| Cindy: |
Hi everybody. I’m Cindy Zuelsdorf with NAB Show Exhibitors Webinar and Kokoro Marketing. Welcome.
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Today we are looking at video interviews and how to give a great video interview at your next exhibition or event. Really, this applies to being on either side of the camera. Today we have Neil Howman, managing director of 202 Communications as our expert.
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Hey, Neil, how are you doing today?
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| Neil: |
Hi, Cindy. Very well. Thanks for inviting me.
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| Cindy: |
I’m so glad that you’re here. So, today we’re going to look at how to prep for your interview, how to know what to say, and give you some awesome pro tips. So let’s get right into it.
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It can be really challenging, Neil, to know what to say in an interview. Let’s talk about choosing what to say.
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| Neil: |
Well, yes. I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of people exhibiting NAB or any other show are there to highlight their products, solutions. In my experience, I think that’s a pretty good place to start. You find a product that you want to highlight, usually a new product, new solution. And what I found in my experience is that if you can concentrate on the key two or three aspects of that product that you wish to convey … And it’s probably worth saying that most video interviews, even if they shoot five minutes of coverage, usually end up as only a couple of minutes. Two to three minutes maximum. So, I think it’s advisable to just focus on two or three key aspects of your product that you are wishing to convey to your audience, potential customers of course.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. Nice. Well said. I used to spend that time before the show and think, like you said, of those two or three points and really just get them in my head. That’s a great way to do it. Maybe also think about what do you want someone to do after they view the video.
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| Neil: |
Yeah, very good point. What do you want them to take away from the video? Obviously, you want them to know a bit more about your product. What I find also, many video interviews end up with the opportunity to give some contact details, so you’re wanting to encourage those people to get in touch with you and learn even more about the products. Come see you, get a demo, meet you at the next show. Those are the sort of things … I think it’s very important to have that in the back of your mind, certainly.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. Now, we’ve all seen some videos that feel uncomfortable for one reason or another. Maybe it feels to sales pitchy or the person looks awkward. When we are choosing what to say, where do those things kind of come into play?
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| Neil: |
Well, it’s a very good point about the sales pitch and too much marketing jargon. I think that people do tend to switch off very quickly if they think they’re being rather aggressively pitched to. I think if you’re wanting to engage with them about some of the key aspects of the product that you’re looking to highlight, your enthusiasm for the product and the message you’re getting over, that should convey enough about wanting to encourage people to learn more about your product. Overt sales pitches I would suggest would be a bit of a no-no, not the best way to go.
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| Cindy: |
Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned enthusiasm because it really does come through if somebody’s excited about what they’re doing verses like, “Okay, here’s our new …”
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| Neil: |
Absolutely. You can usually tell if there’s somebody who’s doing a video interview under duress. Their lack of engagement in the camera or they’re feeling in any way uncomfortable. I think this comes to the point with preparation. Preparation and practice is everything. The vast majority of video interviews you are likely to do at NAB, for example, will be prearranged. You will know that there is a slot booked and a film crew will be coming.
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But having said that, there are at least a couple of publications I can think of off the top of my head who will just appear on the booth and say, “Do you have a few minutes for a quick interview?”
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So just preparation and practice. I’m an old ex-Boy Scout and I think “Be Prepared” was always the motto, so the more prepared you are, I think the easier the process will be. I think it’s important to find one or two people who are very comfortable with being in front of the camera. There’s no point in getting somebody who for whatever reason doesn’t want to be there, because of course, it doesn’t matter how good your message is, somebody very disengaged or completely nervous on the camera will diminish that message strongly.
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| Cindy: |
So true. I have to say that when I was doing a lot of product demos and video interviews at NAB Show and IBC and really all the different venues, even InterBEE and stuff like that, I have to say about half of them, maybe even more than half in my experience, were unplanned. People would walk in and want to do it unplanned and so I realized early on like, “Okay, I’ve got a have this … I’ve got a know what I’m going to say and if there’s two topics or technologies to talk about, I really need two different speeches.” It could be for smaller exhibitors you get more on-the-fly interviews. I’m not sure about that. But for me, a lot of them unplanned. People walking in and want to do an interview. And it can be customers as well. Maybe they’ve got a blog post. Dealers, reps, that kind of thing as well.
