The two questions every video production professional should be asking in sales calls

Introduction

There are two questions that, when asked during the sales process, give videographers, filmmakers, and video production company owners a significantly higher chance of winning a project. Asking these two simple questions literally increases conversion rate from opportunity to win four-fold – you're four times more likely to win a project when you ask them.

As video creators, it's very easy to get caught up in the creative – what the video looks like. We feel that our clients are going to be swayed by seeing a beautiful video, a beautiful concept. But this just isn't true. Your client is paying you money to create video content for a reason: they have a challenge they're trying to overcome or an opportunity they're trying to take.

What You'll Learn

• Why the creative isn't enough – Understanding that clients invest in video to achieve specific outcomes, not just beautiful content.
• The first question – How to uncover what success looks like in your client's eyes.
• The second question – How to determine the monetary value of achieving their goal.
• Forecasting ROI – Using these answers to confidently predict the return on investment your content will deliver.

The Problem With Most Sales Meetings

When I start working with a production company or freelancer, one of the first things I do is sit in on a couple of their sales meetings. I want to understand how they extract information from their clients and what systems they have in place to convert opportunities to projects.

Having done this for some time, I've noticed a trend. The two questions that the vast majority of production professionals miss or fail to ask are the two most important. More often than not, these questions are not asked. After the session, I encourage my client to ask them in the next sales meeting – and their conversion rates rocket 400%.

Question One: Define Success

We'll often hear vague reasons like "to increase sales" or "to drive better brand awareness." But that's not going to help us when we get to the pitch, proposal, or quote stage. We need to be absolutely crystal clear on what results need to be achieved in the eye of the client.

Here's what you should ask: "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 a success?"

This is what the project is going to be judged on. This is what you need to achieve for your client. This is what opens up future work with them, potentially a retainer, and this is what you need to persuade them you're going to achieve when delivering your pitch or proposal.

Question Two: The Value of a Conversion

The second question allows us to forecast the return on investment. In response to whatever they identify their goal to be, we need to find out what a single conversion of that goal would mean to the client.

Simply ask: "What is the value to your business of a single conversion to that goal?"

If their goal was to generate 500 new leads, we need to understand what the value of a single lead is. If their goal is to increase sales, we need to understand what the value of a single sale or the average order value is. They might not know this exactly, but an estimate is just as good.

Putting It Into Practice

Say we're creating videos for a client. Their goal was to generate inquiries and they tell us each inquiry is valued on average at $1,000 to their business. By looking at how many views that video will generate, the average watch rate, and conversion rate, we can forecast the return.

For example: 1,000 views with a 25% view rate means 250 people watch the full video. If 10% convert to an inquiry, that's 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 confidence that we are going to drive powerful results.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:32:00
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.

00:00:32:00 - 00:01:06:00
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. I'm blessed to be in a position to do this thanks to my 16 years experience in the video world, building a production company from scratch to being valued at over $20 million, losing it, and then 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.

00:01:06:00 - 00:01:58:00
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. When I start working with a production company or a freelancer, one of the first things that 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, 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.

00:01:58:00 - 00:02:42:00
But ultimately, your client is paying you money to create video content for them for a reason. They have a challenge that they are trying to overcome or they have an 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 into the challenge or opportunity that the client has and we need to give the client the confidence that we through the creation of beautiful and powerful video content are going to help them to achieve it. So there are two pieces of information that we absolutely must extract from the client in order to win the project and put ourselves in a position to build confidence when we come to pitching, proposing or quoting for that work.

00:02:42:00 - 00:03:18:00
We of course need to know things like their budget, who they're looking to attract, what time frames they're working to, and so on. 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 these sales meetings with new clients, these questions are not asked. So after the session, I encourage my client to ask them in the next sales meeting that they have and their conversion rates rocket 400%. Sounds a lot, right? Can't be true. Well, hold your judgment as I'll go on to explain why this is so powerful.

00:03:18:00 - 00:04:02:00
So knowing that our client is paying us to create content for a reason, it's vital to understand what that reason is. We'll often hear vague reasons like to increase sales, to drive better brand awareness, to launch a product, to increase donations to a cause, 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. We need to find out what a successful project, a successful investment into us as the creators of that content will be.

00:04:02:00 - 00:04:45:00
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 view it as a success? I'll say that again. If we were sitting down together in six months time looking back at this project, what would have to have happened for you to view this as a success? 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 buy method of reinterpreting and summarizing any brief.

00:04:45:00 - 00:05:27:00
We do this to give our pitches proposals or quotes structure and to immediately start the pitch proposal or quote off on the strongest possible footing. The get to buy 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 two, and the buy to structure our pitch proposal or quote. But the answer to this question, 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 a success is your two. This is what the project is going to be judged on. This is what you need to achieve for your client. This is what opens up future work with them, potentially a retainer, and this is what you need to persuade them that you are going to achieve when it comes to delivering your pitch, sending in your proposal, or submitting that quote.

00:05:27:00 - 00:06:09:00
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 guessed. 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.

00:06:09:00 - 00:07:04:00
And that leads us on to the second question again within my free course conversion 90 which you can get via the link below. 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. When a client sees a project 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 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. But the concept is simple. We identify some key metrics that 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 that we are creating will generate.

00:07:04:00 - 00:07:54:00
Every step that you need to take is within the free course. But the second question is crucial and allows you to do this in response to whatever they identify their goal to be, which we now know from asking the 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. We need to understand what the value of a single lead is to their business. If their 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. Nice and simple.

00:07:54:00 - 00:08:49:00
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're creating videos for a client. Their goal was to generate inquiries and they tell us that each inquiry is valued on average at $1,000 to 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. So, if we forecast that for argument sake that the video would generate 1,000 views, it would have a 25% view rate. And of those 250 that watched 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.

00:08:49:00 - 00:09:35:00
This is how we charge what we are worth and give the client the confidence that we are going to drive powerful results. Now, I know that this might 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, course, and audio book, Conversion 90, which is available via the link below. There's also two additional courses there to help you build your lead generation machine and to get more ideal clients onto long-term retainers. So, I hope that's been helpful. I hope you've learned something here. So, go check out those free courses now and have a fantastic day.