How to Use Video in Outbound Prospecting, with Stephen Pacinelli [Episode 760]

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In today’s episode, Chief Marketing Officer of BombBomb, Stephen Pacinelli, and I talk about proactive prospecting, standing out in a crowded space, and when to use a campaign vs personalized touch.

Episode Transcript

Andy Paul: Steve, how you doing?

Stephen Pacinelli: I’m doing fantastic, Andy, how are you?

Andy Paul: I’m doing well. Wells could be considered, um, we’re recording this in sort of the height of the work from home. Um, work from home what? A work from home trend in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I guess.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah, it could be the beginning. It could be the end of work from home, depending on how fast this goes. I guess. We’ll, we’ll see.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Well, I guess it raises an interesting question, which is, do you think this, cause a lot of people are sort of writing about, well, this portends, the beginning of a trend of more people working from home on a more permanent basis. And we’ve started fluctuated in that in the United States. I mean, there was certainly a lot of talk about telecommuting, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it sort of subsided. You know,  when Marissa Meyer was at Yahoo, she talked about bringing everybody back in. Certain benefits to having people together in terms of you’re a small company in terms of building company culture and so on. But where do you see it going?

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah, I think, um, so I’ve worked from home for over 20 years. Every job I had since I graduated college was, was work from home. So I’ve seen an evolution of work from home. Um,

Andy Paul: So are you antisocial or the people deem you a disruptive influence in the office or what’s the story?

Stephen Pacinelli: Perhaps, perhaps. Or, or it’s dumb luck or I just am secretly, I secretly gravitate, you know, most of the time I would, you know, most jobs I had in the past that I would travel the country and speak. Uh, and then, so the time that, that the times that you weren’t speaking, you were at home. And so it was so much harder, 15 years ago than it, than it is today to truly know the members of your team. It is much easier today, but you need to have, you need to have discipline around your, your work from home process, you need to have a separate space, which, which a lot of people that are thrusted into this work from home nine right now, they don’t have a space carved out. They don’t have, I mean, the interuptiosn cause all the kids are home too. So-

Andy Paul: Well yah but you see it all over LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, people sort of taking pictures of their work from home space that, uh, you know, a chair at a dining room table for instance, is the most common one.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. Yeah. I’m lucky enough to have this, uh, this amazing eight by eight foot office in my garage that I built with my father-in-law to separate, you know, to be separated from the madness that goes on inside the house. And it is a key component. And then of course, with technologies, you know, like Zoom, we’re using Zoom right now. Uh, but Zoom for meetings. And we had a 150 people on an all hands meeting at BombBomb, all on Zoom at the same time, it was like four or five screens of like squares

Andy Paul: Right. Yeah. We had something similar this week. About 90 people on yeah.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah, and I mean, and it, it worked and it was great. And I got to see everybody and I feel like I’m connected with them more often. And then, you know, face to face meetings Zoom is great. And then when you’re not, what about the other 99.5% of the time that you’re not in a face-to-face synchronous meeting? What do you do? And then that’s where video messaging comes in as another element, you know, another tool in your tool bag for human connection.

Andy Paul: Which is at a premium right now. You know, it’s sort of funny, it’s, it’s almost like the opposite of human connection now because I just I’m in New York City and, an I hadn’t left my apartment for two days and went outside for a walk. And I was actually on the phone with my wife. I was talking about this cause she’s the only person in her office today, which is the reason she went into her office. But, um, I said you instinctively now when somebody walks by me on the sidewalk, I turned my back on them. That’s like, that’s so it’s so unlike me because you know, I don’t. You know, I’m pretty, yeah. I’m pretty social, but this is like, I just don’t get on me. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really interesting to change in behaviors we’re going to see it. You notice it immediately and myself.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. And I also, I think there’s an interesting dynamic, as long as you’re far enough away from people. People are recognizing one another from a, from a farther distance, but, but there’s a, there’s a kindness that’s also happening just as long as you don’t get too close. Right? Like as soon as you break that barrier, that kindness changes real fast. But there was a like, Hey, you’re out and about like, my neighborhood was just full of people walking in and it’s not usually like that.