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| Neil: |
Yeah. But really, I suppose the video interview is really an extension of you being on your booths, somebody coming onto the booths and giving them a demo, talking them through your product range. Really, it’s just taking that next step of finding somebody who is comfortable when a camera is pointed at them and somebody goes, “Action,” or ” We’re rolling,” or “First question.” Those that freeze like a deer in the headlamps.
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Of course, I think that’s where the practice and the preparation come into play. You know, one tip if I can share anything, is to just to keep breathing. If you’re in front of the camera, keep breathing and try and enjoy it, and the enthusiasm and the message will come across naturally I think.
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| Cindy: |
I love it. We talked a little bit about choosing what to say. We already kind of moved into preparing and practicing for an interview. Let’s talk more about preparing and practicing. What are some key things to consider, Neil, when you’re doing that prep work?
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| Neil: |
Well, I would say that once you’ve honed in on those three key messages that you’re wishing to convey, you want to use your colleagues, especially, to practice in front of. Get their feedback. How are you looking? Is the message coming over clearly enough? You could also, of course, take time to practice on your own. I’ve just brought along one of these little cameras here, or your phone, the camera on your phone. Just set it up. I’ve got a little stand on this. Just practice a little piece to camera as if you were speaking directly into the camera there.
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So use what you can around you to just get more comfortable with the subject matter, more comfortable with talking into the camera. Usually, two or three different types of interview, but one you’re going to be on screen with an interviewer and they will be feeding your questions, so perhaps think about your points of focus. Talk directly to the interviewer and then may be off for a little bit out to the camera. Otherwise, you might get the interviewer who is behind the camera and asking you the questions off-camera. You’ll have to practice that. Get somebody, a partner, friend, colleague to shoot you some questions and just get comfortable with responding to that.
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Of course, the other type of interview is to talk directly into the camera. I would suggest you try to play little trick on yourself and use your focus, that camera lens, as somebody you’re talking to. Just the individual. Focus on them.
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I think also, Cindy, it’s usually the case in interviews that you might have to introduce yourself to the camera and also at the end perhaps to finish the interview with giving some contact details. So perhaps having a clear idea of the opening and the closing of your interview is also a good way to prepare.
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| Cindy: |
Yeah. I definitely agree with you on that point. If you can memorize your open and memorize your close, and it can be really simple. One approach, of course, is to say hi and your name and the show you’re at. That’s one approach. I kind of lean toward another approach that talks about the benefit. So maybe if we have a product that, I don’t know, helps people broadcast live events, just for example, that could be our lead-in. Like, ” If you’re looking to broadcast live events and you’re having problems with X, Y and Z …,” so that’s your lead-in. Then you can say, “And I’m Cindy Zuelsdorf,” and continue on.
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| Neil: |
Yeah.
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| Cindy: |
So, if you can memorize that two sentence open …
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| Neil: |
Another thing to add to that, Cindy, of course is that many interviews will ask you for a very short introduction to your company as well, so if you can have a line or two about who you are and what you do. It’s always best … The more concise, the better. But if you can convey in a couple of lines your primary function in your company, and then at the end, as I say, always try to include your company website and maybe an email address if they ask for that. That’s a good way to go.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. Nice. What else for prep? I’m just looking at what we talked about beforehand, Neil, because we kind of went through a lot of things about prep. Oh, one of them is … You just touched on it a little bit … Is the time issue and time constraints and people’s attention spans. Can you touch on that a little bit?
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| Neil: |
Well again, this is anecdotally but also based on my own experience. If somebody is going to be viewing one of these interviews online, I think their attention span is probably going to just about last that two to three minutes, so it’s your job to be as engaging as possible and to convey the information as clearly and concisely as possible. So coming back to that point about cutting out too much jargon, cutting out too much sales speak, get to the point very quickly, convey it in an engaging way.
