Getting the Yes_part2

0:00Welcome back. This is the second part of our video series on how do you get customers to say yes to doing a video testimonial. We're looking at now the... creating the system in place so you can get consistent testimonials and, customer insight. It really spans the customer life cycle, the entire customer life cycle process, and the different teams that are associated to it, and that's what we're gonna look at right now. This is a very simplified version of a customer life cycle. Someone signs up, you deliver the product, then you try to retain them as a customer, and then you try to raise them to be advocates of your brand.

0:37Generally, when it comes to testimonial videos, it- that's what happens. It kind of gets tagged on at the end. Marketing's like, "Hey, we'd love to get some testimonials. Anyone? Anyone?" Yeah. This should not be the approach. It really should be from the very beginning throughout weaved in as part of the fabric of your business that, "Hey, we like to ca- capture our customer stories and share them." So it begins with signing up, with sales already having it in your contract, and your cus- and your sales folks mentioning it, "Hey, we think you're gonna love this.

1:09We'd love to be able to share your story after you've seen the results." Then as the product's being delivered and during onboarding and delivery, your customer service team is referencing it again, saying, "Hey, hope you're enjoying this. We can't wait to be able to see the, the results, and we'd love to be able to share your story when the time is right." And then when it finally gets to retention and advocacy, then it's like, "Oh, yeah, no, we- we've heard this. Yeah, excited to share your story." This does require to have your customer service team and sales team on board and, and bought, and bought into this concept.

1:41To make that happen, 'cause I see sometimes it's super simple if it's a small team, or maybe not even when it's a small team, but definitely when it's a large team, you have to have some conversations. So there's two things I recommend you need to talk about with them, both address their concerns and share the benefits of why this is a good investment of your time, 'cause they've got other things they need to be doing. First, addressing their concerns. Customer service, often it's, it's around the customer, right? It... There's a lot of time constraints this is gonna take from our customers.

2:13It's complex. It's overwhelming. There's probably fear from them of doing video. For sales, it's time a- and effort away from more sales. there's potential customer resistance. What if our customers are, are... get mad at us or are angry, and I... it's difficult to sell them on, on another product? Or there's just overall technical challenges in the way. Why are we even bothering with this? You need to hit and address these concerns head on by having already clarity on the process. "Hey, this is how we're going to do it.

2:43It won't take a lot of time. It won't be a lot of overwhelm and complex because we got a system in place." Shameless plug here. This is what we do. we have a s- turnkey solution that addresses every single one of these concerns, but whether you use our solution or you have another one, you can't just leave that in doubt. Otherwise, they'll be like, "Uh, what? Like, like, how are you going to, to do this? No, thanks. I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing." So addressing those concerns head on and... but sharing the benefits, why it's worth it. For customer service, speak to the, the fact that it can improve, increase customer satisfaction.

3:18An opportunity for a customer to speak face to face with someone, tell them their feedback, their story, can truly be a, a very satisfying experience for them. Connected to that, it also can improve the overall customer experience. A lot of the customers that we work with, the end customers, after we've interviewed them, they're like, "Wow, that was a lot of fun. I didn't realize it'd be so much fun." If you do it right, we actually ship out video kits to them and sometimes include little goodies. It's part of the customer experience.

3:48It's where... It's an opportunity for, for giving them... giving something back, for an added, opportunity for, for fun. It doesn't have to be a pain or a detraction, but rather part of the overall experience of being a customer with your company. And the last piece for customer service is just better understanding their needs, and they should always be interested and wanting to know, what is our customer thinking? What are they enjoying? What are they not enjoying? And that should be part of, of when you're reaching out to your customers. For sales, it should be a little bit easier 'cause they should understand, "Hey, if I have more of these stories, it'll help me convert more customers, close more deals faster."

4:23Competitive advantage. You may... Your product may, your competitors may have similar product features and, and, other s- similar things, but they don't have your customer stories. There's no one else that has that, your particular customer with their particular use case, and that is a massive competitive advantage that your sales teams can be leveraging as you build up a huge library of customer stories. And the last one is it can strengthen existing relationships. It's an opportunity for your sales team to talk to your customers, cross-sell, upsell.

4:57They should jump at the opportunity for another, chance to d- to dialogue with them. Now, speaking, addressing their concerns and sharing their benefits is, is good, the first step for sure. The next is, all right, what does the process look like? If I, if I really wanna have a system in place, how, how do I get them to, to hand them off to me? What does that look like? Going back to the first, video we t- we talked about the right factor, the right moment matters a lot, and what you're looking for is a trigger. That's where it starts with, where you get a positive signal or a, a certain event happens, like a project completion.

5:32And this is where then the next piece is you make a simple ask. Whoever has the best relationship with the customer, they reach out, and it's very simple. We'll go over in a second some, in the next video over some email templates, so you'll know how do you make that ask. And they copy you on that, the marketing team on there. The second part is plan for follow-up. Don't assume that one email is all that you need. People are busy, and it's not that they don't wanna give you a testimonial, a video te- it's a video testimonial.

6:04They're just busy with their lives. So sometimes it- In most cases, actually, it requires at least two emails, if not three. And you keep them, again, very, very simple. Now, this next step, replies filtered by marketing, is optional. If you have a high quantity of customers, this is a good option. You should always be asking your customers when this trigger moment happens, "Hey, would you be willing to share your story?" And if you have a lot of them, then you decide which ones need to be high touch, more of a customer interview, and the other ones should be more low touch, self-service, filling out a survey or filling out a review or user-generated content.

6:43If you have a very low quantity of customers, then every one would be probably high touch. So that is optional there. The last step is you follow up with the actual details of the process and how it's going to work and happen. Too often I see people jumping to that as the first communication, and then you just overwhelm customers. So many opportunities I've seen of great customers that would have been perfect on video that either didn't reply at all or said no because it was just too many details all at once.

7:15You just... The full email there, this is how it's gonna process works, and this is how it's gonna happen, your incentive, and this proc- and timing, and do you wanna do it? And it's like, "Eh, too much, please." Begin with the simple ask. Follow up. If it makes sense, then you follow up with, with, with the details. And that's something that marketing can then jump in and do after the, since you've been copied on those communications. Now let me go over a couple, checklist items as you're kind of thinking through your, your system and process that you have in place.

7:47Is your entire team on the same page? Sales, customer success, marketing. Have you addressed their concerns? Have you spoken to the benefits? If you're not sure, have a conversation, get a meeting together with them and go over that. Have you included a clause in your contract for doing a case study? Is it already embedded in the sales process? For customer service, is it mentioned during the onboarding and delivery process so their, customers are already queued up when it's time? Do you have a manual or automated way to see who's happy and why?

8:19This could be surveys that you sent out, NPS surveys, ES surveys, or maybe you have a customer success software like Vitally helping you identify, again, are they happy? What is the trigger point? Which leads into that, this next checkpoint of, having a trigger, a system in place to s- to be able to request it. If you don't have a trigger point, then it... you're always gonna have to be reaching out and going out to the sales and customer success. Do we have anyone else? Set up the trigger so customer service sales automatically sends that communication.

8:51Speaking of, final checklist here is have some email templates in place for them to leverage, so they don't have to think about it. Trigger happens, they send the communication. This, if you are able to achieve all these, you're gonna be able to have consistent testimonials coming in, customer stories, customer insight ready for you to leverage. Now in the next, video, we're gonna go over some email templates, three different email templates you can start using, and awesome outreach tactics to improve the chances that someone will apply and say, "Yes, let me get on video.

9:26Let's do it right now." I'll see you in the next video.