The two questions every video production professional should be asking in sales calls
Feb 22, 2023
Introduction
There are two questions that, when asked, give videographers, filmmakers, or video production company owners, a significantly higher chance of winning a project.
Asking these two simple questions during the sales process literally increases conversion rate from opportunity to win four-fold.
You’re four times more likely to win a project when you ask these two very simple questions to your prospect.
So today, we’re going to learn what they are and, most importantly, understand how we use them.
Links
Transcript
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:25:09
There are two questions that, when asked in a sales conversation, give videographers, filmmakers, or video production company owners, a significantly higher chance of winning a project. Asking these two simple questions during the sales process literally increases conversion rate from opportunity to win four fold. You’re four times more likely to win a project when you ask these two simple questions to your prospects.
00:00:25:09 - 00:00:55:01
So today we're going to learn what they are and, most importantly, understand how we use them. Let's get stuck into today's Render Break. Welcome to this week's Render Break. The chance for you to learn a powerful marketing, sales, or retention tactic that will have a massive impact on your video business. Now, if you've engaged with my content before, you'll know that today I consult with and teach video production professionals marketing, sales and retention strategies.
00:00:55:10 - 00:01:19:00
I'm blessed to be in a position to do this thanks to my 15 years experience in the video world building a production company from scratch to being valued at over $20 million, losing it and building back stronger. I've learned a lot in my time, and one of those lessons is what we're going to learn here today. The two questions to ask your client in a sales meeting that will have a dramatic impact on whether or not you win the work.
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When I start working with a production company, or a freelancer, one of the first things I do is sit in on a couple of their sales meetings. I want to understand how they go about their business, how they extract information from their clients or prospects, and, ultimately, what systems they have in place to convert opportunities to projects. Having been doing this for some time, I've noticed a trend. You see, as a video provider, a video creator,
00:01:45:05 - 00:02:10:21
it's very easy to get caught up in the creative - what the video looks like. It’s natural because we feel that our clients are going to be swayed by seeing a beautiful video, a beautiful creative, a beautiful concept. Well, this just isn't true. And I have a separate video that explains this in detail, which I've linked to below. But ultimately your client is paying you money to create video content for them for a reason.
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They have a challenge that they are trying to overcome, or they have enough opportunity that they are trying to take. Obvious, right? We all know that. Well, yes, we do. But our pitches, our proposals, even our quotes, need to tap in to the challenge or opportunity that the client has. And we need to give the client confidence that we, through the creation of beautiful and powerful video content, are going to help them to achieve it.
00:02:37:18 - 00:03:00:02
So there are two pieces of information that we absolutely must extract from our client in order to win the project and put ourselves in a position to build confidence when we come to pitching, proposing, or even quoting for that work. We, of course, need to know things like budget, who they're looking to attract, what time frames they're working to and so on.
00:03:00:09 - 00:03:24:04
That stuff goes without saying. But the two questions that the vast majority of production professionals miss or fail to ask are the two most important. More often than not, when I sit in on those sales meetings with new clients, these questions are not asked. So after that session, I encourage my client to ask them in the next sales meeting that they have and their conversion rates rocket 400%.
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Sounds a lot, right? Can't be true. Well, hold your judgment and I'll go on to explain why this is so powerful. So knowing that our client is paying us to create content for a reason, it’s vital to understand what that reason is. We will often hear vague reasons like to increase sales, to drive better brand awareness, to launch a new product, to increase donations to a cause.
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But that's not going to help us when we get to the pitch, proposal, or quote stage. Within our pitches, proposals or quotes, we need to show results. We need to build confidence in the buyer that we are going to achieve those results. So we need to be absolutely crystal clear on what those results need to be in the eye of the client.
00:04:07:05 - 00:04:32:04
We need to find out what a successful project, a successful investment into us as the creators of that content will be. So the first question gives us the answer to this. Here's what you should ask when you're talking through the project. You simply need to say this: “If we were sitting down together in six months’ time looking back on this project, what would have to have happened for you to have viewed this project as a success?”
00:04:32:15 - 00:04:56:22
I'll say that again. “If we were sitting down together in six months’ time looking back on this project, what would have to have happened for you to view it as successful?” Now, in my book Conversion 90, which teaches you the seven step framework to increasing your conversion rate from opportunity to project win to 90%, I talk about the Get To By method of reinterpreting and summarizing any brief.
