252. Selling on Video: Beyond the Excuses w/ Chris Bogue

First the radio star, now video has killed the bland sales pitch.


In today’s world of sales, people are much less inclined to answer calls from unknown numbers and are highly unlikely to open their door to a stranger. Good news: cold-calling and door-to-door sales can be replaced with video. Chris Bogue, Owner of Chris Bogue Communications, joins the podcast to express the efficacy of adding video to your sales toolbox.


Tune in as we discuss:

• How selecting and catering to your desired audience boosts views - and sales
• How to make yourself impossible to forget using video
• Why basic improv and comedy techniques give you confidence and connection
• Why you should never fear feedback and, instead, actively seek it

More information about Chris Bogue and today’s topics:

• LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-bogue/
• Company Website: https://christopherbogue.com/
• Other Relevant Links: The Complete Guide to Selling on Video; Joe Janes Live with Chris; Nick Capozzi on LinkedIn; Adobe

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
The single most important thing you cando today is to create and deliver a
better experience for your customers. Learnhow sales marketing and customer success experts create
internal alignment, achieve desired outcomes,and exceed customer expectations in a personal and
human way. This is the CustomerExperience Podcast. Here's your host, Ethan

(00:25):
Butte. There's a blind spot oreven a black hole in most sales coaching
and training. It's basic, it'shuman, and it's as simple as what
would you say if you were infront of an interested person right now.
Having a good, clear answer driveshuman centered communication and helps you with selling
on video, and today's guest willwalk you through it. He directed comedy

(00:48):
shows and theater troops at Second City. He was a sales professional at companies
like Belly and Groupon. Today he'sa video consultant and trainer who helps sales
marketing and customer success teams drive revenuewith short, personalized video content. Chris
Bogue, Welcome to the Customer ExperiencePodcast. Hey, thanks for having me.

(01:10):
Yeah, excited to the conversation.I love what you're up to in
general, I'm looking forward appealing Apartyour I'll just call it a LinkedIn persona
or something not that it's not thereal you versus some of the simpler,
more straightforward video coaching and training andmaking video messages in particular more approachable for
people. But because this is theCustomer Experience podcast, that's where we're going

(01:32):
to start. So my first questionfor you is the same. Is that
every episode when I say customer experienceto you, Chris, what does it
mean? I'll use a visual soapologies if you're listening to the audio version
of this, but I like thestatement works even if you can't see what
I'm doing with my hands. Butfor me, it's getting the customer from
here to here. That's what Ido on video. Whether I'm making video

(01:55):
content for marketing or for my websiteor from my brand, or whether I'm
making a sales video direct to aprospect. I usually want to get one
thing across to them. Maybe Iwant them to teach one lesson, you
know, I want to teach onething to them. I want to get
one action from them. I'd likethem to understand one thing that maybe they

(02:15):
don't understand. If you focus onone thing, yeah, your audience should
be by the end of the experienceat some place different, you know.
So that's what customer experience is forme. Two things I absolutely love about
that. One is this idea,of course, that it's a journey.
I think we get hints of that, or even we get that directly in

(02:36):
a lot of the responses that weget, but you get you're encouraging me
to talk about something, and peoplewill dwell in for a minute, because
I think people overlook it is thatit's just any relationship or any journey is
just a series of micro yeses withan occasional macro yes, with a macro
yes being yes, I'll docu signthat seven figure, three year contract,
whatever the case may be. Butit's all these little yeses in this Your

(03:00):
recommendation of focusing on one thing isso critical for any message, moment,
experience, etc. Do you feellike that's overlooked by a lot of people.
Yes. So here's something I've noticedin my coaching. A lot all
my coaching starts with the audience,and on day one of a coaching session,
whether I'm consulting with a company,whether this is from my own personal

(03:21):
thing and I'm training like content creatorsor entrepreneurs or whatever, the question I
asked them, is okay, bestcase scenario, like you get everything exactly
one the person you want to watchyour video is in the audience watching it
right now. Who would you liketo be watching this video? And oftentimes
they don't know, you know,they're like, oh, maybe I want

(03:42):
to get into this vertical because there'sa lot of money there. Maybe you
want to get into this. I'mlike, no, you start with one
person. You start with one person, What is that thing you need to
teach them? Where is the nextlittle hurdle you need to get them over?
You know, then it just becomesa question of, okay, that
one thing, what's the smartest,best, most concise, most helpful,

(04:03):
most interesting, whatever you want tobe, what's the best way to do
that? But you can't do thatuntil you figure out who you want your
audience to be. And I findso few, so few content creators even
start with that question. You know. They're just kind of throwing stuff out
there and hope and it works.Whereas I do some crazy stuff in my
video content, but it's because I'mso comfortable with who my audience is.