Andy Paul: Manhattan is empty. It’s uh, I’m not, I’m in, close to the UN on the, on the East Side. And we’re in a kind of a quiet neighborhood with no through streets so we tend to be a little quieter anyway. But when I look over a railing to the other streets in the rest of the neighborhood, it’s like, yeah, it’s just no one there.

Stephen Pacinelli: I’m a suburban neighborhood. So we have plenty of space to still be apart from one another while walking our dogs.

Andy Paul: Yeah you go outside and play and do it. Yeah. Yeah. We’re a little more intimate here. So, um, yeah, I mean, last Saturday, my wife and I had been in California for a few weeks and flew back on Friday and Saturday morning, we had literally no groceries in the house cause we weren’t anticipating this when we had left. And so we go to Trader Joe’s first thing and. Half hour before it opens the line, stretching two blocks long practically people waiting to get in. So yeah we need we need need people to relax and calm down. But anyway, enough about that let’s let’s talk business. Cause this is what people are tuning in for. So for people who aren’t familiar with BombBomb just on the off chance, why don’t you tell people what BombBomb does.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah, BombBomb, uh, at its core is a video messaging platform that allows you to be face to face with someone when you can’t be face to face and in real life it’s asynchrony. Uh, so it’s a bit different than something like a zoom. Yeah. You know, as we mentioned before, zoom, you have to set that meeting and get people there at the same time and get the agreements that you want to be there and then show up at the same time and, and, and which is great cause synchronous meetings can be very productive and that’s what you’re driving for. Um, but yeah, in all the other instances and all the others, the spaces of communicating with colleagues, communicating with fellow sales reps, uh, communicating with prospects with past clients, with, you know, with leads, everyone. Video messaging can be a great way to break down the barriers and show people who you are. People do business, um, someone in one of your recent episodes, and he said, um, the, the bedrock of sales is still people to people selling. So how do you get people to people selling black text on the white screen isn’t people to people selling. Sending someon  text-based email messages isn’t people to people selling when someone can see you and hear you and feel your passion and see the emotion on your face and know that you have the belief in your product. It’s, it’s a different story. So we help you get face to face with people that matter the most through simple video messages.

Andy Paul: Yeah, I think the, the thing that I really like about it and, and we’ll talk about the usage of it later, cause I’ve used it and first of all, people just respond to it. I mean, first of all, they, they get opened. And then as you said, there’s, you’ve had that opportunity to form that connection. It’s like you’re preempting some of the decisions somebody might have to make about you just by trying to infer what they’re seeing in an email, right. It’s like, you know, is this person, are they smart? Are they credible? Are they a good person? You know, what, what can I learn about this person just based on this email? As opposed to, when you open up a video message, it’s like, Oh, well, there’s Steve, what can I, what can I infer about Steve oriIntuit about Steve based on this video?

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. And that inference part is, is so important. Cause people make a decision on who you are. People don’t believe the message until they believe the messenger. And if they don’t know who the messenger is, the message is then ineffective. Um, but rewinding back to what you said, people just respond to it. And I want to make sure this is, this is clear for the audience. Um, you know I started using video, just a bit of a backstory before we get to people just respond to it. I led a sales team, we had, uh, eight people, we travled the country, we sold products face to face. And then we were trying to figure out how to sell products after the live events as well. And that’s when I stumbled upon video in 2011. So that was the first time I started using video messaging for the purpose of selling a product for better communication. And I made so many mistakes and, and guessed wrong about so many different things that we can walk through. But one of the things that I made a mistake with is I thought that people were responding to video. And in that day in 2011, some of it was cause it was a novelty. Video was the novelty. But I quickly began to realize that it’s not the video. They are not responding to the video. The video actually has very little to do with how they’re responding. It comes down to the messenger and the person that’s delivering it. They’re not responding to video. People are like, Oh, well, someone else uses video there goes the advantage. Well, just like on a phone, the phone can be an advantage. Everyone has the same advantage of using the phone, but it comes down to the salesperson on the phone if it’s really effective. And now people are, are, I think they’re realizing that more, um, that the messages you can’t just send a video and hope that it works. If you have a bad message in text, that’s going to be a bad message in video.

