Video Helps HCSS Improve Sales Cycle

**HCSS has produced over 500 videos in the last three years.**

A video marketing strategy has helped construction software provider HCSS increase engagement and shorten sales cycles.

Video helped HCSS engage prospects earlier in the consideration process, notes Dan Briscoe, vice president of marketing, HCSS. The Sugar Land, TX-based company has about 4,500 customers, including Caterpillar and John Deere. A 22-person team oversees marketing, with the help of inbound agency LyntonWeb. About five percent of the company’s revenue goes towards marketing.

About four years ago, video wasn’t part of the company’s marketing strategy. If someone wanted to learn about the software, they needed to talk to sales reps—and that’s something many B2B prospect simply don’t want to do today. But, the sales cycle is long for the company’s five major product lines and a focus solely on efforts like print advertising and trade shows wasn’t enough.

The company began slowly, creating simple videos and working with Brightcove for video management. Today, ninety percent of market qualified leads have watched at least one video and many that reach the sales team have watched 10 or more, says Briscoe, who spoke at the recent MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston.

Video is now the number one type of content for the company, and 500 videos have been produced in the last three years.

Video can have considerable power, he says, noting that one clip turned a stalled multimillion-dollar deal into a potential sale, shortening an estimated 150-day sales cycle into a week.

Briscoe offered eight tips for getting started with video:

Get executive buy-in and show them why video is a priority.
Buy the equipment you need but don’t worry about breaking the bank—it’s okay to start small and grow.
Start at the bottom of the funnel by asking sales how video could help them get the job done, and help educate customers and prospects.
Get the entire organization involved—marketing, sales, support, the C-suite and your customers can all help create engaging videos.
Use video to tell stories, with your customer as the hero
Make a plan for what you want to do with video—don’t necessarily worry about writing scripts.
Try multiple types of videos to see what works best for each stage of the sales funnel.
As you video library grows, consider adding video management software to your tech stack to automate workflows and collect data on video engagement.

Ninety percent of most sales presentations are spent answering the same questions. Now, thanks to the videos, reps can spend the sales call time talking about how the product would meet the prospect’s specific needs. Videos, such as customer testimonials, don’t have to be elaborate to get their point across, notes Briscoe.