, hey, here are your three problems. And this is how we can help and all these other things about us and the relationship we can have with this company. And there was nothing behind it.

Chet Lovegren 3:08
And so I realized that, you know, PowerPoints were never meant to be shared and not narrated. So I started implementing video into every part of my process, whether it was a brief introduction after my SDR handed off the opportunity for that initial discovery call, just sending an introduction of myself, and highlighting the agenda to an after discovery follow up video, to after the demo, sending over that presentation in that pricing with a canned five minute video, canned meaning like I had a basic scripting outline that I followed, but kind of highlighting, Hey, these are the three products that are going to help this this and this problem. This is how they work. This is the timeline that we talked about, this is the ongoing support. And this is some high level pricing and information for you to take back to your board to talk about what it would look like for next steps. And so what I really found as an individual contributor was video was kind of the way.

Chet Lovegren 3:52
Then 2020 hits, you got higher response rates, you know, like people were more receptive to that. They saw the legwork that you were doing. And more importantly, it's the telephone game, right? If you're evaluating a tool for your boss, 90% of what I tell you is out of your ear in the first 24 hours. And so after we meet, it's maybe a week or two before you're actually going to get to talk to someone about our tool and how to implement it. And this that the other. That's why most people are by repeat buyers, because a VP of sales had a sales, head of operations, wherever you are, if you're a decision maker, you're very prone to not buy a new product you haven't seen or don't know of before. So why companies like Salesforce or huge outreach drift, because they're well known companies and people like oh, yeah, I know that works, whether they've seen it or not.

Chet Lovegren 4:35
So when you are a company that has little brand recognition, or you know, you're you're not one of the Fortune 500 companies of the world, it's really important for you to give something that deletes the telephone game, right? He said that she said that he said that she said that he said, and so now when they're furnishing that to their boss, it's a digestible five minute overview of all the legwork we've done up to that point. And it also shows that hey, everybody else just sent me the paper this guy actually made via video, he went in depth, he branded it, he took the time, that's probably the type of support and care I'm gonna get when I'm paying these people a lot of money for their product. And so it just helped you get more buy in and also, succinctly send the information and make sure that the information was not only heard, but understood.

Chris Schwager 5:15
How did you get to this revelation that video was the thing? Was it incremental? Was it something you'd test and tried? Or did somebody tell you about it? Because obviously, for us, it's been a bit of both. Transforming and going all in on video has been the best thing that we've ever done for our sales processes. Where did you get? I mean, you obviously started a lot earlier than the whole lockdown. You know, when?

Chet Lovegren 5:39
Yeah. It was it was when I started doing software, and I started doing online demos, when I started selling globally. I sold locally for a really long time. So I'm in the Southern California area. For the majority of my sales career I sold locally. You know, it was it was here, right. And it was something where you had to meet in person, maybe a digital signature or something, but it was all local. It was in your area, it was in office visits, all that kind of stuff.

Chet Lovegren 6:02
In 2019, I started working in software, that's when we were able to talk to companies in Atlanta, New York, Honduras, like wherever, right? I could talk to somebody in Beijing, if I wanted to, well, you weren't in office and everything was over GoToMeeting or Zoom, those were the two video platforms that we use. And I found myself just as about to practice sending people full copies of the demos that we would walk through. And then I realized like, is somebody really going to rewatch that Our Demo that we just did? Or do they maybe want to see the highlights? So then I spent, I started spending a lot of time just clipping the pieces that I thought were most relevant. And so now I'm sending an email with three video clips. And then I'm like, but what if I could condense it even further? So I went from one hour demos that I was sending over video, or I'm sorry, over email, packaging up, putting it into one drive having to share the one drive like they have to download it, super clunky, to three 6 (min) maybe 10 minute clips. Now we went from an hour to 30 minutes. To them, I said, what if I just condensed that down into like a mini presentation? Because I know they're not the decision maker. In most cases, I know they're going to their boss. Or their boss isn't even going to give me maybe 10 minutes of their time. So how do I get that down to five minutes. And then was kind of hey, take that, take that presentation template and package up basically the recap instead of doing it via email, do it in a video with the presentation slides, do it in less than five minutes and fire that off.

Chet Lovegren 7:20
And so it was that constant experimentation, which even now, I still do. But it was that constant experimentation that finally led me to the well love like, here we go now drink from this well, because everybody's responding to you. People are asking you questions after the demo. People are wanting to jump on calls, not just to talk about pricing, and what can you do for me on the pricing. But more importantly, well, hey, you call this this and this out. Explain that a little bit more for us, or hey, my boss has some questions, can we hop on a call? Instead of just getting the ghosting, right? Where they just don't respond because you sent them a massive thing that they haven't digested. Nobody wants to take the time to do that

Chris Schwager 7:56
People wanting more volumes of smaller shorter touch points.

Chet Lovegren 8:01
I think that's important too. Like, it's like podcasts too. When my podcast, one of the best parts of my podcast when I released it, are the clips that I put on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram. I get a ton of traction for those, I probably get more collectively in terms of views and traction and impressions on those, that I do on the episode as a whole. Like my podcast is not, I get 300 to 500 downloads at most, at most. That's not a lot.

Chris Schwager 8:27
Per month right?

Chet Lovegren 8:29
Per episode.

Chris Schwager 8:30
Yep.

Chet Lovegren 8:30
So on LinkedIn, if I post a clip, one clip, I can get 14,000 impressions in one day. So that is way more powerful to me. And you kind of have to be looking for my podcast, or already following it or a part of it or know where I'm at in order to like get the updates on the new episodes and find me. On LinkedIn, if one person likes it, that goes to their network as well, especially if the content is ranked higher. So similar concept in sales, right? Micro doses of content, shorter amounts, shorter bits, but make those bits very intentional. Make them very valuable.

