Hey guys,
I got a new plan for getting some new business (Not Web Based, Not Weddings!)

I am thinking of going around to local businesses, like restaruants, small shops, etc and seeing if they might want a video created for their website, for a local theater ad, or as a tv ad.

My plan is to have my demo reel, a few short commercials and related media on a laptop or ipad, along with business cards and talk to owners or managers about it and see what the response is.

Not sure if chain restaruants would want to invest or not, but maybe small ones might.

Any ideas, suggestions, feedback would be HUGELY appreciated!! Thanks.

I was thinking too of having brochures available I could leave at the business in case they are not available to talk, etc.

At the moment I get most business through my website - this is a way more cold call - hands on approach that I ve never done before.

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but prepare for rejection. Better yet, prepare to overcome the obstacles you get of rejection.

Picture this, you run a shoe store/resturant/flower shop. A guy walks into your store on an average day, and offers to give you a service your not really looking for, one that costs $300/$500/$1000 dollars or whatever. Likely, you'll just say no thanks and ask they leave. Some might ask for your card, or ask you to email them more info. Which you'll write, and they'll dabble back & forth with you for some time. Then when it comes time for either paymet, or actually shooting they'll back out.


I admit I'm not overly aggressive & sales is not in my personality, but to me door to door & pounding the pavement is a learning & motivational experience, but not a great resource of time. You may have more luck though, but it's something which ideally makes sense yet when you start dealing with people who are either just employees, or owners who see you asking for basically money out of their pocket, and the reality becomes a bit of a challenge.

Well....I ve never tried it before....that said I know what you mean. I only expect 5% or less of people to even remotely be interested. But I have yet to hear of another way to get commercial jobs!!

I think it might be in my pitch too though. If I can convince them that the video will help them by being on their website or especially playing at a local theater I think I might have something. I don't think TV ads are useful for small businesses that depend on traffic in 1-5 mile radius.

If you want to succeed in this endeavour you need to offer them measurable results.

If your plan is to promote web based videos, then you should be promoting web based videos that can offer great search engine optimization. If there video comes up on the first page of google when someone searches for a relevant topic in their area, that's a measurable result.

My other bit of advice is that if you are offering video as a sales tool, then focus on companies with sales teams, and learn how to make videos that will look great in powerpoint presentations and on iPads. Those two platforms will cover most sales teams current ways of doing presentations to customers. iPads in particular are a very compelling devicefor getting people over the line, because a video presentation that is on and iPad can be shown by a sales rep to a prospective customer anywhere, on a plane, on a train, in a restaurant, even out on a farm.

Great advice, thanks guys.

I'll check into making sure videos appear high in the ranks. Also as far as the ipad, would that be a good way to present my information to them? I think they play 720p videos if I am not mistaken?

Thanks!

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but prepare for rejection. Better yet, prepare to overcome the obstacles you get of rejection.

Picture this, you run a shoe store/resturant/flower shop. A guy walks into your store on an average day, and offers to give you a service your not really looking for, one that costs $300/$500/$1000 dollars or whatever.
Let's bring this a little closer to home.

You are sitting in your video production office one day and there's a knock on the door. The guy is selling shoes for $300/$500/$1000/whatever. What would make you spend this amount on shoes?

For me, at the end of the day, it's got to bring more in than it costs to buy. Even though most of my shoes cost $40 at the mall, I would gladly buy a $500 pair of shoes, as long as over the life of those shoes, they'd bring in $750. If they are $500 shoes and won't bring in any more business (as is the case with shoes), I'd be hard pressed to buy them at any cost.

OP has confused "great video" with "makes money". If it makes financial sense for small businesses like these, they will buy in droves. You just have to pitch a scenario that makes sense.

I think its totally in the pitch and if the businesses want to have a video.
I don't know any business that does NOT want a video, but it will depend upon the pricing and the ROI.

Open to suggestions and feedback or other ways to get more business if you have any.

Just make sure you get to speak with a decision maker. Chatting up anybody but a manger will be a long day.

But this is the only way to learn, so I would say go forward with an open mind and see what happens.

My tip is to do some research about the business before spending the effort. Restaurants, coffee shops, small retail might not have a budget even if they want to do business with you.

I think a good way is to show them the benefits along with costs. This will weed out the time wasters and let the interested parties know what they are getting into. You deal with a huge trust issue when you approach out of the blue so the more info the better.

Excellent Advice Tim,

I plan to ask for a manager or owner if possible or leave a brochure if they are busy because I definitely don't want to waste time with people who are not the decision makers.

