Introduction
How Video and Film
Can Improve Your Sales Training Presentations
James A. Baker
is President of Baker Communications, Inc, a leading training
and career
development firm. Established in 1979, Baker’s ongoing
client list includes over 75 Fortune 500 companies and numerous
medium and small organizations. Baker is a co-founder of the National
Center for Dispute Settlement of the American Arbitrations Association,
and instructor in business
communications at the Jesse H Jones Graduate School of Business
at Rice University, a member of the National Speakers Bureau, on
the board of directors of Cenikor Foundation, The Governor’s
Business Council, and an executive member of Houston’s Drug
Free Business Initiative. This chapter
deals with subjects that relate to the visual aspects of selling.
While both film and video are covered, technological
advances, ease of use, and decreasing costs make video
the method of choice for the presentation of visual materials. Much
useful training
material is still available on film, but increasingly, these
films are being transferred to video. This chapter covers:
· The purpose of training
materials
· The advantages and disadvantages
of video and film
· Developing a training program with video
· Buying video materials
· Making video training materials
· Marketing your own training program
Scientific research
has proven that 90 percent of a sales representative’s
success is a result
of both the visual and vocal image imparted. Persuasive selling
depends largely on the face-to-face interchange and “chemistry”
of the sales message. Studies have shown that only 10 percent
of buying decisions are based on the words that the sales
representative uses, and most decisions are made in the first three
minutes of the sales
call. The decision is based on three elements: nonverbal
communication (60 percent); tone, pace, and pitch of voice (30
percent); and words (10percent). 1
One informal study conducted
at the Harvard Negotiations
Institute in 1986 compared response to training sessions
in which lecture comprised more than 80 percent of class time with
response to similar sessions where videotaped exercises and
role plays comprised 80 percent of class time. Measured learning
nearly doubled in the “video-enhanced” group,
which helps explain why training often fails to achieve
long-term results when teaching is dominated by lecture.
Video modeling
and practicing on video can improve the sales
representative’s ability to use to their advantage all the
psychological and situational reasons that clients buy, as well
as their ability to improve the “chemistry” between
themselves and prospective buyers. Words in a lecture cannot
show salespeople how they appear to buyers. Nor can
words show how to recognize body language and other signals from
buyers who are evaluating the sales message and analyzing
options.
When we train
sales
representatives to accommodate their style to match the customer’s
behavioral cues and to control their own body language and tone
of voice, it increases
their ability to recognize nonverbal
positive and negative signs from the buyer. Everything we know
about the visual nature of the art of selling supports the need
for greater use of visual materials
in training and far less use of the “lecture”
method.
1 Albert Mehrabian, Silent
Messages (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1971), p.43.
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