Chris Schwager 9:02
How prevalent are you on LinkedIn in terms of InMail outreach and, you know, the stigma, I guess is attached to LinkedIn inmail outreach at the moment is ridiculous, except that it still works, right? And it is a numbers game. And what we've noticed over the years has been those messages that were say four years ago, multiple paragraphs, and now we're getting down to single sentence, and I'm almost thinking Jesus Christ, some of these things need to go to emojis because honestly, people, people sniff out the bullshit. And they can they can sense them pretty quickly if it's kind of like this automated, spammy kind of approach.

Chris Schwager 9:11
Is that what you've seen as well is kind of like people just don't have time to do shit anymore. They just don't want to. They don't want to read and play the silly game and waste time is kind of what I'm seeing. Is that the same for you?

Chet Lovegren 19:00
Yes. Like Daniel H pink says, and to sell his human right, he says time is a resource that everybody has very little love. And when you're asking for someone to take a meeting or asking them, if they're interested in learning more, you're asking them to part with a resource with the potential promise of them being better off in the end. So it's really important to hit that reward. So like I call it action by association. I also use it an objection handling. Oh, I'm busy. That's fantastic. I love talking to people that are busy. You know why? Because if you're busy, that means you probably have a lot of customers, if you have a lot of customers, that means you're probably making cash. If you have cash, you're gonna pay your bills, right? Like, in most cases, unless our product sucks, and you want to cancel your contract. It's not normal, but I love busy customers, just because you're busy doesn't mean we shouldn't talk. If anything, it's a reason to continue talking.

Chet Lovegren 10:41
So same situation, it's like you got to highlight that reward in your LinkedIn message. And the problem, the real problem is that probably 70% of inmails are automated spam bots of some sort that are pitching you a product that's probably not even relative to you. So are irrelevant, I should say. So now when you have people that are actually reaching out to people that with relevant products, like if I had something that could help level up your podcast game, right? You have a podcast, you have a great looking podcast, you have great video content, that would be relevant for you. But if I'm just like spamming you about something that helps you get more leads through this, this and this. You're like, I don't even live on that chain. I mean, I don't even use that channel. That's 70% of the message out there.

Chris Schwager 11:22
SEO

Chet Lovegren 11:22
that's the problem is now. It's kind of it's exactly, it's kind of destroyed it. It's kind of destroyed LinkedIn messaging for everyone. So now that there are integrations on LinkedIn, with video, I always tell people when you're prospecting, so when you're at the top of the funnel, and you're reaching out to an account as an SDR, and you find the persona of the person you want to talk to, first step you should always do in your sequence is add them on LinkedIn.

Chet Lovegren 11:31
There's a huge conversation about do you. Do you add a note? Do you just do a blank fire? I actually find that blank firing is the best people are just like, okay, yeah, let's just do it.

Chris Schwager 11:54
I don't want to read the, I don't want to have to Oh,

Chet Lovegren 11:59
yeah. There's no relevance

Chris Schwager 12:01
and most people would connect, right? Like, even if they don't see lots of cases, I think this whole thing around connections, like, well, I'll build my contacts for you. And I'll look like I'm increasing my, my connections. They're not so much that particularly where they were, like, very few, I mean, I've had one in 100, that would say to me, I don't connect with people that I don't think you're gonna be right for my, for my contacts, you know. But apart from that, most people will go Yeah,

Chet Lovegren 12:31
it's a it's like the new Twitter, everybody wants more followers and more followers, the second you connect with someone, they're an automatic follower. And everybody wants that, you know. The only the only group of people where I've seen they respond better to the added notes, when you're talking about relevant value, are CEOs. And CEOs of like Series B companies in hire. That's the only because because if you look at most, their LinkedIn, they have less than, like 2000 connections, they are a very select group of people. VPs of sales COOs, b2b SaaS companies, digital ad companies, like media sales, all those, like the majority of who's actually interacting with one another on LinkedIn. They'll just accept that.

Chris Schwager 13:06
It's a catch 22 though. I mean, like, you know, it's funny, because people complain about the spammy inmail stuff, but they're the ones that have actually accepted the connection. That's ironic, you know, anytime. And it's very rare that anybody has a has a whinge to us but you know, this looks like automated spam. And it's not one of our biggest outreach campaigns that we actually do. So it is a successful strategy for us, the odd person, every once in a while, will pipe up and say, oh, you know, what's this? Like? You think after four, four messages that you'd, you'd get the, you'd get the picture that I'm not interested in sight? Yeah. But we've also had people spend 10s of 1000s of dollars after the fourth message. It's like, this is prospecting. And this is sales like what are you meant to do? You know, so.

Chris Schwager 13:56
But anyway, I didn't have a real question that attached to that, but I guess I just wanted to, like illustrate the point that people make a connection that they are vulnerable to, people wanting to communicate with them and rightly so. Right. Like whether it's spam or not like it's, that's that's its function, so accept or don't accept or ignore or whatever is up to you.

Chet Lovegren 14:15
And not interested. Okay, did ya? You could have easily said no, thank you.

Chris Schwager 14:19
Yeah, that's right.

Chet Lovegren 14:20
Like and then if I keep going after it, it's like, okay, now you're kind of a-hole.

Chris Schwager 14:22
Yeah, exactly right.

