Why Customer Testimonial Videos Are The Best Form of B2B Sales Enablement in 2020

Even the most skilled sales representative in the world can't be expected to move prospects down the pipeline efficiently without high quality marketing collateral.

There is only so much you can do with words alone.

The process that a prospective B2B customer goes through before making a buying decision is unique for each of them, and can involve days (or even weeks) of research and evaluation.

And, as a B2B marketer, you need to equip buyers (and your sales team) with the right resources to feel comfortable choosing your business as the right solution.

But therein lies the main problem:

Most content given to your sales teams for sales enablement goes unused, forgotten, and left behind. This can be a major drain on resources and even lower the potential closing rates of your sales team. It's a lose-lose.

These resources can come in many forms, like whitepapers, PDFs, and more. But, more and more, studies show these materials go unused.

Thankfully, there is hope:

Story driven video testimonials have proven to be highly effective assets for sales enablement, time and time again.

Why? Video engages buyers. It stands out in their inbox, or on their feed. And real customers testifying about the power of your brand builds credibility and trust that other mediums just can't provide.

Here is why providing your sales team customer testimonial videos is an easy win for both you and your sales team.

Quick Refresher: What is Sales Enablement?

Before getting into why videos are such a powerful sales enablement tool, it's important to have a solid understanding of what this term really means.

As a basic definition, it refers to the process of providing sales teams with all of the resources they need to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

As SiriusDecisions explains, "Sales enablement's goal is to ensure that every seller has the required knowledge, skills, processes, and behaviors to optimize every interaction with buyers."

Sales enablement isn't intended to replace a team, but instead to empower each employee to perform their role at maximum efficiency.

Sales enablement resources can come in many forms, including written content, graphics, and presentations — just to name a few of the more common approaches. These can all be effective when done well, as long as the buyer's experience is central during creation.

But when it comes to engaging prospective customers, video beats all of them, every time.

Here are four reasons why.

4 Reasons Customer Testimonial Videos Are Extremely Effective for Sales Enablement

Businesses now have many tools at their disposal for creating sales enablement content.

The tough part is finding content that your sales teams actually uses, and that prospects actually trust.

As a B2B SaaS marketer, this can be difficult to say the least. Markets are saturated and standing out is harder than ever.

To add to those woes, according to Gartner, "only 9% of B2B buyers consider vendor content as trustworthy". This is a serious challenge B2B marketers face when arming their sales team with effective content.

Thankfully, video testimonials and video case studies are a proven solution to combat the growing skepticism in B2B buyers. Here's four reasons why providing your sales team with video case studies will improve both their ability to close and your internal reputation for delivering valuable, effective content.

Video Testimonial Example for Bigtincan, featuring their customer HINO Trucks.

1. Prospects Trust Their Peers More Than Your Marketing Claims

One of the most important goals of any sales process is building trust in your company and product offering with new B2B prospects.

After all, if someone is considering giving you their money, they need to know that they can expect value or a return on their investment - and that your product has solved the problem they have for other people similar to them.

And while your marketing materials and other resources likely tell your audience what they can expect, prospects prefer to get validation from peers in the industry they can relate to.

That's where bringing testimonial videos from existing customers into the process becomes extremely valuable for your sales team.

In fact, when B2B buyers were asked about how reviews and testimonials from existing buyers impact their decisions, 49% said they directly impacted their product consideration.

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So if you want to take a proactive approach to earning your audience's trust, you need to incorporate testimonials and case studies from existing customers who have experienced success with your product.

Effectively, authentic customer testimonial videos validate all of your existing marketing claims on your site. You can say that your tool has helped businesses grow revenue 200%, but without proven testimonials from real clients to back it up, those are just words.

For example, software company New Relic backs up their claims by directly showcasing testimonial videos. First, they claim that their software can deeper customer relationships and improve your experiences. Then, they back it up with a video explaining exactly how they did it for their customer.

And in case you're wondering whether this approach really works, the answer is yes.

In one survey of marketers using video, testimonials were ranked the most effective type of video content by 51% of respondents — beating out both tutorial videos (50%), and demo videos (49%).

Testimonials in video form are powerful. They feel far different than written testimonials that can seem like more marketing messaging written my on-staff marketers rather than the actual customers. Videos tell the story directly from the perspective of your customer, providing a win-win for both the marketing and sales teams.

Why else is video better than having solely written testimonial content? Let's dig in a bit deeper...

2. Statistically, Today's Buyers Prefer Video to Written Content

If you've never created videos as part of your marketing or sales efforts, you might be wondering whether they're really necessary for sharing testimonials.

After all, if the goal is to illustrate your brand's value from the perspective of a consumer, wouldn't a written review be able to accomplish this?

The thing is, today's prospects prefer video over every other content format for getting information from vendors they are evaluating. In fact, one HubSpot survey found that 54% of them want to see videos from the brands and businesses they support.

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Only 18% said blog articles, and 17% said content in PDF format — making it clear that video testimonials have the potential to be interesting to a much larger portion of your target audience.