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Another thing as well, I just wanted to hop back to if you’re in a situation where you’re practicing yourself. You’ve put a camera in front and you’re practicing. You can also sort of think about if your rehearsal tape works out incredibly well, a point to make is you may have just happened upon an extra piece of content that you can use there. If I’ve recorded a minute’s practice on my phone and I look at it and say, “Hey, that’s not bad,” I can put that on my website or use it on my social media. I thought that might just be worth saying. Your preparation can have some additional benefits as well.
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But yes, getting back to time constraints. I think yes, get those two or three points in there as quickly as possible. Practice your beginning. Practice your ending. There you are. Got it?
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| Cindy: |
Nice. I’m glad you got that part up about a little preview. I was just talking with someone I work with who’s doing a paper at an upcoming show and he’s getting his technical paper ready, and my tip to him was exactly what you said. Practice. Then, in his case I thought it would be really cool if he took a little bit of that content and made a blog post about it. Have the video just a minute or two of the video up, and then that way he can start posting that on social media in advance to prep people to come to his paper. And do the same thing for your booth. Have a blog post, have a little minute clip up. You’ve practiced your video at that point so you’re ready for the show. When you do your video interview at the show, it can be the same exact content that you did in advance. Great idea, Neil. I like it.
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| Neil: |
Yeah. It’s just one of the added bonuses of your preparation I think really. But I think all this preparation, really Cindy, leads toward when you’re at the show, you’re on the booth, and either somebody comes along on a sort of non-spec interview or a prearranged one, the more practice and preparation you’ve done, you can take more control of the situation.
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| Cindy: |
Nice.
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| Neil: |
I know Ben is watching this from IABM and would know that there are many video crews who’ve got X amount of videos to get through, visiting a number of booths. We know how big the holes are at NAB. Many other big shows. If you can help them, in my experience, they really appreciate that. If you can help them because you’ve got a firm idea of where you want them to set up, what you want to have in the background, where you want to stand, that will help them get through that process quicker and move on to their next engagement. And it gives you a sense of ownership, of process. There’s no problem with coming around to the camera and having a look at the shot and getting a sense of whether they’ve just got your head and shoulders in or a little bit more of your body so you’ll know how to stand. I think that’s very important. Again, the preparation can help you take more control of the situation and get more out of it.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. So we looked at what to say and we talked a little bit about prep and practice. We kind of started moving into some pro-techniques here, and one of them pro-tips wise that you touched on is the background and being in control of that. Can you talk, Neil, about backgrounds because we’ve all seen some come out great and we’ve all seen somewhere you go, “Oops. They shouldn’t have shot that video right there.” Why is that?
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| Neil: |
Absolutely. Well, if we take the majority of your interviews, you want to be able to focus on, let’s say, a new product. If you can get a shot where your new product demo, if it’s suitable, in the background with its title in the background, that would be perfect. I have … Do I dare share, Cindy?
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| Cindy: |
Oh, bring it on. Everyone will like this. Niel’s got a hilarious story and we can all relate.
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| Neil: |
Life’s a learning process, isn’t it, everyone? When I was very young, probably in the Boy Scouts, I completely ignored the “Be Prepared” motto. Well, I thought I’d done very well. I was asked to prepare a short presentation on how to put up a tent. It was overhead projectors in those days. I had a series of slides. The first mistake I made was I entitled my presentation “Tent Erection”. I’m sure you know which way this is going. But I didn’t get my slide quite centered on the overhead projector, so there I am delivering what I thought was a fantastic two-minute on putting up a tent with just the word erection over my head.
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| Cindy: |
That went bad! So the word tent was cut off and …
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| Neil: |
Life’s a series of learning curves, I find. So there we go.
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But on a serious point, I have seen a number of video interviews that have been badly framed. The interviewee or the company involved haven’t taken control of the situation. The film crew were in a hurry so they said, “That’ll do.” They’ve just got half the name of the background or maybe it’s spelled something or suggested something that they were planning on. So I think it’s a really important thing to think about where you’re standing, what’s going on behind you, as well as how you’re saying things. Because of course, anything that distracts from the way that you’re saying things is going to distract from people taking in the information you’re wanting to convey to them. So there we go.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. I think it’s hilarious. I’ve definitely had some interviews where I looked later at the shot and the competitor’s logo is in the background.