Chet Lovegren 14:24
Leave me alone. Like I told you, no thanks. Be polite about it, right? But if I send you a four messages or three emails, it's like it's super easy. Even with LinkedIn half the time it suggests text underneath for quick responses. It kind of reads what's being said and it's like, no thanks or not now. It's like it's not that hard. You press one button same with email, Google, you can respond no thanks. Yes, right. It's already a canned response on there. Easy peasy. Great. You can click the unsubscribe button, but no we choose not to do it. I think it's our just our human nature that we want to be chased a little bit whether we want it or not, like we kind of are like yeah, keep chasing me. Let me see all your sales stuff. What are you doing? How are you targeting me? Are you going to win me over? Ever like I think it's just human nature a little bit that people that's why they don't say no, they like a backup plan to, you know, they might use something similar to what we're talking about, maybe they're not interested now but they like knowing that that option is always available and when they say no, that option is then off the table they're not chased anymore.

Chris Schwager 15:14
It's a such a interesting thing that in Australia very few people are really doing very well at this and they just can't get the concept really, or have the process in place to be able to do it consistently. We've been doing for like four years, we've done great business from from LinkedIn outreaches and do you consider that point of connection with or without the note in mail message that you might send from time to time? What we do is thank you for liking and sharing our post. These are all really great areas for people just to respond and to be part of it. I'm just interested in your thoughts do you consider these you know, like, touch points in your in your process? Like are these part of do these sit inside the process

Chet Lovegren 16:00
in LinkedIn, there's two things that work the best for us, but you have to be connected with someone for it to work. First one, do the video, share your screen you're on the person's profile. That's that's the that's one of the big ones right? I was sick last weekend woke up today had a little bit of a you know, stuffy nose, I messaged you to just say hey, like, do I sound okay, everything good. And you've messaged me back because I was on your LinkedIn profile. When I did the video and I sent it. You're like, wow, I thought you're gonna like review my LinkedIn or something like that. Like that was really cool. Right beyond LinkedIn, what's what's really eye catching? Right? If if somebody's messaging you and the first thing that you see is your LinkedIn exactly what the heck is yes, you know,

Chris Schwager 16:37
that caught my attention. I gotta say it caught my attention, but it left me disappointed. I was like, Ah, I thought he was gonna give me some feedback. Like, you know, always welcome feedback. Like, Hey, man, your profile picture looks awesome, bro. But I didn't get any of that. So but No, on the whole, the activity absolutely worked.

Chet Lovegren 16:53
And then well, and then the second one is LinkedIn voicemails. Which are highly underused. And they're great, because there's no preview, everybody's gonna click. And that's the same for video, right? You see a little preview of something everybody's gonna click your video anyway, because they don't get a lot of videos. That's why it works. It's a pattern interrupt. But the LinkedIn voicemail, there's no audio preview, it's just a blue. It's just a big blue bar with a white button. You click it. You listen to it. Easy peasy. The only caveat I have is that you can't do it on desktop. You got to do it with a device.

Chris Schwager 17:24
LinkedIn is LinkedIn. Right? As everybody knows, it has its limitations. But we respond to new connections with like a three to four second. "Hey, is thanks for connecting. Have a great week." That's all we do. And people respond to that. And oh, wow, I didn't even know LinkedIn had voice, mail or whatever. So yeah, like, it's the littlest things that if you just did it regularly, you did, you'd get more attention, I think. And I think these are the tools that are in front of us. But a lot of people don't know that they exist. So therefore, they're not really doing anything unique or different.

Chris Schwager 18:02
To your point about the whole screenshotting, my LinkedIn profile, a client emailed me yesterday, and and the subject line said, unprofessional conduct. And I was like, Oh, shit, what have I done? I end up and he goes in the message. He says, now that I've got your attention, I just wanted to tell you how great things are blah, blah, whatever it was, whatever the rest of the message was. I had to call him. I called him straightaway. And we had a 20 minute chat. And I said, Have you got a list of these subject lines that you've kind of assembling and goes, Yeah, I'm putting them together. So well, that one bloody worked really well. Like that was amazing how that worked.

Chris Schwager 18:44
And so there's so much discussion around friction in marketing and people like particularly on LinkedIn playing, it's so bloody safe. Like, it's all like held content and really conservative and safe. And you know, it's useful, and here's my tip and blah, blah, blah, like where how do people create more friction based, I guess? content for the purposes of either marketing or sales? How do they keep doing NAT so that people disagree or, or react or, or act as a result? Do you guys use that? Do you guys do that much

Chet Lovegren 19:21
We do it to some extent, we asked an interesting question. And one thing I'd say about subject lines is be very careful when you do use friction based subject lines, so to speak. It's good because when you think about execs, like we do we reach out to execs, right? So when you think about an exec, most of them, I say 90% of them. I have noticed that the younger we get in the exec world, though, the fewer people do this, I think there's like an old school thing, but they do what's called inbox, inbox triage.

Chet Lovegren 19:49
And so they'll sit there and look at like 10 Eat, like, you know, they'll every, every three hours for 15 minutes, they'll go to their inbox, and they'll look at like 10 emails in a row. And they'll go I don't know that, don't know the email, don't know the email, don't know the email, don't know the email and they'll just delete them straight out, right? That's inbox. That's an inbox triage. They go 10 emails at a time, if it's not relevant, they'll just delete it. And so think about what you see, when you look at a bunch of emails in a row, if you don't see a name that you know, just text, right. So we've been experimenting a lot with emojis. And that kind of builds a little bit more interest.

Chet Lovegren 20:24
We experimented with some friction-based subject lines, because we do at pavilion we do like sales, training, leadership training, things like that. And so we would look and see like, okay, who's this Chief Revenue officers, you know, head of sales? And we'll put like, hey, what if Chris, what if Chris quits tomorrow? And that then they'll Gosh, Chris, Chris, is our head of sales Z Quiddity. And they'll open it without even knowing who it's from that gets a great open rate. Very poor reply rate. Because it might have just given them a heart attack. So you have to be kind of careful with that, where I think.