And this makes sense: your prospects are busy. They don't have time to read a dozen emails, sort through the masses of text, and more. Let alone reading an entire PDF with a half-dozen of pages of context and backstory.

In another survey, HubSpot found that while 73% skim through blog posts and 75% skim through long-form content (and potentially even multitask while "reading"" them), that number drops to 38% for video.

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So once you grab a user's attention with video, you're much more likely to keep it than you would be with any form of written content.

This is because your potential customers get hundreds of emails per day. They read less than 15 seconds of written content on your site, too. Why? Saturation! Everybody is using PDF case studies, meanwhile, nobody has the time or attention span to consume it.

PDF case studies are a good start. But, they have nowhere near the power of video. While only 15 seconds of written content is consumed before distractions set in, people consume an average of six hours of video daily.

Want a slam dunk for your sales team? The best content that you as a marketer can provide to them are video testimonials.

3. Video Significantly Increases Click Through and Conversion Rate

Given that videos are more interesting to potential clients and more effective at keeping them engaged, it should come as no surprise that they're also better for increasing your sales teams' outreach / closing success.

But it might come as a surprise just how much more effective they are.

In fact, providing video to your team for a sales page can increase conversions by a whopping 80% or more.

Vend, B2B retail POS software company is a prime example of this strategy in action. Their marketing team creates video testimonials and delivers them directly to the sales team on landing pages:

The fact is, showcasing existing happy customers to their prospects helps build trust faster.

And considering that the ultimate goal of sales enablement is to drive prospective customers and clients to take action, this is an advantage that can't be overstated.

The more effective a resource is at driving buyers down the funnel, the more valuable it is to your company — and the more directly it can contribute to your sales teams' effectiveness.

When it comes to cold outreach and reaching potential customers via email, it's no surprise to hear that video improves performance.

According to GetResponse, utilizing video content like customer testimonials can improve CTR by 300% in email messaging and reduce unsubscribe rates by 75%.

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Reaching potential customers via email is hard. Inboxes are crowded. But very few are using video to their advantage, giving your sales team valuable differentiation.

Customer testimonial videos are a great way to break through the noise and provide immense value to your potential customers. Want your sales team to close more leads? Provide them with video to make a lasting impression on their email outreach.

4. Testimonials Let You Highlight Your Key Buyer Personas & Key Verticals

Potential customers want to hear from existing customers. But more specifically, they want to hear from other existing customers like them.

After all, every potential client has their own unique set of reasons for seeking out the products and services that your company offers. That's especially true if you serve several unique audience segments, or partner with clients in a variety of different industries.

And customer testimonial videos are an excellent solution to this challenge.

The key here is developing video testimonials that align with each specific vertical, or persona, your product caters to.

For example, if you're a software company offering solutions for small businesses as well as fortune 1000 companies, you'd want to create testimonial videos for both of these audiences. If you're a cybersecurity company who helps customers in both the public and private sector, the same rule applies.

In that sense, while any testimonials are a positive, relevant testimonials are far more effective. Potential customers are far more convinced to buy when seeing testimonials that match their persona or identity. Part of this has to do with the psychological principle of implicit egotism, which essentially means that people naturally gravitate towards (and trust) people they view to be "like themselves."

Slack is a prime example of creating customer testimonial videos for their different audience segments:

In their testimonial section, you can even sort the "Customer Stories" by industry and company size.

Similarly, Trello highlights all of the different audience segments that they serve, inviting businesses from diverse industries to become potential users of their software:

Regardless of the exact audiences you serve, you'll want to make sure that the testimonials you offer these audiences address challenges and concerns that are unique to each. Giving this to your sales team is far more valuable than a generic testimonial that likely won't match their target account.  The more specific and relevant the testimonials you can give them, the better.

And always remember: Ask your testimonial interviewee what kinds of problems they had before working with you, and what specific struggles led them to seek a solution. Then, have them explain why your company was uniquely suited to help, along with the results and impact they've since achieved.

With this approach, you can avoid taking a one-size-fits-all approach to illustrating your brand's value. Instead, you'll create helpful, specific resources that speak directly to each of the potential customers you want to engage and convert. This where video testimonials become even more effective and valuable in the hands of your marketing and sales team.

Conclusion

Sales enablement is essential for moving potential customers and clients through the buying process with relevant content at the right time, and showing them why they should trust your your company to solve their problems.

And while there are many options for creating resources for this goal, in terms of bang for your buck, you'd be hard pressed to find a more effective and versatile option than professional customer testimonial videos.

Prospective customers trust existing customers to give them honest, unbiased information far more than they trust your company and your sales team. And though testimonials can take other formats, today's buyers prefer video to written content.

By leveraging video testimonials, your sales team is able to communicate more value over email and actually drive making. And, ff your company serves multiple audience segments, video testimonials can illustrate your experience in each of them, and let potential clients hear directly from other people with similar problems and needs.

If you want to help your sales team build trust and close more deals faster, providing them with professional, story-driven customer testimonial videos that are also authentic is a surefire way to close more deals, faster. Which ultimately, is what sales enablement is all about.