Rehumanize Your Business Read online

  SIGN 5: YOU BENEFIT FROM WORD OF MOUTH

  Reaching out. Keeping in touch. Staying top of mind. Along with delivering an excellent customer experience, these are your precursors to positive word of mouth, repeat business, personal referrals, and online reviews. When you, your brand, or your company reminds people who you are, reiterates the value you provide, and continues to provide new value, your name is available when the conversation comes up at the office, in the gym, or around the restaurant table. Do you have an insurance person? A CRM? A financial planner or tax advisor? A preferred video app? Who do you know who can help me make some improvements to my home before putting it on the market? Do you know a person or an app that can help me generate more online leads?

  We like to recommend people, products, services, brands, and companies. It feeds our urge to help other people and it taps into our sense of mastery. Is your name the one we provide? Without a referral, a consumer's search for help turns from friends, family, and coworkers to the internet. You may play that game well, but it can be expensive to buy or work your way to the top of the right search results. Ideally, of course, you're in a both/and situation—the great experience you deliver earns word of mouth and you also show up well online.

  Keeping in touch and staying top of mind through a consistent stream of personal videos is a great way to earn referrals indirectly. You can also ask for them explicitly from time to time. Some professionals close every video with a hard or soft request for referral. Others use changes in seasons, market conditions, or special offers to present a reason to refer. The best make it easy to refer them by using very specific language about themselves or their contact information. Your clients will adopt your language when you use it with consistency, frequency, and repetition.

  Even more than with referrals, the key to winning online reviews is to ask for them. Specifically, the key is asking the right people at the right time. After positive customer interactions, send a video. You can automate them, but they're even better when personal. Thank them. Remind them about the experience and a fun or challenging experience along the way. Position the review as a benefit not just to you, but to other people just like them who deserve the same level of care, service, and support. Provide a link to your preferred review site, along with basic instruction about what awaits after the click. Your ability to link is one of the reasons video email is an ideal medium for this ask. Not only are you more persuasive, you can also send them exactly where they need to go and know exactly who has and hasn't yet clicked that link.

  But we're already generating great word of mouth without video, you offer. Great! This means you're effective at building trusting relationships, providing real value, and staying top of mind. You're in perfect position to do this at scale using video. If you're already winning these favors from your satisfied clients, it's either just happening as a natural outcome or you're explicitly asking by email or in person. If it's just happening, asking will make it happen a lot more often. If you're asking in person, you're missing scale. If you're asking by text email, you're overestimating your effectiveness. A face-to-face request is 34 times more effective than the same request in a typed-out email, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.3 That's a dramatic lift!

  But we don't like asking favors of our customers and clients, you share. That's fine. We all have a fear of rejection; it's fundamental to the human experience. The vulnerability you'd display in asking for help is attractive, even if it doesn't feel that way. Humility is a good look, especially to people you've served well. If rejection isn't your hang-up and instead it's about the imposition of the ask, here's the resolve. Per a phenomenon dubbed the Ben Franklin Effect, being asked for favors creates liking toward the person making the request. We like doing favors; we form social bonds through this give and take. It triggers a sense of reciprocity, so don't be afraid. Don't hold back. And don't rely on plain text to get the job done.

  SIGN 6: YOU WIN MORE OPPORTUNITIES FACE TO FACE

  Among these six signs you should be mixing simple videos into your communication flow, this final one is like the first. It's a catch-all. Whether we directly sell or support products and services or we indirectly represent or advance ideas and opportunities, we're more effective face to face. Yes, you can build a real relationship through live video meetings and asynchronous video exchanges, but they're both inferior to being there in person. There's a reason we talk specifically about meeting “IRL” (in real life). It's different. And better.

  BombBomb's Chief Marketing Officer and my coauthor, Steve, lives and works outside Philadelphia. Nearly our entire company lives in Colorado Springs and works in our downtown office. Steve schedules one-on-one meetings via Zoom. He joins group meetings the same way. Slack, video email, traditional emails, text messages, and social media help close the gap. But he always takes care to come to the office at least a half dozen times each year, because there's nothing better than face to face. There's a feel to it—a complete understanding, a fuller knowing. When he led a re-engineering of our inside sales process to bolster its consultative nature, he came to Colorado Springs for a week. The re-engineering took about six weeks, but it would have taken longer and been less effective if he'd not invested in that face time.

  But we can't always be there in person. In Steve's case, distance keeps us apart; he simply can't visit the office every day. Do you have employees or customers who are down the street? Across town? Across the state? Throughout the region? Across the country? Around the world? No matter how far through that string of questions you made it with affirmative answers, distance is part of the equation that results in your failure to get together with people as often as you need or want to. Another part of that equation is time. We simply don't have the time to travel to and connect with everyone directly.