Chet Lovegren 20:58
Where I think friction based content would be, or what you're referring to is like adding some friction, where I think it's really valuable, is in social media. On LinkedIn with, I'm doing a LinkedIn live tomorrow, I'm doing a cold call battle. And my header on the thing is cold calling is not dead. The only people that say that are the losers who suck at cold calling. Like, I love that. Because it's very, it's very disruptive to say cold calling is dead, you know, to sell your stupid, frickin email course or something, right? Like, that's everybody saying, yes, cold calling is not dead. It's on life support, because a lot of people are really bad at it. But playing that other side of the coin, where it's like, cold calling is only dead, because those that's the people that suck are saying that right? Or video prospecting doesn't work, because that's the people who suck. Yeah. And so creating that kind of content where then you're informing people. And so like pavilion is doing like a video prospecting course, right. And we were trying to push that we did a social selling course, we were trying to push that as well. So we we as reps at the company, were creating things that were very friction based around like, you know, people will deny that this happened, or, Hey, go go learn how to do video prospecting, or go learn how to do social selling from the person who hasn't sold in 10 years.

Chet Lovegren 22:09
Video prospecting and social selling is a new concept that came out of COVID, or at least what it is that's being trained upon now. So why are these people that are in their late 50s, that haven't sold a damn thing in 10 years out there trying to tell people how to do it? Come to Pavilion, and learn from people who do it currently, you know what I mean? Like, those are the kinds of things where we're kind of creating that doubt about the status quo, and getting people to think a little bit differently. But a lot of that is done not only through text, but through video, we use a lot of TikTok use a lot of Instagram, use, you have to own your own brand, your company does not own your brand. But if you're not making content as the expert in the industry that you're working in right now, you're not going to go anywhere. And that's the other important part of video to me is like creating this essentially like video paper trail of these concepts and ideas regarding your expertise, whether you sell logistics software, that DoorDash gift cards, I don't care what you sell, right? You need to become an expert in the industry that you're in and create content around that. And more importantly, create content that kind of fights the status quo of the pattern interrupters in the industry disruptors that are trying to say, Oh, this is not, this doesn't work. Or this is how this goes, well, how would you know? Because I work in that. And these are my results. Let me share those with you. And then you show the impact, the action by association. These are other people that have worked alongside us that do X, Y, and Z. These are the results they've experienced. And that's where I think you can gain a lot more value.

Chris Schwager 23:37
People are impatient when it comes to putting new things like this together, like new processes in place. Is it just impatient? It's like, oh, three months went by it didn't work, you know, or is it just like, okay, it's, in some cases, like we've had clients that are spending 1000s of dollars trying to get more leads in and they're just doing it very badly. Like they were pointing different people, paying different people to cold call and drum up business and stuff like that, and it's just not working for them. Is that is that a case of the business, just not structured in the right way to have accountability for specific areas of expenditure that they're going through and the results thereafter? I guess, the direct question is, Are people impatient when it comes to putting new processes like video selling in place?

Chet Lovegren 24:25
I don't think that companies are impatient. I think companies are inept. They don't know how to drive. They don't. They have no idea how to do it. Right. I think that's the first part. I think the second part is, especially in the SDR world. A lot of SDRs are fresh out of college, or this is their first job in sales. Right? You don't see a lot of 35 year old SDRS they're typically mid 20s, late 20s Utmost. Occasionally, you'll get the former educator or veteran that's, you know, 30-31 that wants to make an industry pivot into tech sales. So they started as an SDR, right? Most commonly, they're 23 to 28.

Chet Lovegren 25:04
There's this whole thing with Gen Z or millennial or whatever the heck we call them, where it's all about my time is very special work life balance all this stuff, and they don't take the job as seriously as they should. They don't understand how serious work really is. Time is a currency, you get very little love, you're constantly running out of it. If you're going to trade your life in to go work at a job, do it 150% of the way. Creating content, learning how to do video well sticking with it firing off 10 video messages a day, sending LinkedIn voicemails, it's very easy to clock in and make 50 cold calls and send off 10 personalized emails and then let your sequence machine whatever you're using HubSpot outreach, SalesLoft, whatever, fire off 30 Candy mills in the sequence, right, it's very easy to do that. And then it's very easy at the end of the month to complain about not hitting your number. It's very hard to stay diligent and block your time appropriately. So you're doing a little bit of everything, and not putting all your eggs in one basket and really diversifying your prospecting portfolio. Want to do some cold calls, I'm going to do some double tap cold calls, I want to do some personalized emails, I have some sequenced canned emails that are going out, I'm going to send some content emails, I'm going to send out some feedback emails, I'm going to do some video introductions, I'm going to do some video follow up, I'm going to do some LinkedIn voicemails, I'm going to send some clips of LinkedIn posts that are relevant to these prospects in this part of the sequence. I'm going to go tag these prospects on LinkedIn, I'm gonna go send my TikTok video that I just did about why VPs of sales don't buy sales training to all my prospects right now. I'm gonna go text that link somehow or get it in their inbox somehow. Right? We don't spread a lot of that over because we think we should just press the button clock in did my job. Yeah, that's it.

Chet Lovegren 26:41
We don't take it 150% away, man, you're trading in your life for this company right now. Why not make it make sense? Why not try to hit 150% of quota every month, the opportunities out there because I'll tell you, the one out of every 50 SDRS who thinks that way where they're diversifying their prospecting portfolio, doing a lot of video content, experiencing that delayed gratification, understanding what I do now is for 90 days down the road, those efforts aren't gonna pay off right away. Those are the ones that get promoted to account executive in less than a year. Those are the ones that will make six figures in their first year as an SDR. Those are the ones that are continually gratified at their work and don't get burnout. Those are the ones that don't have the job hop every six months. But we're in this era right now where it's like, I should just be able to clock in, clock out and accept my check, well, then you become an office drone.