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| Neil: |
That’s a good one. Yeah.
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| Cindy: |
I’d be like, “Darn it.”
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| Neil: |
The product looming large in the background.
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| Cindy: |
Yes, I’ve had that happen, or there’s half the word cut off. I didn’t have anything quite so terrible as tent being left out of my shot, but I had something where half the product name was in there and it just doesn’t make any sense at all.
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| Neil: |
Yeah. I haven’t delivered that presentation since. Traumatized about camping holidays.
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| Cindy: |
Oh my gosh. One of the things I like to do, too, when I’m doing an interview just comes back to your point about making it easier for the crew. Man, if you make it easy for the crew, they’ll come back to you every year, every show and you get way more interviews. So things you can do to prepare for that and talk with the crew … You can say, like you said Neil, “Hey, let’s do the shoot right here. Will that work for you? Can we get this piece in it?” And then ask them some questions. Are they going to do any B-roll, meaning are they going to do shots afterword where they pick it up and do a shot of the product.
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| Neil: |
Exactly.
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| Cindy: |
Are they going to do any B-roll… You called it cutaways, too. |
| Neil: |
Yes. There are more technical film people than me obviously on this, but if it’s in an editing capacity then they can do some close-ups of the demos afterwards or the set, get a wider shot of the booths. This whole thing about taking control of the situation … One thing that might be worth mentioning, Cindy, is that a lot of the questions are prearranged in video interviews. So I suppose this goes back to your first part of the process, which is thinking about the key points about your new product that you’re wishing to convey and focusing on those. You can construct the interview along the lines that you would wish it to go. So again, you can discuss with the film crew in advance the questions and what other additional cutaway shots, etc., the whole thing. It all comes down to that preparation I think.
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| Cindy: |
You might ask the crew, “Can I do any pickups? Can I do pickups?” And so what that would mean is if I make a mistake when I’m talking, is it okay to stop and start talking again, because that’s an edit point where they can edit that out. They might say, “No. We need to do it all in one shot, one take, that kind of thing.” Then you can pause and start over again but if they say pickups are okay, it’s great because then you can say, “Oops. I meant to say … So here we are.” You know, you can pause and pick up.
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| Neil: |
That’s a good point.
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| Cindy: |
So ask the crew, “Can I do pickups? Can I pick up if I want to restate something?” As we’re talking, I might have three points in mind and during the interview I cannot think of that second point. Just go on to the third one and keep going. Nobody else will know you missed that one. It doesn’t matter. Then just go to your close. When you feel like, “I don’t know what to say. I forgot what to say,” go to your close and just … And then pause. Pause at the beginning when you start talking, right before you start, and at the end pause and just told for a moment. That gives them a nice place to edit out of the video as well, finish it up.
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| Neil: |
Right. It might be worth saying that point as well. That’s a very good point and I think many video crews really appreciate that if you’ve got an interviewee who provides that one and two and three, counting in their head, pause so that they’ve got a cut off point. But also something about where your eyes are going, because what I noticed is somebody finishes if they’re doing something directly into camera and then it sort of …
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| Cindy: |
Yes. They look over at the camera crew or their friend and [crosstalk 00:22:17]
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| Neil: |
And sort of hover between a split-second afterwords. That can make a problem when there’s some editing involved.
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| Cindy: |
You end up trying to do an early dissolve and splitting the audio or something to try to fix it. Yes. It’s hard.
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| Neil: |
It’s those little things that can help improve the experience.
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| Cindy: |
I’ll usually ask the crew, “Do I need to look at you or look at the camera?” If they say, “Either one is fine,” if you’ve got a choice and you maybe have never done it before and are comfortable, choose the looking off the camera. That’s my suggestion. Because if you look at the camera, it feels weird. I’m looking at it right now, but if you can just grab a colleague, have a designated buddy who’s going to stand off camera and you talk to them and give your information to them and make them stay there while you do the interview.
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| Neil: |
Michael Caine, the famous actor, did a great filmed workshop for actors and he said that if you’re looking somebody in the eye or camera, you just pick one eye to focus on or, as you say, find somebody to stand just to the left or right of the camera and just focus on speaking to them. That’s a very good tip.