Andy Paul: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Stephen Pacinelli: And that’s it. And so, so yeah, they’re not responding to video. They’re responding to you. They’re responding to you as a person.

Andy Paul: Yeah. I mean, I think that if you go through your, and I was doing this as a test, because I knew this one was going to come up before we spoke and it goes through my inbox and so on. I think in the last, I don’t know, maybe over the last month, I think I’ve received four, maybe video messages out of thousands of emails. I mean, to me it’s still like so much fertile ground to be plowed with this.

Stephen Pacinelli: It’s still a novelty to an extent. Yes. Yeah.

Andy Paul: I mean the penetration is comparatively low, which I think, I think still is to your point earlier, if you do have an effective message, you’re going to stand up even more than you will at some point. Yeah. Everybody’s gonna be doing it more routinely.

Um, you know. I’d always hold some people back. Cause people don’t like being on camera, yada, yada, yada. But yeah, I mean, again, when I was sending them more consistently then I have been recently, but more when I was doing more active prospecting, um, yeah, the response response to it, the response rate was incredible. I mean, people that, people that they oftentimes wouldn’t video message back, even though they had the link there to click to record something. Um,

Stephen Pacinelli: Cause they’re afraid. Just like-

Andy Paul: Cause they were afraid, but, but you at least get something back on a pretty high percentage.

Stephen Pacinelli: So, uh, getting something back, remind me to, to chat about that. Cause I’ve been doing something called the Gratitude Project through video, and I think salespeople that have a high ACV deal. I think this is a slam dunk approach to building relationships, but-

Andy Paul: Well, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about what is, what is the gratitude project?

Stephen Pacinelli: Okay, well, so we can, I was going to say some people don’t like to be on camera. Let me, let me just address that one. This is a quick one. The other one’s longer, but that that’s some people just don’t like to be on camera is a, is a true statement. And, and once you get past that, the video isn’t for you. The, the reason why you’re, you’re sending a video to someone else is to explain something more articulate, articulately, to show them something through a screen recorder. The video just doesn’t have to be you, you can live demo or show someone something, to have them feel the emotion. And this is, this is the segue to the gratitude project. To have them feel the emotion of, of true gratitude or a thanks and sales being a transfer of emotion. Right? That’s that’s all sales is, is transfer of emotion. Video allows that to happen. And so when you stop thinking about who this video is for, when you record that video, when you’re nervous, video’s not for you when you watch that video back and you don’t like the way that you looked or sound, video is not for the video is not for you. It’s for the recipient. And if you think about it that way, that also makes you think about the message that you’re using to that recipient, right. Is the message valuable to the person that I’m sending it to, you know, if this video isn’t for me, is the message valuable? Am I delivering it in a better way? Does video work for this instance? And if you could say, yes, the message is valuable and yes, video is a better format, a better medium to communicate it. And then you have the right message to send out in video that will be more effective and will do a better job for you.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And just to clarify, when you were saying the video isn’t for me is, is just when people are listening. It’s not that you’re not meant for video. It’s just that, that video isn’t intended that specifically isn’t intended for you, you may still be made for video is just-

Stephen Pacinelli: Yes. Thank you for that clarification. Yes so the gratitude, do you want to.

