There’s no question alignment is an important part of sales enablement. In fact, of the three big stages of sales enablement — align, adopt, accelerate — alignment is arguably the most important.
After all, it’s pretty hard to get widespread adoption and meaningful program acceleration if you don’t first spend time aligning everyone around a shared set of strategies and goals.
That would be like telling a group of athletes to run a race without marking the course. Chaos.
But even though it’s incredibly important, aligning your sales team doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right tools (like video) you can align your sales team quickly, without investing a ton of resources.
Here’s how to add video to your alignment strategy, plus five video templates to get you started.
Why use video to align your sales team?
Alignment is a cornerstone of sales enablement. On paper, it sounds easy. But in reality, it’s complicated and full of moving parts.
First, you have to align your marketing and sales teams. At the same time, you need to achieve internal alignment within your sales team. Everyone on the team needs to understand the big-picture goals and how their individual performance contributes to those goals.
Fair enough.
But how are you supposed to do all this when the market moves a mile a minute, the sales pipeline is more sophisticated than ever, and no one on your team has time to attend yet another meeting or read yet another email from sales enablement?
The answer: video.
Video has a pretty big leg up on your traditional comms methods.
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Video is easy to consume
Because it uses visuals and movement, video conveys a lot of information in a short amount of time. What would’ve been a thirty-minute meeting can usually be achieved in the span of a two-minute video.
Video is memorable
We remember far more information when we watch a video than we do when we read an email or a long-winded Slack message. Video makes the onslaught of sales enablement information much more manageable for your team.
Video is on demand
You need everyone to be on the same page. But how can you do that if you can’t even get them all in the same room? Your team is busy selling — as they should be. Video is an on-demand option that lets them consume your messages at their own pace.
Align your sales teams with these five videos
By now, we hope the power of sales enablement videos is evident to you. But to deliver results, even the most capable communication tool has to be deployed strategically.
To help align your team, put video to work in these five areas.
1. Updates
If you deliver the right information, sales update videos are a great tool for aligning your teams.
Create a package of regular update videos that cover everything from sales numbers on up to a high-level overview of the complete sales pipeline. That way, everyone stays pointed in the same direction, based on the most current information.
Start with these update videos
- Sales pipeline update: A high-level strategic overview that helps the executive team assess resource allocation.
- Sales process and policy update: Create a short video whenever you update your sales playbook or internal policies, or when you fine-tune your sales processes.
- Weekly sales activity update: Highlight the number of sales calls booked, calls made, email volume, and any other important metrics.
- Monthly sales update: A regular video that goes over the numbers for the month, as well as progress toward quarterly targets. Also use this chance to announce top performers.
- Quarterly sales update: Focus on the big sales numbers in your quarterly sales updates. Save the more granular data for your weekly and monthly updates.
Best practices for update videos
- Keep videos under a minute, if at all possible. Set a hard limit of two minutes.
- Avoid sending the same video to everyone. Create updates for the executive team and updates for the sales team, with data targeted at the needs of each.
- Include a call-to-action. Include a few action items to make it crystal clear what the information means. Or include a call-to-action button linking to the more detailed document.
Adding a clickable button at the end of your videos is easy with Biteable Teams.
2. Announcements
Announcements eat up a lot of time during your sales meetings, and they rarely get the attention they deserve. Solve this problem by moving most of your announcements to video.
Create short videos to announce top performers, the winners of incentive rewards, and any news about commission policy changes and incentive program updates.
Start with these announcement videos
- Top performer announcement: A short video recognizing the top performer(s) in a given time period. Weekly, monthly, and quarterly top performer videos are a good combination.
- Big win announcement: A celebratory video for when your team wins a big deal or hits a sales target ahead of schedule.
- Incentive program announcement: A video outlining the key details of a new incentive program or any major changes to your existing program.
Best practices for video announcements
- Keep announcement videos extra short. 15 to 30 seconds is enough.
- Keep a template on hand. Announcement videos can’t always be scheduled ahead of time. Have a video template ready so you aren’t caught off guard.
- Recorded first-person. Make it more personalized with footage of you or another leader delivering the news.
Pro tip: The easiest way to get first-person footage is by using the Record Me feature in Biteable Teams. Record yourself directly in the platform — no uploads necessary.
3. Reports
Sales performance reporting videos basically guarantee that everyone gets the important details from your sales reports.
However, sales report videos don’t replace your written reports. Videos extract the highlights and make them memorable. Send video reports as companion resources to your text documents.
Start with these report videos
- Quarterly sales report: A video covering the sales numbers for the quarter at a relatively coarse level of detail.
- Yearly sales report: A more detailed video covering performance numbers for the year. These videos can be more detailed than quarterly reports, because you send them far less frequently.
Best practices for sales report videos
- Limit your sales report videos to between two and three minutes. Limiting the run time stops you from cramming the entire report into your video.
- Include a clickable link to the full, written report. Make it as easy as possible for viewers to read the entire report.
4. Sales education
Send a video to your team whenever you add a new tool to your sales tech stack or implement new strategies and tactics. Or, send out weekly micro-learning videos that help keep reps at the top of their game.
These videos are quick to watch, and they’re incredibly easy to use as on-the-fly reference materials whenever people get stuck or need a refresher.
Start with these sales education videos
- New tool introduction and setup: A video guide for setting up a new sales tool.
- Sales playbook and framework training: Outline changes to your sales playbook or framework and how those changes impact the sales process.
- Product developments and features: Quick videos that educate reps on product developments and new features, along with a few pointers for how to leverage these in the sales process.
- Sales messaging training: sales training videos that show your sales team how to sell new products and services or engage with customers in new markets.
Best practices for sales education videos
- Keep videos as short as they can be. There’s no official length for training videos. But keep your videos short enough that team members can watch them in the spare minutes between tasks.
- Break up complex topics. Break up complex topics into a series of shorter videos, especially if you find that a video is creeping beyond the five or ten-minute mark.
- Include screen recording footage. This shows how to set up and use digital tools as precisely as possible. If screen recording isn’t an option, grab some screenshots.
5. Participation
Video can seriously cut down on the number of meetings you hold. But some meetings are still necessary.
Any time you have to put a meeting on the calendar, send a video invite. A video invite won’t get lost in the inbox or disappear in the flow of instant messages. It’s also a good way to garner excitement about a meeting and prepare people for what to expect.
Start with these participation videos
- Meeting invites: Really short videos that give all the vital details people need to show up for an upcoming meeting.
- Training announcements: Similar to meeting invite videos, but with additional details such as what to bring and any mandatory prep work.
Best practices for participation videos
- Keep videos short and to the point. Meeting invite videos should be literally seconds long. Less than 60 seconds is enough to give the who, what, when, where, and why.
- Include a clickable link to a confirmation page. If you need to confirm attendance, include a link to it at the end of your video, so people can immediately confirm their attendance.
Get your sales team in perfect alignment with Biteable Teams
As a sales enablement professional, strategically implementing tools is basic stuff. So adding video as a sales alignment tool is no problem. However, the time and technical skills for creating videos might feel like a major obstacle.
Biteable Teams removes these obstacles.
Branded scenes and templates make creating engaging videos quick and easy. All you have to do is choose a template and add your message by pointing and clicking on the user-friendly, browser-based platform. An intuitive workflow and loads of visual assets take the guesswork out of video making.
It’s so simple, you’ll have a complete package of sales alignment videos with only minutes spared and no headache invested.