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| Cindy: |
Now, we were talking about ways to look stronger on camera, Neil, and what do you think about people that don’t know what to do with their hands? I know I’ll find myself doing stuff. What do you suggest?
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| Neil: |
Me too. Me too. First of all, understand what the shot is going to look like. If it’s just head and shoulders, you probably need to worry less, although because everything is exaggerated on camera, perhaps be conscious of moving around too much. But if it is a wider shot where your hands are involved and you’re not quite sure what to do with them, then just keep them loosely clasped in front of you, relaxed. I think the ideal way to do it is to use your hands at specific times to accentuate a point and then bring them back to a sort of neutral position so that they don’t become the most distracting thing about that. If you don’t know what to do, just hold them gently in front of you.
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| Cindy: |
That’s perfect. That’s perfect.
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| Nick: |
Can I chime in for a quick second?
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| Cindy: |
Yeah. Come on in, Nick.
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| Nick: |
Thank you.
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| Cindy: |
You’re welcome.
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| Nick: |
Neil, how are you doing, by the way?
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| Neil: |
I’m very well, Nick. How are you?
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| Nick: |
Wonderful. I’m doing great. I just wanted to chime in quickly because I actually thought public speaking for several years at a university in the Northeast and one thing I wanted to say, just echoing what Neil said, there are a lot of things especially in a two to three minute window where attention spans are very, very slim, so anything that you’re going to do that’s going to take away from the content, that’s really … Any kind of excuse that the brain has to go away from the voice or the content is going to really hurt the interview. A lot of the fidgeting will be damaging. A lot of the swing will be damaging.
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But the biggest thing that I’ve always learned with my students and what I’m probably doing right now is talking too fast. A lot of times our brain will go so fast because we’re nervous and our mouth will try to match the speed of our mind, and it never will. So the preparation is key there and making sure your cadence is appropriate because if you’re going a mile a minute, that’s going to make for a poor interview as well. So definitely watching the cadence and your tone. As Neil said in the opening too, your audience is only going to be as excited as you are, so if you are monotone or if you are un-enthused, you can’t expect your audience to be enthusiastic if you’re not.
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| Neil: |
Absolutely. Very good point.
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| Cindy: |
Well said.
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| Neil: |
The other thing I would add that is to find a kind colleague who can just take a look at you before you go on. Spinach in the teeth, some mark on the shirt, or whatever it is. Just have a moment to just either check yourself or get somebody kind to help you.
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| Cindy: |
I love that. That’s perfect. So we’ve got a Q & A chat box open here, so go ahead and put your questions in there. Neil, let’s just kind of wrap up here and then we’ll go to Q & A if people do have questions.
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Some of our audience here may be doing their first-ever video, or maybe they just want to up their game. We gave a lot of tips today. What two or three things would you say, if you’re just going to do two or three things based on today’s session, what would those be?
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| Neil: |
Well, preparation is everything. I couldn’t say it enough. Be prepared and be practiced. Concentrate on two or three key points. Use your colleagues to help you rehearse. Film yourself if you have enough time. See how you’re coming across. Have a think about how a shot will look when you’re actually on the stand. Think about your background. Think about what you want to convey. The last thing I would say is remember to breathe and enjoy it. Your enthusiasm and engagement levels will come across clearly.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. Well said. Well said.
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When you’re shooting video at NAB, of course you can have your own crew and engage with other crews. Just to let you know, NAB Show does have a preferred vendor and we’ll put that in the chat box too as well, just so that you have that information.
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Would you guys like it if we put this together as a checklist? I started to do that and I thought, “Well, we’ll just have our call today because there’ll be more stuff that comes out of it.” So if I hear back from you that you’ll find it useful, we’ll add it into the blog post and the video replay and you can see … Okay, great. We are seeing a few people saying checklist. Yeah.
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So Fallon will just post here in a minute where that will be. We’ll have it on the kokoroinc.com website where all the replays are and I’ll just put a checklist on there as well.