Andy Paul: Well, I mean, I think let’s sort of deconstruct what you just talked about is, is you are going to be nervous when you first start doing this. Anybody that hasn’t done video messaging before. And so what are sort of the keys to sort of building up the comfort level, sort of doing this in a flow, like it’s an email and a flow. I mean, most not everybody’s like me where I tend to edit emails, my wife, if she’s sitting next to me on the couch, I’m trying to create an email. She’s like, Oh, just send it already. Yeah. But when I do videos, yeah, you can’t do that. You know, you don’t have time and, and, but yeah, you’re seeking a perfection, which again, it’s, you have to look through it through that, looking at it through the eyes of the person receiving it.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. Yeah. So your, your imperfection is your perfection. That’s what will connect you to, to the person that’s receiving it. But I love that you use the word flow, right? Because if people are really trying to, if you’re trying to get and do a habit and you make, you make a promise to yourself, you know what? I know that I am better face to face. I know if people see me and they hear me that I will be a more effective salesperson. If you can say yes to those things, you’re going to make a serious effort on trying, air quotes, you know, trying out video and say, okay, I’ll use video for the next two weeks or three weeks or whatever and see how it works.

But that flow, the, the word they use flow is so important because that first one’s going to be tough. The second one’s gonna be tough. And if you record one or two, and then you stop for a day or two, and then you start over and you record one or two, you never quite get that flow. So if you do time block it and chunk it out.

You’ll notice after you record like two or three in a row. That to record the fourth, fifth, and six, all in that same sitting like you’re boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you do get into that flow state of mine and you stop worrying about the other things and you don’t watch them back because you want to get 10 videos out in 20 minutes and that’s you want to send 10 30 second videos and you can do that if you get in that flow. And that’s what salespeople that are really using video well, that’s what they’re doing is they’re chunking it and they’re time blocking that out.

Andy Paul: But a critical thing you brought up is they don’t watch it back.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yes. Yes. As long as the name is correct, everything else is, is okay. Your ums your ahs, the child that runs through the shot in the background, because you’re working from home is, is only going to endear you to the recipient. And I don’t know if I mentioned this the last time I was on a couple of years ago.

Hopefully I didn’t. Um, it might’ve happened after actually I think so my, my favorite story is of my wife who was sending, um, she wouldn’t use video. Couldn’t get her to use it. She finally finally broke her down, convinced her to use it, and she was selling skincare products. And so she had all of her products in her hand. She recorded her first video, dropped all the products in the papers during the video, recording popped out of the frame and she looked over at me. I was in the kitchen. I was like, look, you keep going. And she popped back into the frame. Bright red face and kept going. And when she was done, she was like, I’m not sending that video out. And I was like, Oh yeah, click. And, and, and we sent it.

Andy Paul: So you got past that point in your marriage is what you’re saying.

Stephen Pacinelli: So she got a phone call, 15 minutes later from Susan, the person, and I know Susan now, cause now she’s a friend of the family from, from Susan Manganean who watched the video and so connected with Gretchen because of she called it klutzy, which was fairly close. She was like, Oh my God, I’m so klutzy too. And this was their first phone conversation they ever, ever had. And they talked about stories for ten minutes on how each one of them was klutzy. And then at the end she was like, well, I’ll just buy all of the producets. And she did. And, and it was because that imperfect video, the mistakes that happened to dropping the product, showing people your true authenticity is, is the most important thing to think about when you’re sending a video.

If you were a bit quirky and you said something silly know, like, I don’t know if, if the, if the person on the other end is going to relate, send it. That’s who you are, your authenticity will stand out and make that connection for you. And if they. Don’t like you and they didn’t like it for whatever reason, even better, the faster, you know, that you’re not supposed to get along with that prospect, the better.

Andy Paul: Absolutely. I agree. So two things, one is, is, and just sort of basics. How long should a video be optimally or how long should it not be right. Perhaps to start there and sort of, how do you, is there structure that you’ve, you’ve found through looking, you know, however many millions have been sent through BombBomb, that’s a little more effective.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. So, uh, video length is, is really ambiguous. Um, in general, if you want a good rule of thumb, the less of a relationship you have with someone, the shorter, the video. So we, we try to tell people a minute or less, um, we actually guide people that way, because if you do send it through BombBomb, we give the exact time on the bottom and the seconds. And after you hit a minute, it just says, one minute, two minutes, three minutes under a minute, it says. 37 seconds, that 37 seconds. Again, you’re asking someone for their time and if the video says 5 minutes and I don’t know the sender, I’m not giving someone, I don’t know, five minutes of my time. That’s valuable.