I ve already been researching small shopping centers to see if the businesses have a video or not on their website, etc.

I think I still need to find out about the benefits of having a video on a website and if that would help drive traffic to a restaraunt, etc. I ve also looking into running a local theater ad and the costs seem like it could possibly work.

I think this more about salesmanship than the video service. If you're a great salesman you'll have lots of work. I seen this first hand, years ago a guy took me on to sell industrial equipment. This was cold calling, telling business owners "Here is something you don't have but you need it." It was thousnds of dollars too. I knew the industry and the equipment in a "hands on" way better than the guy that was training me. But he was a great salesman, he sold around 90% of the stops we made - when he was pitching. I followed his teaching and I couldn't make a sale!

Work on your pitch, try different angles, but at the end of the day going face to face will produce more results than posting on this forum :)

Yeah..
The only investment I have to make is getting an ipad to present the demos in a professional way and my time.

Any tips for a new salesman?

I used to do a little sales (not video related) and it seemed like
IF you had a good product -you yourself believed in- and
IF the customer is interested
THEN you get a sale.

IF the customer is not interested, or does not have a budget for it, then its a brick wall - unless you can explain the benefits of the product.

My other recent thought is that in order to cut costs, an entire shopping center could pitch in on a slightly longer commercial to bring all those businesses business.....

Ive shot videos for a few local people. What I find works is going to business groups like BNI ( BNI International - Business Networking and Referrals (http://www.bni.com/) ) there you will meet local business owners (the people you need to talk to) you do a video from them then they spread the word on your work and it snow balls

A few suggestions:

If you haven't been in sales before, you'll want to get some basic training before you start knocking on doors. You could read some books on sales or get the ones that are audio books and listen to them. Check out Zig Ziggler.

You should be of the mindset that you are presenting them a legitimate offer that could help them. If they say "No", by being professional and leaving them with a good impression, you still might make the sale. They may talk it over with a friend and call you back. If you try to do a hard sell and burn your bridges, even if they later think it would be a great idea, they are not going to call you back. There are only x number of restaurants within a 20 mile radius of where you live. Try to stay on good terms with everybody you talk to and you won't have to drive further and further to find someone you haven't pissed off yet.

Come up with some ice breakers to get the conversation going.... something as simple as, "Have you ever thought of advertising your business on TV?"

Come up with a list of FEATURES that a video provides, then turn those into BENEFITS. For example: "A video can be shown on the web or TV, and what that means to you, is you'll be able to reach a much larger audience than just those who happen to drive by and see your sign."

You'll need to know your stuff and be able to explain it in layman's terms. You should work on this and not leave it up to whatever you can come up with on the spot. Most people will have questions/concerns and you can probably guess what they will be and come up with some canned responses that sound better than a rambling response.

Also, you'd have to know how to get their video onto TV and what that will cost them, otherwise it's like assigning them homework. They won't like that and will expect you to know how they take the video you made and actually get it on the air/web.

It sounds like a good way to get yourself lots of business. Good luck and remember, "If at first you do succeed, try not to look so surprised."

Checklist...

- Work on my sales pitch
- Find out how much it costs to run tv and theater ads
- See about getting some brochures made and company polo shirt
- List the Features and Benefits of having a video that explains about a business or organization
- Look at targeting entire shopping centers and getting businesses to pitch in for one ad
- Make a lot of good impressions


Does a Laptop or Ipad seem like a good way to present some demos, and facts, etc?

Thanks for all your help guys, I probably won't actually start "cold calling" for another couple weeks so give me more feedback! Also - Check out my website, the Granitos Commercial is what I am planning on demoing along with a 1 minute demo of a bunch of stuff I ve done (still creating that).

Does a Laptop or Ipad seem like a good way to present some demos, and facts, etc?
I am a pretty good salesman, using some of the tactics/styles noted above. I find that 50%+ of the time, whoever I'm selling is buying the dream, not the video. Hard to say for sure, because the e-mails I send out have video and my website has video, but I bet close to 50% of my clients have never seen video I've shot when we start working together. (The other 50% want to see every project I've done since 1993, and speak to 14 different clients, plus get me to guarantee we'll stick to a budget that's half what it'll actually cost.)

This is not to say never show 'em your video, but don't do it first. Do it after they're sold.