27:27
You're trading in a part of your life. Take it seriously, make it make sense, make it worth your time, which I cannot claim credit for that concept. That's actually the great Jim Rohn who talks about taking work seriously. And understanding that you are trading in a part of your life for a paycheck. So you might as well make it make sense, make it count, make it as make the most out of it. Instead of I gotta go make 50 calls today, screw 50 calls, go make 20 but go send like 20 personalized videos, spend an hour shooting off 30/42 connection videos to people.

Chris Schwager 27:57
Diversifying. I mean, we're so big on this and like you we believe in, we've got print video brochure, tactile stuff that goes out. So have you seen these video brochures?

Chet Lovegren 28:10
No, that's amazing.

Chris Schwager 28:12
So you know, print collateral, text, phone, video, it's pretty much everything you can think of we have a crack at it. So what's your --

Chet Lovegren 28:22
Smart.
- Right? Yeah.

Chet Lovegren 28:23
because direct mail? Well, I know this is in the States. This is true. But people discount direct mail, but direct mail is making a comeback. Yeah. Because legally, if I send something to your corporate office, even if you're fully remote, because you're in the US and it's you're at a software company, you're doing tech sales. If your company is located in New York, and you live in Austin, Texas, if I send it to New York, your company legally has to get you mail that was sent to you within 48 hours. Post state right? And so that I know that direct mail is going to go to your home, even if I don't have your home address. So direct mail in the States is actually making a comeback, which is kind of cool. I don't know. I don't know how it is over there. But that's in the States. Right?

Chris Schwager 28:58
Well, that's funny, you know, I talk about you know, doing follow ups with video brochures, for instance, because that is a lumpy piece of mail, right that that's hard not to open. I've done I just finished a whole video on this. I'm talking specifically about 100 of these that went out for our clients with personalized videos by the way in each video brochure. So they came in the studio one flew in from Melbourne to record 50 videos all with individual names, company, inquiry, that sort of stuff was all included. So 100 individual videos, put into those video brochures and sent out and followed up.

Chris Schwager 29:35
Often is Hey, did so and so you get the thing. And we're just actually we're just waiting to understand is Chet the right guy to send some marketing Clairol to you just around video in the like, you can't you just email it to us? And it's like, no, it's a video brochure, it actually goes in the post and like, they think it's foreign ads, right? But But post is for millennials new for us, for me. Not so not so new. But it is, in a way coming coming back. Because, you know, video and a video brochure is combining both electronic and tactile marketing to one. And you know, really, all you need to be doing is putting a simple message in there if the agenda or the outcome is to get the foot in the door to get that first meeting to get them to reply, act, do something, then you don't need to try and sell the whole bloody package, you just need to give him a quick, simple message and say, Hey, I'm thinking about you. And I want to I want to chat, you know, like, give us an opportunity. This is, you know, some people went with mannequins and did the whole thing to kind of like get get the foot in the door. As such, this is just a nice, neat way, hard to not open because it is lumpy. And it is kind of got a bit of weight, too. It's not like just a shitty paper brochure, not that I've discounted payment brochures because they do work, but not quite as effective.

Chris Schwager 30:55
But yeah, the ROI is good, you know, as 10x on this, this sort of stuff, because you know, you're pouring a lot of energy, there's a lot of moving parts. And I think to your point is like, you know, to do it, well, you can't just go Oh, yeah, bang, here's a name flick the thing they either did or they didn't it's a numbers game. Yeah, you know, these guys are poor and real investment and real energy into putting these together because their, their dollar value out of this is huge. They only need probably a couple of these to drop for the whole thing to be profitable. And great for them. So

Chet Lovegren 31:32
That's what I tell people all the time. I'm like, Look, you're not chasing 15 appointments a month, right? In outbound sales, ABS strategy, sales, development, whatever you want to call it, right? You're not chasing 20 people, you're not chasing 50 people, you need 10 People basically from, from your outreach to fall through, go through a meeting. And then you're gonna have all those leftovers from your other activity that will get you to your 12 or 15 a month. That's your quota. But you're really just looking for eight to 10 people a month. Very simple.

Chris Schwager 32:00
Are you a believer quality over quantity?

Chet Lovegren 32:02
No, you can have both. Okay, that's the problem. There are so many tools at our disposal right now. I mean, look, I come the first sales job I ever had. I walked in the door of this crappy building with this bad carpet in these gray walls. The guy hands me a big huge book, the yellow pages, right? You remember the I don't know how to. Like build business directory, I'd say yellow pages, people like what the hell are you talking about? Like the website? Like, no, it was a book at one time with businesses. He handed me that a hard wired phone, a legal pad and a pen. And he said, here's the deal. Either you book me three appointments for tomorrow, or you make 100 calls. That's how you get paid. If you don't hit either of those. You don't get paid. You got to hit one or the other or both. That was sales to me at the beginning. Right. And it was just going through the business directory setting appointments for this guy, right. That's what I was doing.

Chet Lovegren 32:49
I don't care what business you talk to you just set me appointments gonna tie these businesses about this thing. Okay, cool. That was so grueling. And I had that was like an after hours job for me when I was going through college, right? That was four hours to make 100 cold calls or set three appointments, whichever came first. Now it's like we have people that are crying about making 20 calls. Are you kidding me? We have software that just loads everybody that you need to talk to you up and you just go bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I mean, not to say I'm a rock star. Everybody thinks they were a rock star when they were a rep but I've honestly gone on these calls with with reps and sat there and went, Okay, let's go and we'll get 15 minutes and make 10 calls. Nobody will pick up No, go. We want to keep going. Yeah, we've been down for 15 minutes. Let's go resiliency. Let's go like one hour, like what a full hour. And by the end of that hour, they've hit 45 calls. They're like, wow, I didn't think that was possible.