So you want to keep, keep that low. But if someone reached out to me, if we had a new lead, if I had a new lead and they had a very specific question about an aspect of, of the program and I sent them a four minute screen recording with my face up on there at the same time where they can see me and see my screen. That’s okay. Because they asked about, Hey, I want to see how this program does X, Y, and Z. And then you start off the video and say, Hey, this is going to take a couple minutes for me to describe, because we have some really great features, but you asked about X, Y, and Z. And because he asked about that, I also want to show you, uh, A, uh, and walk them through it and that’s going to be okay in that instance.

Andy Paul: And I find that sort of thing. That’s sort of a good segue into what I want to talk about next, which is how people are using this in real life, like sales teams and so on. So for, and again, based on your experience with how your customers are using it, are they using it, let’s say at the SDR level more for, um, you know, proactive, personalized outreach, or part of campaigns, you know, we’ve got a template at video we use and we stick it in a. In a cadence and off it goes, I mean, it seems like more personalization is better, obviously.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. So some people say well, how long does that take? Cause that takes a lot of time. There’s a time and place for both. We do use both in 2011, when I first started using video, I was like, great. Now I can take our marketing videos, put them into an email and send them out. And like it didn’t net me anything. It was 2011. So you know, it wasn’t the smartest bulb. Not that I am now. Brightest bulb. Yeah. So, um, so yes, you can put a marketing video in there. Something that the team created and drop it into a sequence. If you have an 18 step sequence and whatever program that, that, that you enjoy using ring, Revenue.io, perhaps.

Andy Paul: For instance. Yeah.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yep. And so you can, you can drop that in there, but where you’re really gonna gain ground and gain traction is in that personal touch. If you are taking the time most, most BDRs, SDRs are being taught to take the time, to look up a little information about the recipient and add that into the text based email.

Well, people know that that can be faked. So it’s not as effective anymore. Your key is to disrupt. Their pattern. It’s a pattern disrupt. And if you take a video and you spend, you’re already spending the minute to look them up on LinkedIn, before you reach out to that recipient, because it’s part of your Tier 1 ABM, you know, outbounding campaign, add that into your whiteboard.

Andy Paul: It’s in the playbook, but I don’t think very many people do it, but yeah go ahead.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah, right. Even, even if you didn’t look them up, write their name on that white board, show them, disrupt that pattern and let them know that this is a video that was created. This is an email first, but this was a video that was created just for them because their name is handwritten on the white board. And I draw little pictures and designs and all sorts of things.

Andy Paul: So people who are listening to this and can’t see you. Um, you’re holding up like an 8 by 11 whiteboard

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah.

Andy Paul: Just as a small, dry erase board, basically. Right.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yup. With a marker that I keep handy right here. And, um, I sent an email, which we could talk about it, to the CMO of Salesforce. I don’t know the CMO of Salesforce. I never met the CMO of Salesforce, but I did listen to their podcast one day and thought it was fantastic. And drew, she talked about Kodak Cameras and Starbucks.

So I drew, and I’m not the best drawer, but I drew a Kodak Camera and a Starbucks cup and sent it out. And that video got played nine times, 90% or more of that video. So we got played again and again and again and again, and I’m pretty sure that most of the emails that she receives on a daily basis, aren’t getting that type of traction or interaction. Now that was part of my gratitude project, but yeah.

Andy Paul: So we’ll tell us what you said in that. I mean, so yeah. Yeah, several parts of this is that, so just recap, so people understand, this is what Steven saying that you do, and, and if you ever get an email from anybody at BombBomb and they do this religiously is, is there some, I call it proof of life.

Stephen Pacinelli: That’s that is, I’m writing that down. I’m writing that down right now.