(04:26):
You know, I started doing stufffor the people I wanted in my audience,
and I started altering my strategy basedon what was resonating with them.
So from my end, none ofthis stuff looks like a risk. You
know, even if I'm doing likesome sketch comedy based stuff out there,
maybe it's a little bit of risqueor something. These are topics that I've
tested with my audience, you know, and I know they're going to get
something ont of it. You know, once you know who your people are,

(04:50):
it frees you to do all thesethings, all these different topics,
all these different ways you can help. But no, I believe very few
people, unfortunately, start with thatmindset. So interesting. I think a
lot of folks are afraid to commitin the way that you just described yourself
as having committed for fear of somethingelse you already said, which is like,

(05:12):
but there might be a whole bunchof money in this other vertical that
I'm not quite prepared to capitalize on, or you know, they have problems
that maybe I don't understand well enoughto solve. So this idea of like
saying yes very adamantly and clearly toa particular set of people, the implication
is saying no to some other onesor at least not right now. And
I think a lot of people arescared to do that. They shouldn't be.

(05:34):
Like anybody, anybody who's ever hadto make a career in sales knows,
you know, if you spend timechasing the wrong people, that could
be your job. You know,if you're spending all all your time talking
to people who aren't the right fit, aren't the right job, aren't you
know, Like it doesn't matter howgood they would be for your quota,

(05:55):
they don't want it, you know. Whereas like I always tell people,
show up where your customers already areand just get very curious about what's bringing
them there, you know. Andit was actually funny because like I was
on a training like last week ormaybe it was this week. I can't
even know it was last week,but it was. It was a sales

(06:15):
team and I was training them onvideo and one of them goes, hey,
by the way, how did youget my bus? You know,
he's ahead of sales. He doesn'ttake meetings for me. He does not
answer cold calls, he does notanswer cold emails. And I was like,
Dan, go check your DMS.Go on LinkedIn, literally, go
check your DMS. And I foundhim the same way I found everybody I

(06:36):
showed up. I noticed something hewas interested in. He was engaging with
some content that I had also engagedwith, and I was like, hey,
I really like the point you madethere. Let's connect. And after
you know, some time him beingin my network and he came to a
couple events that I posted up,I sent him a thirty second video being
like, hey, Dan, Idon't know how much video your team uses,

(06:57):
but you know, like, letme know if you want to chat
about this. It was very short, very direct, and then yeah,
I closed it. I'm training ateam and they all about my course and
it was like it was nice,but it was like it started with me
going where he already was, becauseI was just looking for people who were
already interested in the topics we bothtalk about. And you know, there
wasn't a lot of pressure, Itwasn't very hard. Everything felt very natural,

(07:20):
because I know, you just findyour people and you just give them
most relevant to them, so muchgood advice in one response there, and
before we get any farther ahead,I want to get this out for contexts.
You've already alluded to some of thework that you do some of the
types folks you work with. ButI would love for you to take this
on like really really directly for everyone'sunderstanding and context. Tell us a little

(07:43):
bit about what you're doing with crisBow Communications, like who are your ideal
customers and what are some of theproblems that you're solving for them. Obviously,
we have sales teams so far andvideo. I teased it a little
bit in the intro, but I'dlove for you just take a good clear
swing at that. Yeah, soI have to offer, so I'd sell
to salespeople and I sell to contentmarketers and entrepreneurs. I'm either teaching people

(08:05):
to do videos that are one toone, which is what I do mostly
for sales, or I'm doing onetoo many videos. You know, where
you are educating your buyers, you'reeducating prospects, you're building brand awareness.
So yeah, I do teach thoselike separately, so I guess we can
talk about them one at a time. For salespeople, I am mostly teaching

(08:26):
a process. I'm teaching fundamentals foron camera performance because most sales teams are
not taught those. But most importantly, I teach them how to do it
regularly. It is not much differentfrom cold calling or cold emailing in that
like either you do it and itworks, or you don't do it and
it doesn't work. You know thereason why I talk about these two offerings

(08:46):
differently is because I actually probably likenot good for me? Is it?
Entrepreneur? But people get them confused. For sales, I am not doing
quote creative outreach. That is notwhat I teach. Some people do that.
Some people teach sales how to goout and make like the most creative
prospecting video possible. I come froma type of sales where that's not possible.