Chet Lovegren 33:38
So why everything's loaded up for you. Plus, through your calls, go through your emails go since Yes, just you got to time boxes. So if you time box, you can you can achieve a lot in that single amount of time where rep most reps go wrong is they'll make eight calls one personal pickup, they'll say oh, you know what, I'm not the right person to talk to you need to go talk to Chris. And then they'll go in their CRM, they'll make their notes, they'll go on Zoom info, they'll try to find who Chris is. They'll add them on LinkedIn. They'll research Chris, they'll look at this. They'll do all this work. And the next thing they know they're in their email block or their video block or their social selling block. Write that down on a piece of paper, go continue your call block, maximize your time be in that task. And then when you have an admin block later, then go and do all those notes. Right. Write it down on a piece of paper.

Chet Lovegren 34:24 4:57
Kevin said he's not the right guy to talk to you need to talk to Chris VP of sales, boom, next call. Now you can complete those 30 calls 40 calls in an hour, then you move to this task block, then you move to that task block. And look, we timeboxing is one key of it. The other part is the tech stack, we have the tech stack, even if you just have something like HubSpot, and you're using that for a co marketing CRM and a sales engagement tool, or if you have what I call the Holy Trinity, right, you have your Salesforce, you have your outreach and your data enrichment tool or LinkedIn. Right? If you even if you're fully loaded, like it doesn't matter if you're going to have something basic or even something premium. Regardless, you already have more technology than people that were working on Wall Street and boiler rooms are making 300 miles an hour business day. Yeah. And so there's so much opportunity out there so many more touch points than what we're giving ourselves credit.

Chris Schwager 35:15
I don't even know how to respond to that. But I suppose the Wolf of Wall Street, you know, it's like, how did we get to a point, I guess, you know, you look at that movie, and it's all about making calls and scripts, right? You know, maybe it's repeat the process, but how have we now gotten into a state where people need, you know, whatever it is 1320 Bloody touch points for the penny to drop at some point. It's not just our the in the Quick call, or the quick email that that, that moves people, it's a lot of ongoing activity. You know, social media obviously plays a big part in that. What, what's your version of the of the the climate of the world is it has technology, you know, phones, you know, the diversification of people's attention meant that now they just need to be hit in the same way from multiple different angles for for them to really pay attention.

Chet Lovegren 36:22
It's like if you went to Coachella, right? The reason the main stage is farther away from everything else, because that's, that's the main stage. Those are the people that if anything, we want everybody to hear these people, right? These are the big names, you don't put a small stage and another small stage next on main stage. Now on the other side of Coachella, you'll have a small stage and then another small stage, that other small stage, right? Because it's the noise when it's the little ones when it's the extra artists, when it's the side artists, the niche artists, it's okay if there's a lot of noise because that 30 People will be there 100 They're at there. But when it comes to the mainstage, it's on the other end of the park all by itself, because that's where the Kanye West's are performing. That's where the machine gun Kelly's are performing. Right? It's the main stage. They don't want a lot of noise around there. And so all it is now is there's just so much noise, right? There are Robo dialers so the phone that you know, in the last five years phones have really died down just because of you know, now iPhones are so smart. That's a scam, likely, right? On like 90% of calls. Now, companies are getting smart, where they have these tools where they have these local dialer. So you can dial as if you're in that person's area code, and I hear it all the time on cold calls are like, Hey, I only picked up because one guy literally I listen to call today says you called me I went to school in Tampa and this was a Tampa number. And I thought it might be somebody from my college like asking for a donation or something like that, because he just got promoted to a VP job. He's like, I think somebody is like looking at me on LinkedIn trying to get donation money out of me as an alumni. That's the only reason I picked up this call.

Chet Lovegren 37:46
Now good thing that I mean, that method kind of work. They had a conversation. But a lot of people are now learning that and they're getting skeptical about spam. This is why I'm kind of hesitant to send videos and emails anymore, because a lot of times it's a link, right? You can't fully embed a clickable video. It's a link right? Well, links and emails are starting to hinder emails because email software companies is getting so smart that it automatically marks it as spam. And if you hit if you hit spam too many times the automatically marked your domain is spam. Now anybody from your company trying to reach out with that domain is now is now on the pooper. Right? So it's kind of I think it's just too much noise has people hesitant? That's why it's about building a more relational one on one connection. And where do you have a one on one connection with? Now, online, right, YouTube, there are YouTubers that I watch that I don't I don't think about like the community behind Mave this kid that's 25 years old and camps in his truck in Minnesota that I like to watch because it's just fun videos. I don't think about his community. I think about the one on one connection I have with him as a viewer to a content creator, right like what I like watching that's why they're very personal. They talk to the camera, they talk to you. That's the importance of video. It's the same thing on TikTok. I don't look at it as much as a community as I do a one on one relationship. That's why it's called like a vlog. It's a one sided relationship. It's the coolest thing about stand up comedy.

Chet Lovegren. 39:08
The hardest part about it is you're trying to learn how to have a one sided conversation with many different people at one time. That's why they say stand up comedy is actually like the art of it is so hard. It takes people you won't hear of a stand up comic for years. It's not like somebody to stand up comedy and six months later they're they have Netflix special. It takes some eight years. Yeah, so I think else is kind of the same thing. It's just, there's so much information that it's become so generalized that people have lost that one on one connection. Even if you look back at Wolf of Wall Street, boy, that room, all that stuff, right, it was still gonna make 500 calls. So yeah, there still was a lot of quantity. But we didn't have a bunch of other avenues of getting targeted. And so it was still very new. The concept of sales and what was being sold was very new. And so people were less prone to feeling attacked as opposed to now. So while the technology allows us the ability to do more in less time, so quality and quantity is also kind of the problem. So we need to learn how to equally balanced it a little bit better.