Andy Paul: Proof of life demonstration in the video. And you see it in the thumbnail that plays in the body of your email when you receive it, which said, yeah, it could be say, Hi, Andy, and have the date on it or something. I mean, for people to understand the proof of life reference with say, when you kidnap somebody, you want to make sure they’re doing a ransom manual to make sure they’re they’re alive so they have a photograph of the kidnap victim holding today’s paper or something.

Stephen Pacinelli: Newspaper. Yeah.

Andy Paul: This is the video email equivalent of it. And yeah, just a simple 8×11, um, dry erase board. You can hold up and put on Sharpie and, and yeah, the ones that I respond to that I receive, I got to pitch, uh, just, uh, what day was is, so would’ve been earlier this week from somebody to come on the show and yeah, not having seen that. Um, yeah, I probably would have gone by it more quickly, may not give them the same attention, but his view of message was very strong to the point. I think it was 47 seconds uh, yeah, he’s booked to come on the show.

Stephen Pacinelli: Well, there you go. That’s and it’s proof of life and proof of personalization.

Andy Paul: But how do you do that when you’ve got, you know, the demand to send out or you gotta make 50 calls today or send out 50 emails or, you know, how are, how are you finding SDRs balancing the time to be able to do that personalization? I know you said that forego the LinkedIn look up, but I’m not sure that set us apart. I’m not sure they’re doing that anyway.

Stephen Pacinelli: So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a change in thought process because, because is the goal really 50 calls or is the goal five real interactions or five touches or, or appointments set. And so if you’re just hitting a number and so that’s why it’s the right time in place. Not every email. The majority of  my emails are text-based emails. But a quarter of them are video when it’s the right time, the right place with the right message. And using that little framework that we went over before, deciding when to send that, that personal video message. If you’re selling a product that that is $5 a month. Maybe personal video isn’t right for you to sell the product, maybe in supporting it.

If you do have to support it with a real person and you have your CS team, they can quickly send a video to show someone something that might be where you want to use personal video messaging or for, um, internal communication to each other. You know, so you’re sending videos or you’re dropping them in Slack, or you’re dropping a video, you know, in an email or, or wherever, because video messaging just isn’t for email, you can use it in other, in other messaging platforms too.

Andy Paul: Yeah. So I’m thinking in the case of you talked about before is, you know, maybe that second one you send is you’ve got a two minute excerpt from your software demonstration. You think about you’re an SDR. Maybe you had a first call, first conversation with somebody that wouldn’t really commit to a demo.

Perfect time to send a video as the second one. Hey, start with your message, reconnecting, have a short excerpt from, you know, screen captures as you said of your software demo. Something like a key point you know they’re really interested in. Could lead to setting up that demo.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Andy Paul: Which you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise unless you’re using video.

Stephen Pacinelli: Correct. And a lot of instances. Yeah.

Andy Paul: Yeah. Yeah. That’s very interesting. One other sort of unique use cases are you finding for, I mean, I love that sort of preview demo one of the screen capture cause I think that’s pretty compelling. What else are you seeing?

Stephen Pacinelli: So are you talking about times to use it or innovative, uh, attention grabbing techniques?

Andy Paul: Oh, let’s say innovative attention grabbing techniques that people could learn from.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. So we use a TUNED methodology for that tune. Are your emails tuned for attention? And so the, the team aspect for the T. One way to gather attention is to get a couple people in a video. That is something more like a novelty. If you can count the amount of videos that you received in the past month. Count the amount of videos that you received with three different people or four different people standing at the camera waiting to talk to you. It stands out. The videos that we’ve sent. And so my, my personal team, since 2011 on and sent over over 75,000 video messages for the sake of building communication and closing more deals. 75,000 and the team messages that we’ve sent. And this is something I’ve recognized early work, and you can use the team strategy, even if it’s not a personal video, because it will generate more awareness for that prerecorded video that you’re going to drop into the sequence and get more plays on that too. If there’s four or five or six, I usually show an example of a, a video that we send at BombBomb and there’s actually another really good one that Conversica sent to us before, when we signed up for the second year in a row, you know, their whole team got on a video and just said, you know, thanks. And so, yeah. Putting a lot of people on their team is the, is the first part of the tune methodology, then you have a expected do something unexpected. Um, one video email that we sent out was after a major conference in Wim Hoff was the speaker at that conference. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Wim Hoff.