(09:09):
If I had to put on atalent show for every single prospect,
that's just way too much work.You know. My method is all about,
like how do you make a list? How do you make and send
like five to ten videos within anhour or two? How do you just
build the muscle of doing it everyday? You know? So for me,
it's like video isn't a cure allfor sales. It is a skill
justice important as cold calling and coldemailing. But sales leaders, sales trainers,

(09:35):
sales professionals have not put in thepractice and effort and study a video
the way they have for cold callingin cold emailing, you know, so
videos should fit. It should justbe one other tool, one other channel
that's driving in sales. But mostsales teams don't use it at all because
they don't have a process, they'renot used to doing this, they don't
have best practices. It's too newfor them, too many moving parts.

(09:56):
So video training. I do that, teach a cohort for video prospecting,
and I also sell a course calledThe Complete Guide to Selling on Video.
Yeah, that is just my salesprocess, completely documented. So from start
to finish, how do you goin with just a phone and then by
the end of it, you've gottwenty five videos shot, edited, captioned,
sent out on LinkedIn and or gemail. That's what that course is.

(10:22):
So it's one thing, one toone video prospecting. I couldn't sell
without it. Absolutely love it,Okay, really quickly before we go on
to the content marketing, probably morecreative stuff. Yes, I want to
ask a question that would be obviousto you or me because we've spent a
lot of time on this in ourlives, but for the people that aren't

(10:43):
as dialed into this, why isthis so important as a skill? And
a method of outreach alongside typed outmessages, alongside cold calling, etc.
When I assume you're probably talking withsalespeople and sales leaders who already have that
kind of mindset already, this feelslike it's something that's important. But take

(11:05):
someone who is basically familiar with theidea of what you just described helping people
with and share like, why doesthis matter to salespeople? Yeah, if
you're a salesperson, you work veryvery hard to talk to a very small
number of people. Anybody who's neverdone sales has no idea how difficult it

(11:26):
is. And you know, inmany cases, you know, let's take
an SDR, a sales development representative, or you could just call them a
cold caller. That's oftentimes what theyare there. They are making cold calls
all day. They are paid basedon how many qualified meetings they can set,
right, So they call up peopleall day, they email people,
they get meetings on the calendar.They only get paid if that person shows

(11:50):
up. And oftentimes what sdr strugglewith is what they call the show rate.
You know, you book all thesemeetings and then people don't show up,
which is almost worse than setting themeeting in the first place. You
know, because now you've taken time, maybe you prepared for it, you
know, maybe an AE has putthat time on their calendar. Whatever,
You've wasted so much more time.And I have found that just a small

(12:11):
human touch point, you know,just a fifteen second Hey, Ethan,
looking forward to chatting with you onMonday. Here's something I want you to
think about. See you at threepm. That is so much more likely
to actually drive a person to ameeting, or at the very least,
if they're going to reschedule, Iget like twenty four hours notice. It

(12:31):
doesn't happen like five minutes before themeeting, and it's just harder to ignore
you. You know, we're abusy world. We're a distracted world.
We're increasingly a world where people don'tanswer unsolicited phone calls. And you know,
when you're selling to an executive andthey tell you that they're busy,
they're not wrong. You know.It's like you've got to have a lot

(12:54):
going for you if you interrupt themout of the blue on the phone and
want to spin that into a goodand productive meeting. Whereas the video gives
you complete control over how you showup. And that is the thing I
really hammer home is like, look, your email might get sent to spam.
You might call someone in the middleof a bad day and they're defensive
and angry or whatever. If youshow up, if the first thing a

(13:16):
prospect sees from you is you,and you're professional, and you're friendly,
and you're you know, you're interestedin them, You're a little bit more
curious, a little bit more thoughtfulthan everybody else in the inbox. That
is what you want because they mightnot be ready to take your sales meeting
yet. Which you don't want isyou don't want to be added to the

(13:37):
do not call us. You don'twant to be added to spam. You
don't want people to tell you no, thanks, not interested, or you
know, do not call or unsubscribeor whatever I want them to at least
like, have me in mind iffive months from now is a better time,
you know. So, I findlike you can control your first impression
and your last impression on video.That is a powerful thing. You have

(13:58):
one hundred percent control over your messagethere with all your storytelling gifts, your
tone of voice, your eye contact. It's so powerful. But the fear
of doing it wrong just holds somany sales professionals back love it. So
we're going to get into that,fear for sure, we're going to get
even more practical stuff. You offereda lot right there, including this idea
of a little human moment. Youalso, I infer from what you said

(14:20):
something that I like to share alot too, is that the video message
isn't necessarily about video at all.Video is just the best way to deliver
it. You professionally interested in them, right, This is so key.
So we're gonna get into some practicalstuff there. But let's now double back
to the other side of what youteach and coach around video content and the

(14:43):
way that I used to teach us, Because you know, we've been at
this for over a decade at bombombI've been doing almost a dozen years full
time myself. One of the lineswe drew to make this distinction early on
was marketing through video versus relationships throughvideo. Marketing through video is this idea
of you know, one for audience, YouTube, social media, embedded etc.