Chris Schwager 10:39
I'm interested, do you leave voicemails any longer because I'm pretty much done with leaving voicemails like Ali in rare occasions, would I bother? Because I would actually hang out straightaway, particularly the ones that say I've got 10 seconds to leave some robot will transfer it to text unlike I'm not into that at all. But I will hang up straight away and send a text message. What's your version of that?

Chet Lovegren 40:34
I have I haven't jumped on the texting bandwagon yet. I'm still flirting with that a little bit on outbound in the States. It's a little complicated because of like compliance laws and take the off your lists and all that crap. Especially because everybody's working from home it feels like for the most part for a lot of lot of businesses. Especially like in my industry we're targeting tech salespeople like that's what we talk to. Most of them are working from home so it's their cell phone so it's a little it's a little risky but voicemails yeah there's there's something I learned in voicemails under 30 seconds typically under 20 seconds should always direct them to something else. And then leave your name and number at the end because if you leave your name and number at the front end they go Oh Chris from Ridge Films okay, I know this is hey Chris Ridge Films. I know that is right, delete. But if you say hey Chet, sent over some collateral that I thought would be interesting to you, I got something else headed your way. It's a video brochure so make sure that you get it because I put a lot of effort into it wouldn't let something like that to get lost in the mail. Shoot me a call back if you want or I'd love to hear your thoughts via email when you get it this is Chris Ridge Films that hit great 111111 But yeah, I still leave voicemails but they're they're very tightly directed towards something else. And then I leave my name and information at the end so as not to put that information up front and allow them to just, you know, write me off.

Chris Schwager 41:49
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Chris Schwager 42:38
Chet, we could talk for ages mate and because it's so like, it's so us right now, you know, 5-10 years ago, we wouldn't even know what the hell you're talking about. But right now is so high. And its integration with video is just such great timing. Tell us what, I guess the mistakes are some of the mistakes people make. And I guess what your top tips are for avoiding those mistakes.

Chet Lovegren 43:09
Waiting. No need to wait. Just go do it now. Zig Ziglar one of the greatest salespeople that ever walked this earth said anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. You're you're gonna suck it first. I mean, if you saw the way I was filming video, or like podcast content like this, I mean, I got a green screen now I got $500 with a lighting. I got a DSLR. I'm working on a nice lens, right. I'm trying to get to your game. Chris. I'm trying to get to your level of crystal clear gray background.

Chris Schwager 43:34
Off we go so you can see the whole thing?

Chet Lovegren 43:37
See yeah, exactly. Trying to get there. I'm not there yet. I'm working here. But you know, when I first started it was honestly it was it was my cell phone turned sideways on a little on a little thing that clipped onto my desk because it had the iPhone, had a better camera than this Logitech webcam I was using for work. No lighting, didn't care that my bed was in the background, right because I live in LA, we outgrew our house. We have three kids now. I don't think we're expected to grow that fast in two years. So you know, we had we had two kids in the last three years here and so we're kind of outgrown our house. So now my, my me and my wife's bedroom is now my office space as well. But I didn't care about all that, right. I didn't care what my background looked like, I didn't care about anything. I just wanted to get in front of people and make a connection. Because you know what, 90% of the people I was targeting were in the same position. I was targeting VPs of sales in New York that have four kids and live in a three Better apartment, you know what I mean? Because New York is super expensive, even though their VP of sales are still paying like five grand a month to live there.

Chet Lovegren 44:34
I was targeting, you know, young SDR managers that were living in an apartment with their girlfriend or something like that, right? They didn't care either, because they were in a similar workspace, you know, we forget that 90% of people are living in the same circumstance that we kind of are in that regard. I jump on video calls with people all day long. Most of them have a bed or a TV or a kitchen table in the background, not a lot of people are working in their very own specific space. And it's a very unique subset of people, I would say one out of 10 people have a very special dedicated background. And so we wait, we wait because we put up all these things that we think need to be perfect. You're going to fail, go fail now, rather than waiting until everybody else has already failed. And they figured it out. Don't wait. Do it now. So you can be ahead of the curve. We're already we're already behind the curve. Actually, reality is we're already behind. People are catching on to it. I get video emails from candidates all day long as I'm hiring SDRs right now, the people that know what they're doing, they're sending me video emails, they're sending me video through LinkedIn, they're sending me LinkedIn voicemails. They're reaching out to other people at my company and asking what their experience of the company has been like they're sending them video messages, people are already using video, so you better start failing now, or else you're really going to fail later. But you can't wait. Don't wait to start doing it now. And you'll start building different things over time, you'll get a background, you'll start lighting your background, you'll upgrade your lighting, you'll get a better camera, you'll figure out how to get your camera set up on your computer, you'll start doing all these things. But if you don't know how to just point and shoot and have a conversation, it doesn't matter if you can set up a $25,000 $50,000 camera setup doesn't matter because you don't even know how to point shoot, learn to point shoot, just go from there, stop waiting. There's no time like the present. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly go out there and just do it.

Chris Schwager 46:15
Is it a case of it being so overwhelming. People don't know how to bite off that chunk of the elephant and just commit to it and repeat the process is that what is that why people aren't getting on the you know, is that why we're behind? You know, I'll say universally, is that why we're behind?

Chet Lovegren 46:33
little bit. Yeah. It's impostor syndrome. You know, you look at I waited for I waited for months to start a TikTok because all the other sales leadership people and stuff like that and career coaches on TikTok had great produce content. And then I learned from a TikTok strategist that you know?

Chris Schwager 46:48
Just do you.

