Using Video As A Selling Tool

A YouTube channel is good for several reasons: it lets you post original videos and “subscribe” to video feeds for distributor and/or manufacturer videos, it’s fairly easy to use, it’s search-engine friendly, and, best of all, it’s free.

There are also other video services like Vimeo and Flickr, but YouTube is currently the most popular. In fact, it’s so popular that YouTube searches are very near eclipsing Google searches, says DuBois.

If you don’t want to invest a lot of time managing online videos, Professional Distributor’s online Media Center archives hundreds of tool and equipment videos from many manufacturers. Visit www.vehicleservicepros.com/media-center to view them all.

Micro Broadcasts

DuBois has another suggestion to take you leaps and bounds into the future of video: use QR codes (bar codes made of tiny squares that smartphones “read” and automatically take users to an online page) to bring customers from the real work to “cyber video.”

“Everybody’s carrying a smart phone,” says DuBois. If you put QR codes on products, shelves or display boxes on your truck, your customer can be watching a short video on his phone about the exact product he’s interested in. This allows you to present interest-specific demos on-demand to several customers at once. Now it’s not like just being in two places at once – it’s like being in a virtually unlimited number of places at once -- doing sales pitches or relying on professionally produced videos with the most up-to-date technical details.

You can also emblazon your literature with QR codes (see goqr.me) and/or shortlinks (see bit.ly) linking to online videos, says DuBois. (Both sites offer free services.)

To juggle all this information, you might even consider keeping a spreadsheet of your most popular tools and equipment with links to video and PDF literature. When a customer asks for a specification sheet or product literature, you can easily email him both the PDF and a video link.

I agree with DuBois that harnessing the power of video is smart. It can help you spend less time researching and answering technical questions, and more time closing sales.