Andy Paul: I know the name, but I-

Stephen Pacinelli: The ice man. He’s got like all the, uh, the records for being in cold water ice baths, like swimming, you know, so. So he did the, he was the key speaker. So everyone learned about Wim Hoff and why the cold is good for you and cold showers and cold this and cold that. And so we sent a mass email to everyone that we met at that convention, and it was two of our sales reps team right there. And they were standing outside in six inches of snow in bathing suits.

Andy Paul: I was going to suggest that yeah.

Stephen Pacinelli: So that’s unexpected. Like what, what are these two clowns doing? And, and, and so that, that was a prerecorded video that and I forget the total amount of people went out to, it was everyone that, that we met at the, at the show that had a 53% play rate on a video that wasn’t personalized. It was a video that went out to X amount of people. And so which is really, really high just to get it.

Andy Paul: And I imagine shared quite a bit as well.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah, absolutely. Cause we were like, well, look at this and they’re like, we’re outside, we’re Wim Hoffing it, you know? Right now we hope you guys had a great time at the convention.

Andy Paul: Any conversion stats on that?

Stephen Pacinelli: I don’t, I don’t have it all the way through, through. So, um, but, but my, my favorite one is the name, which we, we talked about, but to take it a step further than the name on the whiteboard, you know, just writing someone’s name on a whiteboard is great, but you want to add some type of, in which brings me to the E as well, emotion to the name, whether you write it on the white board or, um, I received a video of a colleague and obviously you’re listening to this. You won’t be able to see this, but his head was down. He was shaking his head. He looked like he was about to cry. And then he looked up and I just saw the sadness in his eyes. And I’m going to, what is this? I have to hit play on this one. And then of course the happy emotions through not just sad emotions, but that was a video that I received after um, had a strange morning of getting, I received like 20 phone calls from people asking me how to do stuff in BombBomb. And I’m like, what is going on? And so that was our, uh, our email marketing manager. And he was like, I made a huge mistake and put your personal cell phone number on a mass email that I sent out.

Andy Paul: Where’s he work now?

Stephen Pacinelli: Surprisingly still at BombBomb. Kyle is a great, great guy. That was one mistake. And, and he does awesome work, but yeah.

Andy Paul: All right. So then we’ve got name. We got emotion. What’s the D then.

Stephen Pacinelli: Uh, so I, I got to go through it in my head. So it’s, so it’s team unexpected name, emotion, and detail. Know why I need to say it in order for me to remember, but I do. Getting old, getting old Andy, but I’m so detail is, this is what we were kind of talking about before a bit. Um, if, if you’re doing outbounding, if you’re a BDR SDR, and you need to gain that attention, you could write someone’s name on a whiteboard, but if you really did look them up and look up their LinkedIn profile, do a search screen recorder with your face on it, with them, then up on the screen, if you can help them with their websitego to that page on their website, on the recipient’s website and have that up on the screen. So when that video hits their inbox and it’s, if using something like BombBomb is already playing, they can see a scrolling down their page on their website. Or what I love to do is teach people just to be interested in other people.

And if you. Look them up and you saw the, they wrote an awesome article. They have a great guide, a great download or bring up, you know, they’re proud of the content they’re putting together and what they’re writing, go to that blog post, go to that amazing guide that they’re promoting and promoting, you know, on LinkedIn and another place and have that on your screen, create that. Add that sense of detail that you are paying attention. And if someone sees content that they created, it’s like seeing their baby, right. It’s like, Oh, there’s my baby. I’m going to, I’m going to hit play. Cause they spent a lot of time creating that blog post, creating that download, creating whatever.

