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As a sales leader, you’re always looking for innovative ideas that will help your team achieve more sales, right? When you’re on the lookout for new tools for your team, you’ve probably found that the line between sales and marketing is increasingly blurry. One such tool that you might consider to be in the domain of marketing, but can equally be effective for use by the sales team, is the explainer video. Explainer videos have seen a big rise in popularity recently because they are extremely affordable and effective in driving sales.

What Are They?

An explainer video is a short animated video which explains your business, product or service in a simple yet engaging way. They grab a customer or prospect’s attention through the use of clear, concise language and attractive visuals. They not only inform customers about product offerings but explain how they solve their problem and why your solutions are the best on the market.

In this way, they are extremely well suited to modern sales techniques which are all about listening to customers’ needs and positioning your product as the solution.

Explainer videos share these characteristics:

• Short: On average, no longer than 90 seconds
• Simple: They follow the classical narrative structure of “what”, “how” and “why”.
• Highlight target customer’s pain points: And then providing the solution.
• Animated: Generally use animation to present a fun and light-hearted approach, engage the audience and give a human touch to the brand.
• Branded: They use the look & feel of the brand's identity to foster strong brand recognition.
• Music and Voice-over: To accompany the interesting visuals, explainer videos feature emotive music and a professional voiceover artist who literally “explains” the problem, product and solution.

Do They Work?

In a word, yes. Explainer videos have a great deal of success in terms of digital marketing. Used on your website, they increase web traffic, increase conversion rates and improve your sites ranking on Google. But that’s not going to help my sales pros, you cry! Here’s how they help sales reps out in the field:

• Add some excitement to the pitch. An engaging, personalized pitch is what your reps need to make a sale. Boring PowerPoint slideshows are just not going to do it. But a lively, tailored explainer video is going to make a big impression on a prospect. Explainer videos are particularly useful if you have a harder to explain product or service since they are focused on simplifying and clarifying.
• Stay in your prospect’s head. Did you know that the vast majority of the population are visual learners rather than verbal learners? 65% of the population will retain information better if it is seen rather than heard (35% verbal, 5% experiential). That means if you are just talking to your prospect they are far less likely to retain what you’ve said versus if they see it in action through an explainer video. Using video will help your product stay in your prospect’s long-term memory, improve their understanding and evoke an emotional response.
• Showcase your company and product’s personality. While we’d all like to hope that the personality of our reps alone can be relied upon to guarantee the personality of our brand shines through, that is not always the case. You can’t control how a rep might perform on any given day in the field but what you can control is that the materials you give them do a great job in making your company sparkle. A well-produced explainer video will effectively communicate your product or service and showcase your brand’s personality, even if your rep is having a bad day.