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If people have questions for you, Neil, they can hit you up on email or follow you on your blog? Would that be good?
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| Neil: |
Absolutely. Absolutely. My email is neil@202coms.com. I’m sure Cindy has that.
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| Cindy: |
We’re putting it on the chat. It’s up on the chat here.
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| Neil: |
Thank you very much.
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| Cindy: |
I’ll put it in the show notes.
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| Neil: |
Looking forward to perhaps meeting some of the people who joined at NAB itself. It’ll be great to see some of you.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. What questions do you guys have? If you have questions or want tips, Neil’s been on both sides of the camera, as have I and we’re happy to take your questions.
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| Neil: |
Well, yeah.
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| Cindy: |
Shoot your questions over in the chat box. I’m just looking through right now. Also, if you have other NAB Show related questions, you can shoot those into the chat box right now because Nick can take any NAB Show related questions at all.
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We’ve got a really fun comment in here that came in a little bit earlier today about someone who was conducting an interview and the person doing the interview talked all about streaming and the product but didn’t mention their company name. While the content was really awesome, apparently the company and the PR agency were bummed. Maybe they were able to put a lower third in later. I don’t know with that. That’s a great story. I think I’ve probably done that myself.
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What else?
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| Neil: |
Easily done. It’s easily done.
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| Cindy: |
Nice. Nice. Okay. Question about Facebook Live. Fallon, If I can hit you up to put the Facebook Live video, how to do the video in the chat box in a moment, it is in the kokoroinc.com blog. There is a special post on how to do Facebook Live at NAB. So yeah, we can totally talk about that.
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As you know, right now Facebook gives a bump, gives a preference to Live content. If you are doing Facebook Live, that’s going to come up to the top of peoples feeds so they’re going to get notified right away about it. So I would totally do that. You can always go in and edit the post later. You can embed that Facebook Live video into a blog post or put it on other places as well. It’s a great way to do it. If anybody feels nervous being live, know that you can delete that post later. You don’t have to go live with it. You can click the thing that says no, I don’t want to. You could practice on your own personal feed before you go to your company feed. If you’re going to go to your company pages, be sure you have the Facebook pages app on here. You’ll need that separate app instead of just your normal Facebook app. Those were some points about Facebook Life.
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Anything specific that you want to know about it? Those are the questions I get all the time, so I was just repeating about that. Fallon’s going to put the … Oh, Fallon’s got the link in the chat box right there. Actually, I have a two-minute video where I actually show you what buttons to push to do the whole thing and walk you through the UI.
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Neil, you were just at a couple shows in the UK and you shot a little video there. Did you dabble in Facebook Live or was it all pre-producible?
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| Neil: |
Yeah. A bit of a hectic schedule. We were just trialing a few ideas, so we just shot on this little guy here. But one thing worth saying is that the mic quality wasn’t great, so that is an improvement that I’m going to be making personally. I’m going to do my own small little videos at NAB, just need to get it decent microphone to go with it. That will be my top tip for a mini camera.
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Cindy, you are probably more experienced on using your phone camera.
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| Cindy: |
Yes. I do a lot of phone.
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| Neil: |
Yeah. Do you use the little mic on that?
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| Cindy: |
I have an Audio-Technica mic. It’s not particularly expensive. I want to say it was 20 bucks that I have. I have a couple Rode mics I use. For this I use this Rode Podcaster mic, which I like a lot. That’s the model number. Obviously, I’m not going to take that to a show. There are smaller Rode mics that I use when I’m on the road and I like those a lot. Those are good.
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That’s a little tip for everybody, too, is when the video crew comes in, make it easy for them to put that mic on you. So if it means you’ve got to move your jacket so you can hide the wire or whatever, just be ready for that piece of it as well. Like, “Hey, how can I help with the mic?” Maybe if you have any tape handy, that’s great too because then you can just tape the cord into your jacket or shirt or whatever. The mic is a good thing. I’m so glad you said that, Neil. Because that makes … [crosstalk 00:34:08]
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| Neil: |
I remember you and I having a conversation about that quite a while ago, Cindy. This was trailing from my point of view just for personal use and yeah, the mic is really important.