Yeah, well, not one I saw recently somebody had done was, um, yeah, sort of the screen capture in the background was the website of their person’s Alma Mater. Um, And they apparently were using that as sort of their motif as they went through in prospecting. And we’re claiming great results with it. I don’t remember the specifics, but instant personalization.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Which, which actually this would be a good segue into, into the Gratitude Project because that’s all about detail.  So I listened to, I love, I love podcasts. I listened to a bunch of podcasts and each morning I usually listen to a podcast while I’m working out and I’ve been doing this for years.

And I thought about it and I’m like, man, we live in an, in an unprecedented in time where I can get the insights from the smartest people on the planet, and we have people like you interviewing the smartest people and their ideologies and what makes them go and their thought process. And this is, this is just so amazing. I thought about it. I’m like, I don’t like I haven’t thanked any of these people, any of the podcast guests for coming on and sharing their knowledge and all their expertise. And, and I thought to myself, I’m like, I wonder how many people truly do reach out to thank these people for their time. And my guess was very little to none. Or if they were reaching out, it was for, uh, maybe other, other reasons to pitch them something, you know, right off the bat.

So I said, you know what, I’m not going to pitch anything. I’m going to send them a video and there were all people I don’t know, of course I’m going to send them a video and I’m going to be very clear and specific about what I learned from them and, and how I’m going to use that content. Or what it sparked for me and my team.

And so I have a Google doc here that, that I can bring up and I can show you all the names, the date, the video that I sent. Uh, the title, the podcast that they were on, the notes that I have, and if they responded and I started doing this on January 10th, so a little bit late into the year, but on January 10th. Um, and I’ve been doing it four to five times a week, every week since then, except my vacation week, I did take a week off. Um, and. The last time I checked, I was at a 72% response rate, a 72% response rate because in the subject line of the email, I talked about them and I would try to pick out something specific about that episode. And then in the body of the email, I had just one or two sentences, like really quick telling them to watch the video because of something very specific I learned in each episode. And then I would use the white board and I told you for the CMO of Salesforce, I drew the Kodak camera. And so I did all sorts of different things with the whiteboard takes you 30 seconds to come up with something or like my favorite quote.

Do you say something back? Someone said something, you say it back to them. It is all about them. It’s triggering them to be curious, to see what you have to say. And so I send it out. I’ve been sending out these videos and I’m getting an amazing response. And I was thinking about other people, can you, if you sell, I gave this example to a Primo, a company, there are customers of, of BombBomb as well, and they sell some, they sell a product that’s $300,000. And so they have a list of 250 people. Do they have the time to sit down and, and look at their recipients and see what they’re doing. And if they’re on a podcast, which chances are the people they’re going after are out there somewhere sharing information and then send it out just to start that relationship. If that relationship can start off of, thank you so much. The responses I’ve been getting, like people curse that I’ve had one, I sent it out to Christopher Lochhead and, and, um, and his response was Holy shit, the human, sorry. But that was the, that was the response. He was like, this is the most Epic message I’ve ever received about my podcast.

And so I made an impression on him and I wasn’t trying to sell him BombBomb to do it, but now how do we have a relationship that maybe if I was trying to prospect and sell him that I could then take the next small step, people try to leap the Grand Canyon and send out these emails to like you ready to buy it? You ready to buy it? No, no. And no, be interested about me, care about me. And if, and if I care about them, they’ll reciprocate.

Andy Paul: Exactly. Yeah. It’s about connection. Yeah. Let’s start there. Just connect.

Stephen Pacinelli: Just connect. Make it real

Andy Paul: Well, unfortunately run out of time, but it’s always fantastic. Talk with you and look forward to doing it again before too long.

Stephen Pacinelli: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I appreciate all the conversations that we’ve had.

Andy Paul: Well, we’ll look forward talking again soon.

Stephen Pacinelli: Sounds good.