  You know intuitively that you communicate more clearly, connect more effectively, and convert at a higher rate when you're face to face. But time and distance keep you apart from the people who matter most to your business. The next best thing is video. It overcomes distance in that you can send yourself anywhere in the world nearly instantly. And when that video is asynchronous—recorded and sent when it's convenient for you and opened up and watched when it's convenient for your recipient—it also overcomes time. You don't have to schedule an appointment at a specific time and you don't have to interrupt someone with the expectation of meeting right now. Few communication channels offer both of these benefits and get you face to face.

  SIX SIGNS THAT YOU NEED PERSONAL VIDEO

  Can personal video help you rehumanize your business, accelerate your sales, and improve your customer experience? Should you start replacing some of your typed-out text with webcam or smartphone videos? How many of these signs are true of you and your team?

  At least two of the signs recapped in Figure 4.1 are true of everyone—the first and last. And most of the others are true of everyone working in a professional capacity. The fact of the matter is that we've relied too long on faceless digital communication to get important and valuable jobs done. We're over-reliant on a medium that doesn't build trust, doesn't differentiate us, and doesn't communicate as well as looking someone in the eye through the lens and talking to him or her in a personal, casual, and natural way.

  FIGURE 4.1 Six Signs That You Need Personal Video

  So, what does this look like in practice? The next chapter gives you nine specific stories of individuals and teams who are rehumanizing their businesses with personal videos and 10 specific times to use video instead of text.

  NOTES

  1. Pink, Daniel H. To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others (London: Penguin, 2013): 21.

  2. Daugherty, Paul, and Wilson, H. James. Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2018): 92.

  3. Roghanizad, M. Mahdi, and Bohns, Vanessa K. “Ask in Person: You're Less Persuasive Than You Think over Email.” Jou
rnal of Experimental Social Psychology 69 (2017): 223–226.

  PART 2

  When to Rehumanize with Video

  CHAPTER 5

  Nine Stories of Sales Acceleration and Better Customer Experience

  “I consider myself to be in sales in the sense that my students are my customers,” says Dr. Daniel Smith, PhD, CRC, NCC, LMHC. An adjunct professor at the University of Buffalo and Canisius College, Dan says that a simple webcam video from his desk “allows me to stand head and shoulders above other teachers because I can reach out and create a relationship with my students.” Of course, he shared that with us by sending a personal video, something he's done more than 1,400 times.

  Because he's an online professor, Dan teaches counseling and therapy to students across the United States and around the world. He rarely meets any of them in person, so he takes care to communicate face to face in his emails. To start a semester, he sends an introductory video to the entire class. He puts a face with the name and lets the students know with warmth and sincerity that he's available whenever they need him. What a great start to a working relationship.

  When a student makes an inquiry at any point during the semester, he promises a reply within 24 hours. Instead of typing out long responses, he clicks “Record” and talks to the student. When he gives feedback on exams, papers, or other significant projects, he doesn't just provide a letter grade, some marks in red pen, and a few margin notes. Dan delivers feedback rich with nonverbal communication to inform and inspire in a way that rewards high performing students and lights a fire under those whose performance needs improvement.

  “That student feels special. That student feels respected. And that student feels like they are part of the class.”

  As a counselor in high-conflict divorce cases, Dan sends videos to parents, children, and attorneys at times when emotions often run high. Progress starts by building trust and rapport with all the stakeholders in a case. It continues when he takes care to get the tone of the message just right or to empathize with one of the people involved. Not only does video help him do these things more effectively, it also helps him get the same message delivered to everyone at the same time without having to make a series of phone calls.

  As an instructor and as a counselor, Dan sees himself as being in the “change” business. Behavior change happens only through human connection and a sense of relationship. Figuring out how to meaningfully connect online was paramount to him and he deemed traditional digital communication insufficient. “It's just as easy for me to send a video as it is to type out an email,” says Dan, adding that personal video allows him to “reach into their living room, their study, and create a relationship.”

  “The person you're trying to facilitate change in is a human being, not a human doing. Email is doing. Video email is the essence of being. It is the tool to establish this relationship.”

  This philosophy and practice are so effective for Dan that he was asked to make a video for tenured professors in the brick and mortar school about how to build relationships through video. What's the measure that earned him this attention? Student feedback at the end of each semester. His customers value his service.

  AUTHOR DAN PINK AND PROFESSOR DAN SMITH

  When you look back to the opening line of this chapter, Dan Smith sounds a lot like Dan Pink, bestselling author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us; A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future; and When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, among other titles. The similarity in the perspective of these Dans comes from Pink's To Sell Is Human, also a bestseller.