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| Cindy: |
Nice.
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| Neil: |
So we got video but the audio wasn’t so good.
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| Cindy: |
Right. If you’ve got audio and lighting, and you’re good to go.
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| Neil: |
Yeah.
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| Cindy: |
So if you’re shooting the video, if there’s a way you can find a place that has some reasonable lights, do that and then if you have that and the mic, you’re going to be golden. It will be awesome.
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We’ve got a question here about somebody who’s saying that they just started a new job and they’re doing an interview about their products but they aren’t feeling super comfortable with the technical aspects of it. Boy, can I address that. The number of times I’ve had to do an interview and talk about a product that I’ve really just got the download from one of the engineers that morning … Well, there’s a lot of those. So I fully hear that.
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What I would say is sometimes I like to talk to a salesperson. I’ll go talk to the engineering get the scoop. They’re going to sit there and tell you it’s over-sampled, it has 16 bits, whatever, all the different things. That’s awesome. Then I go talk to the salesperson and I go, “Hey, who buys this and why?” They might give the first answer, but remember our three levels of why, if you’ve ever heard that in questions and interviews. Why would they buy it? Oh, they buy it because it’s a great price. Great. So it’s a good price but why else would they buy it? Well, they would buy it because if they are using this other camera, they have problems with X, Y and Z, but if they use our camera, it solves A, B and C. Okay. Boom. You just got one of your points or maybe two of your points for your interview.
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So talking to a salesperson to me is really, really awesome because they know that pain points that your target audience has and then you can put that into an interview and be like, “Hey, I’m here today talking with you about this product X and the reason it’s different from other ones out there is … this reason.” And then start in on your reason one, your reason two and reason three.
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If you want to hit me up, I will talk to you off-line. You can contact me, the person who posted this question. Call me. I will fully coach you through it if you want just because I’m like, “I get you.” Hope that helps.
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| Neil: |
Yeah. I couldn’t agree with that advice more, Cindy. We’ve got to remember that in the short space of time that the video is going to take place, you’re trying to convey the initial engagement about these products. If they want to know more, the potential customer, they can then come and have a chat with the sales team then speak to the technical guys and drill deeper into it. This is a short window. I think from a sales perspective, how will it help of potential customer solve a particular problem is more the focus that should be taken rather than all that.
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| Cindy: |
Totally. What’s different about it and what does it solve? If you can talk about that, you’re going to get a load of interviews and stuff. It’s going to be different from what the engineering staff will say about the product. That’s totally valuable info. If you can be that awesome person that combines the engineering information with what the salesperson would say to solve a problem … What does the salesperson look for when they go talk to somebody? How do they identify that person is a good fit for this product? Get that in your video.
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All right. What else? What else? Any other questions, anybody?
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| Nick: |
Cindy, I just wanted to chime in really quickly one last time. This isn’t particular to the video aspect of things, but just for exhibitors to be aware, as I’m sure everybody online is scrambling for their show prep … Just so they are aware, Advanced shipments are being taken now until the 27th at the Advanced warehouse in Vegas through the general on-site contractor, Freeman, and from now until the 26th they have that window for all of their catering needs. So I just wanted to throw in some exhibit service in their real quick just to … If anyone has any questions on that, of course Fallon put my information in the chat, so feel free to call me. Feel free to email me. I know we are getting to the nitty-gritty, so I just wanted to get the exhibitor deadlines in their real quick.
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| Cindy: |
Thank you, Nick. I’m looking at other messages. Somebody just posted in here how great this series of webinars has been and it is so helpful to them. Thank you for that. Just keep telling NAB Show that because then we’ll keep doing more and bring back those topics you want to hear about in future webinars as well.
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I think we’ve gone through all the chat questions. If you have anything else you’d like to talk with us about, you can talk with Neil, talk with me, talk with Nick. All of our contact info is here. We’ll see you in Las Vegas. Thank you and thank you, Neil.
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| Neil: |
Thanks so much, Cindy. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much, everyone.
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| Nick: |
Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Neil. Much appreciated, guys.
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| Cindy: |
Bye.
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| Neil: |
Cheers.
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