00:04:57:06 - 00:05:20:07
We do this to give our pitches, proposals, and quotes, structure and to immediately start the pitch, proposal, or quote off on the strongest possible footing. The Get To By method is simple. Who are we looking to get? What are we looking to get them to do? And by which means are we going to do that? We use the Get, the To, and The By, to structure our pitch, proposal, or quote.
00:05:20:13 - 00:05:40:01
But the answer to this question (if we were sitting down together in six months’ time looking back on the project, what would have to have happened for you to view it as successful?) is your To. This is what the project is going to be judged upon. This is what you need to achieve for your client. This is what opens up future work with them - potentially a retainer.
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And this is what you need to persuade them that you are going to achieve when it comes to delivering your pitch, sending your proposal, or submitting your quote. The client will love this question. They will suddenly see that you are putting their interests, their investment, at heart. And the answer to this question gives us so much information that we otherwise would probably have missed, or had to have guessed.
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This allows us to ensure that our creative, our plan, our video content, is constantly driving to the heart of the reason that our client is entrusting us with their money to create this content. But it also allows us to forecast the success of the content that we are going to create, if certain metrics are hit when the client's audience engages with the video, or videos, that we are creating and that leads us on to the second question.
00:06:30:24 - 00:06:52:11
Again, within my book, Conversion 90, which you can get for just $7 via the link below this video by the way, one of the steps that we work through is called Forecasting The ROI, or Return On Investment. Within the Forecasting The ROI section, we take a look at the simple metrics that our content needs to hit in order to provide a positive and powerful Return On Investment for our client.
00:06:52:21 - 00:07:15:00
When a client sees a projected ROI, their eyes light up and suddenly the situation changes from you trying to work with the client, to the client trying to work with you. It's very powerful - and one of the main reasons that the people that apply the Conversion 90 framework to their pitches, proposals or quotes convert over 90%, 90.8% to be exact, of their opportunities to paid and profitable projects.
00:07:15:06 - 00:07:37:00
But the concept is simple. We identify some metrics our video, or videos, should hit such as view rate, conversion rate and so on. And then we are able to forecast the return, the value, that the videos we are going to be creating will generate. Every step that you need to take is within the book. Again, you can get that framework for just $7 via the link below.
00:07:37:00 - 00:08:00:15
But the second question is crucial and allows us to do this. In response to whatever they identify their goal to be, which we now know from asking that first question, we need to find out what a single conversion of that goal would mean to the client. Let me explain. If your client was a marketing manager or a business owner and their goal was to generate 500 new leads into their business, that's what they view as a success,
00:08:00:21 - 00:08:19:23
we need to understand what the value of a single lead is to their business. If the goal is to increase sales, we need to understand what the value of a single sale or the average order value is. So our next question is this: “What is the value to your business of a single conversion to that goal?” That's it.
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Nice and simple. Now, they might not know this exactly, but an estimate is just as good here. The reason that we ask this is because when we pitch, propose, or quote, for the project, we can then confidently forecast the Return On Investment, the value of our content. Say we were creating a video for a client. Their goal was to generate inquiries and they tell us that each inquiry is valued on average at $1,000 for their business. By looking at how many views that video will generate, the average watch rate and conversion rate on that content, we will be able to say that as long as those targets are hit, the return on investment will be X
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amount of dollars. So if we forecast that, for argument's sake, that video would generate 1,000 views, it would have a 25% view rate., and of those 25% that watch the full video, 10% converted to an inquiry, we would generate 25 inquiries. Multiply that by $1,000 and we've generated $25,000 worth of inquiries for them. This is how we charge what we are worth and give the client the confidence that we are going to drive powerful results.
00:09:24:00 - 00:09:50:03
Now, I know that this may sound like an alien concept to you at this stage, and there's a lot of unknowns here. But as I've said, every single step that you need to take in order to increase your conversion rate to over 90%, to charge what you are worth, to win long term contracts, is outlined in detail within my book Conversion 90, which is available via the link below, and you can get that framework for just $7.
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So I hope that's been helpful. I hope you've learned something here and if you'd like to understand the full steps, grab your copy of Conversion 90 via the link below. Have a fantastic day.