This didn't all come together for me until I bought a house and started hiring contractors for stuff I had no idea about. Plubming, I have no clue about. First plumber came over, got a flashlight out, looked under the house, looked in the sink, made some notes, and quoted a price. Second plumber came over, walked around, asked me where I wanted the sink, made some good comments, asked some good questions, suggested some stuff I hadn't thought of, asked questions I hadn't yet considered, chatted me up about how great it was to own your own house, and eventually threw out some numbers. He got the gig. He hadn't so much as looked under the sink. Because it doesn't matter what was in the sink or what was in the crawlspace, HE'S A PLUMBER, whatever the problem is, he can handle it.

That's you. You are selling a product they think they need but don't really understand. They don't know what they want, they want you to show them. The guy who owns a restaurant knows a lot about table service and cooking, and has been forced to learn tax code and health regs. But he knows NOTHING about attracting customers. You are selling "how to attract customers", you're just attracting them with video. If you successfully attract them, the guy will be producing spots with you 6x/yr for the rest of his life. If you don't attract them, the guy will never re-hire you.

Re restaurants, I would start with asking where people currently look when they come to town and want to find a restaurant - they often go to one of the sites like Yelp and find ratings of places in the area. If there is a link to the restaurant, they'll go there and see if there is an online menu. If there is bandwidth they might watch a video. So the sales pitch would be along the lines of - here is what happens when I search here. Show them competing restaurant websites (good use of an iPad), then theirs if it exists. I think the opportunity might be in some type of comprehensive package - online menu + photos + video. The restaurant business is highly competitive so demonstrating that a competitor did a better job provides some impetus to one-up the competition.

Re the shopping center - cool idea. Any group of shops might be able to work together and each have some footage to use on their website as a standalone ad while reducing their individual expenditure.

One thing to beware of people is be careful about advising to them to put the video onto their website. By saying that, you need to factor in any costs their probable web designer will be taking by adding and embedding the code. I know it sounds like "So, just add it, it's easy", but as one who does my own web design myself it typically isn't that way (positioning can be a b*tch). First, the video may not look good right on the home page, so you'd want a seperate section and link in the navigation menu, which in itself could be a problem if the nav bar is set to a position filling it's container or appearance across the page if horizontal, thus requiring them to reduce the size of all the nav bar options. Also you, the video creator, would probably like some sort of "Check out our Web Video" on the home page, something they'd create in Photoshop or Illustrator. Just basically dealing with it & html/CSS for them to open the clients web file would be a fee in itself. Also, some may be built with very basic templates (wix, weebly) where customization isn't so easy or the quote unqoute web designer may not know code at all, just designs using purely templates.

I'm just saying I wouldn't be out there assuring them you will give them a video for their website without considering the fact that when their web designer gets a phone call asking them to add a video section to their site they are quoted some figure you are not in control of, and when you say you can do it yourself the designer refuses to allow you access to the site or it's hosting. Just something to think about proactively.

Jim- Great idea, I'll explore that option with Yelp and check into adding a video to the Yelp site or if its possible. Thanks!

David- Just thinking the same thing! one idea is maybe I could sell a website / video package together. Alot of businesses either don't have a website or one they are not happy with. So maybe a package deal would fix that, and I could team with a website guy, or have about 8 pre designed sites that I customize for the client.

Thanks for the tips guys!

Silas,
How goes the pavement pounding?
What results or lessons have you learned?

I'm about to do the same . . . business is sooo slooooow.

Here is where I am at...

Most of my work comes from craigslist and google. When someone contacts me I try to find out the budget. It seems like alot of the time I have to charge a little less then I should have too. But the economy is very hard here so I think that's the only thing you can do. Hopefully as I get more referrals I'll get better paying jobs.

My Yelp account got closed because I never use it, so I have not been able to try anything on there at all yet, I probably need to make a new account to do put any video up.

I decided not to go around showing my work on a ipad because the results I would get would probably really be low, and I do not have enough samples for all the various types of business I would like to sell to. As I increase my commercial portfolio with nice DSLR video samples (alot of my work commercial work is before DSLR, because I did weddings for many years) then I think I'll definitely have more business.

One other thing that helps is to really focus on how to help the business, not a cool video. That's been a little tough for me, but I am figuring it out. Also because I work with small businesses mostly, I am been learning how to effectively help them sell their product or service as well.

BOTTOM LINE - in a hard economy don't be afraid to give some deals out to get the jobs. Its a nice dream to be creating top notch stuff, but not every business wants or can afford it.

Also I improved my website and with google tracking was able to optimize it and know what people are interested in or not. I think its definitely helped.
In addition I got the Canon 5Diii and the 200mm 2.8 prime lens - can't wait to use it on the next job!!!