Today’s enterprise technology buying teams have more players than the active roster of a major league baseball team (28 vs 26). (SMB buying teams have NHL-size rosters: 22). These numbers, from research by Foundry help explain why the concept multi-threading — getting results faster by spreading the work — has expanded from software engineering into sales and marketing. You can download the infographic here (registration required).
In sales, building relationships with more people on the buying team has been shown to produce more wins in less time. But implementing a multi-threading strategy does complicate the sales process. Among the complications, multi-threading requires targeted content to engage more people with different roles and interests from more angles and with different approaches and messaging. Since nearly all tech buyers watch videos about new solutions, this includes new types of video content. Here are three approaches to consider.
Line-of-business Videos
Let’s start with who’s on the buying team. Today’s teams, Foundry’s research says, are split almost evenly between IT roles (15) and business roles (13).
Most technology videos address business benefits at some point, but they are not primarily designed to engage line-of-business folks. So, when you’re making a video about how new features and upgrades benefit IT, you should routinely add on teasers or repackage excerpts, to catch the attention other line-of-business roles on the buying team such as application owners or logistics execs.
To plan new video content you can build on existing relationships: asking IT buying team members you know about the concerns of non-IT team members — and enlisting your subject matter experts for brief on-screen responses to these issues.
Use Case Videos
It’s well-known that IT decision-makers want to know about real-world use cases. Most tech company webinars and software platform demos contain brief sections demonstrating how some task can be accomplished better, faster, and cheaper. Such demos aren’t hard to expand into short use-case videos for buying team members who wouldn’t otherwise see the webinar they come from.
Third-party Endorsement Videos
Ninety-five percent of tech buyers say they watch videos for business purposes. Their top viewing choices are:
- Industry research/tech analyst reports – 44%
- In-depth product reviews – 43%
- Interviews with industry experts – 38%
You can’t count on all 28 members of a buying team to watch all these videos of reports, reviews, and interviews. But you can reach more of them with short videos built around why outstanding features noted by analysts could make a big difference to certain buying team members.