Chet Lovegren 46:48
LinkedIn algorithm is actually watching your videos, they actually like seeing raw unproduced footage, because they don't want this to turn into a commercial platform like that. They like that the users don't feel that imposter syndrome, because they could just video themselves. They like that unique connection where people are like, I don't care. Hey, you know what my name is XYZ NFL athlete, I'm worth millions of dollars. But I'm not doing some fancy footage here. I'm literally setting my iPhone up on the practice field and running drills with my wide receiver. People like that raw authentic footage. And so the algorithm actually appreciates that. And so when I learned that I was like, okay, cool. Just started shooting videos in my kitchen or in my living room or in my car, like I didn't care, just started shooting videos right here holding my camera right here. But it is part of that impostor syndrome, it feels like a lot to bite off. We think we have to do all these things, we get these parameters built up in our brain. And so we just get paralysis analysis, and we never do it.

Chris Schwager 47:38
How should people learn more from you around all this, because I think a lot of people hear that would hear that imposter syndrome and, and still not be able to take that leap. And to jump that hurdle and to start and to, you know, it's a lot for people to continue, they know that they've got to do it. But then it's kind of like, how, how do I take that first step, you know, it's, I guess, jump in and do that. But like jumping in and recording a video is not necessarily building a repeatable process that's going to deliver results over time, that's just shooting a video. And, you know, they're just a video in itself has so many moving parts. This is not even fucking, like, this is not about sales, even at this point. This is just about them trying to string two words together and not look like a dick and not come out looking so self conscious that they can't, that they take the next. Okay, good. I learned a lot now I'll do the next one. And then I'll do the next one. Like, I mean, this is a great segue for our DIY Video Program because we haven't acknowledged all of that and helping people coaching them through all this, including the hardware and the and the training afterwards. But for the people that we're talking to right now, is it a case where they really should just get some professional help to do it properly? And to do it like to get going quickly? I mean, you're an anomaly really, when you think about it, I mean, you know, your your journey, he probably wasn't, you know, overnight, but but but you had an accrual of knowledge that you accumulated and repeated over over time. So is is a solution, a coach, a guide someone to sort of teach them how to do it.

Chet Lovegren 49:18
You know, the most real piece of advice I have for people is go get married and have a kid and then see how fast you want to figure things out. That was that was my life, right? It was like oh my god, they were Gotta take this seriously. But I would say on a more practical level, right, I think there's value to it, like reality is an SDR that's just trying to figure it out that doesn't know what they're doing that's 24 years old making maybe on track to make 50, 60 us a year. I don't know if going and paying for someone like me, who does, you know, $500 sessions for career coaching or going and paying for a DIY program, whatever the cost might be, I'm sure it's not, you know, 100 bucks. I don't know if that's relevant. I would say if you're looking for the cheapest option, go start with the community. Go talk to other people in a community like pavilion, or find a channel on LinkedIn about video prospecting, just start trying to seek out your own resources. I would say for people that are in a position where they're like, this is something I need to take advantage of, I need to make that investment in. Yes, get a coach, get a program, get a product in place, there's a lot of stuff online. Chris has stuff that he's offering. I don't have like anything structured for this, I'm always happy to connect with people and like talk through process and share video scripts and sequences that have video prospecting in them for sales dev teams, but go find that structured training, like that's I made an $8,000 investment this year, in public speaking and training on how to be a better public speaker, and how to run the business public speaking because I started earning a lot of like consulting gigs and training gigs and go speak to our company about this, this and this.

Chet Lovegren 50:52
And I said, You know what, I need to get better. As a speaker, I need to take this more seriously. I need to understand the business speaking as well, because I was asking a lot of consulting friends, like, oh, how do you do this? Or what is your contract look like for this? Or what should I ask for? Who pays for this? And I went and made that investment because it was time, right? I can understand though, how someone might not have the ability to make any level of investment. And if you're in that position, right? If you're young and hungry and just trying to get started, go access the community get the launch Tiktok, you can learn a lot on TikTok, yeah, just get a base understanding of knowledge. Look at other SDRS around you go find an SDR community. But if you are a little bit more elevated than that, you should make the investment sooner than you think you need to because it's going to pay dividends like what's one extra deal for you. You don't I mean, if you're an account executive, he spent $2,500 on the course. But one extra one extra enterprise deal could bring you a 5k in commission. That sounds like a pretty darn good investment cuz you're probably going to win more than one yellow for the next year from from taking that course. Right?

Chris Schwager 51:47
If The pain is great enough and you value either knowledge or value getting things done quicker with a coach someone to expediate the process, then you will figure it out. That if you've if it's low on your value, if it's the pain is not that great, you're not really you don't care either way, then you're not going to bother with it and keep hacking away and chipping and procrastinating and sitting around and go oh, I should really do that. Which I gotta say. So many people still do right? I shoulda woulda coulda.

Chet Lovegren 52:22
If you're a 24 year old SDR and you've been doing sales for three months, go figure out how to cold call and cold email first before you start trying like, you know what I mean? Go put on your underwear before you try to put on shoes and run outside of the house. Right? Because you don't want to be run around butt naked. But like if you are in a position where like, Hey, I'm properly closed when I'm running outside, but I need to run faster, then yes, it's time to make that investment. You probably should make it a little sooner than you think. Because the longer you wait, the farther behind you're gonna be.

Chris Schwager 52:28
Well that I gotta say we've gone way longer than we used to. So if you want to learn more about video prospecting or Chet Lovegren, have a look at the show notes for details. Chet, thank you so much for for extending the time for us. It was very relevant for for Ridge Films and for us and great synergy between sales and video. They're talking right through all of those points. It was just a fantastic discussion. And thank you so much for being on the show.

Chet Lovegren 53:16
My pleasure, Chris, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

Chris Schwager 53:21
People still love buying from people and personalised videos to reach out to them can make a huge difference in your sales. Thanks for tuning in. That's all for this episode of Video Made Simple podcast. I look forward to seeing you next week.