  Like Smith, Pink sees himself as a salesperson. “I am a salesman … I spend a significant portion of my days trying to coax others to part with resources.”1 But most of what he does isn't direct selling. His sales activities include:

  Getting an editor to drop a bad story idea

  Getting a business partner to team up

  Getting an organization to change strategy

  Getting a gate agent to assign him an aisle seat

  Getting strangers to read articles he wrote

  Getting friends to do him favors

  Getting his son to take a shower

  Nearly everyone operating in professional capacity is challenged with persuading, influencing, and moving others, even when not engaged in direct selling. Access to information grew exponentially because of the internet, so it's no longer asymmetrical. Both sides in most business relationships have approximately equal access to information. This raises the importance of honesty, transparency, and directness.

  You can no longer trade on what you know that the other party doesn't. Putting yourself in others' shoes and getting into others' heads is the key to selling yourself, your ideas, your products, and your services. When working with others, don't just make statements, ask questions; this forces people to engage. Don't lean on scripts; few situations are sufficiently stable, predictable, and consistent for them to be effective. Do lean on a higher sense of purpose; this motivates people in a transcendent way. To “combine the efficiency of electronic communication with the intimacy of seeing another person's face and hearing her voice,” as Pink writes, send a video.

  In this chapter, you'll meet people in a variety of roles who achieve their desired outcomes more quickly and more often by rehumanizing their business processes with video. As you read their stories, think about how the use of video compares with the use of text. Think about similar situations in which you've found yourself and about how personal video might have accelerated your process or improved your outcome.

  THE MOST IMPORTANT SOUND IN ANY LANGUAGE

  For more than 20 years, Michael Thorne has been helping people buy and sell homes just southeast of Vancouver, British Columbia. Having built a name and reputation in his community, Michael often receives inquiries from prospective clients he's never met. One email from a family thinking about selling their home was signed by all four members—Ryan, Amy, Oliver, and Violet. With thousands of dollars in professional video equipment sitting off his left shoulder in the frame shown in Figure 5.1, Michael held out his iPhone to record and send a video reply.

  FIGURE 5.1 Quickly Record and Send Mobile Videos

  Why not use the DSLR camera, fancy microphone, and professional lights? Speed and authenticity. Even a semi-formal production process inhibits both. He's sent thousands of simple, mobile videos from varied locations like the airport tarmac, a ferry deck, a car dealership, a conference stage (while presenting), neighborhood streets, and more. To create marketing videos, he uses a Canon 80D, Insta360, GoPro Fusion, DJI drone, and other cameras. “The last camera I'd be willing to give up,” says Michael, “is my iPhone.” He proudly rocked an iPhone 5S for four years before upgrading to the X.

  Expensive equipment and formal production reduce speed and authenticity.

  In the video, Michael greeted each of the family members by name before introducing himself, thanking them for their interest, and proposing to meet at their home the next night at 7 p.m. As he prepared for the appointment, Michael noticed that the video was viewed more than a dozen times. Interesting! With more curiosity than trepidation about that, he walked up to their front door a couple of minutes before 7 o'clock and gave it a knock. He heard inside the sound of little feet running up to the front door.

  When the front door opened, five-year-old Oliver greeted him: “Michael! Michael! Michael!” Turns out, Oliver was so enamored of being greeted by name, he asked his parents to watch the video over and over before going to bed the previous night. A dozen times. If you're a parent, you know that “Again! Again!” drill when your child's excited about something. The familiarity built through his video not only assured Michael the opportunity to list and sell the home, it also accelerated the formation of trust so well that the family was perfectly comfortable allowing their young child to open the door and welcome into their home a person they'd never met.

  When you're recording a truly perso
nal video, take care to say the name of each recipient right off the top to immediately capture full attention and to let each person know the message is specifically for her or him. Author of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie famously reminds us that a person's own name is the sweetest and most important sound that could be spoken. More recently, a study titled, “Brain Activation When Hearing One's Own and Others' Names” found “unique brain functioning activation specific to one's own name in relation to the names of others.”2 The patterns of activation when we hear our own name are similar to those when we make personal judgments, so we're speaking even more to each person when we speak his or her name. Inserting the person's “[first_name]” into the subject line or email body does not have the same effect. While it may “personalize” the message, it doesn't make it truly personal.

  Visit BombBomb.com/BookBonus to see Michael's video.

  As a fun, child-related addition, here's another “that would never have happened with a traditional email reply” story featuring Michael's partner in RE Video Studio, a real estate education project and community. Jesse Peters serves clients in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and uses video in all aspects of his business. One afternoon, Jesse was outside in his yard, where his daughter was blowing bubbles. He received an inquiry from a couple thinking about buying a home.