(15:05):
Performing a variety of purposes. Let'sset that aside for a moment and
focus on what we call relationships throughvideo, which is this more direct personal,
not as I'm air quoting creative,just really just a nice human touch
point in the mix of all theother outreach. That's the way we separated
it. Talk about how you separateit and what you're kind of doing for
some of those folks. Yeah,so content was something I kind of fell

(15:28):
accidentally into. I did not intendto be a video content creator, so
to speak, but I knew Iwanted to teach video prospecting. And I've
got this whole other life. Youknow. I was a sketch comedian for
fifteen years. So I was writingsketch comedy shows. I was writing for
other people, which is a veryimportant part of my style. You know,

(15:50):
I do a lot of crossover stuffwhere I'm writing lines, i'm writing
dialogue, I'm writing content for otherpeople. And yeah, I was like,
oh, you know what, I'lljust go start making content about video
about sales. So I was makingtalking head kind of stuff where I was
just kind of talking to the cameraabout what I know. And that's fine.
I coach people to make that.But I also started throwing in a

(16:10):
little bit of character work here andthere, because I'm a one man show,
and I would do you know,things where I'm like talking about cold
calling, so cuts the phone.All of a sudden, it's me in
like a different shirt, acting differentand like I kind of can't help it.
So I would kind of start pickingup other mannerisms as this other person,
and then yeah, I would startpulling my audience on what they liked

(16:30):
about the content, and overwhelmingly theywere like, we want more of the
sketch cont like whatever that was whenyou threw away to the phone, that
was what we liked. You know. So this did a couple interesting things
for me. One, it taughtme that serious people they still like fun
stuff. And this is my lastjob too, my last job before I

(16:51):
started my own business. I wasworking in education technology, and yeah,
I learned the same thing. PhDsIvy League grads extraordin nearly wealthy people with
status. They go to all ratedmovies too. You know, they go
to stand up comedy shows. Theyhave a good time. They you know,
listen to music. They're they're justlike regular people. You don't stop
laughing just because you know you reacha certain net worth. And you know,

(17:18):
it's funny because I'm kind of tornin this situation where like I'm really
taught in this like hyper like it'scalled the style is called neo futurism.
We're getting really obscure here. Butthere's a school of theater that's been going
for a few decades in Chicago calledthe neo Futurists. And I studied with
them for a little while and Ilearned some things from them. And it
is this hyper honesty where you werealways You're not allowed to play a character,

(17:41):
you are always yourself. You haveto tell the truth, you have
to take the audience on some kindof experience with you. That is the
whole promise, you know. SoI teach people like, hey, you
want to go out there as justyou and your element? You know.
Everyone says the most entertaining version ofthem is the version that they are around
their friends and family, and I'mlike, yeah, that's the version of

(18:03):
you we're going to get on video. And you know, it's like I
don't try to tell people to befunny. I don't try to tell people
to go do crazy stuff, butit ends up happening, because what will
happen is somebody sends me like athree minute long video and like they have
some sort of like goofy or unusualmoment in the middle of it, where
they do something silly, or theydo something a little unguarded, or they

(18:25):
take kind of an unusual position,and I'm like, start with that.
Whatever you did in the middle there, that little moment, Put that in
the first three seconds of your videoand see what happens. You know,
And there's all these fantastically talented peopleeverywhere. You know, some of them
are trained performers. Some of themwere stand up comedians and dancers and actors,

(18:48):
and you know, they just stoppeddoing that because they had to go
be serious. And yeah, I'veactually discovered, like, no, you
could actually do pretty much whatever youwant in professional content, and I really
push the boundaries. We can talkabout that too. I've got all sorts
of characters, and some of thesketches are a little blue. They've got

(19:08):
like bleeped out swear words, andI'm playing multiple characters. Again, I
never worry that somebody's going to takeit the wrong way because I know my
audience. You know, the ironyis the funnier, the comedy is the
more serious, like information I canactually pack into the video. And if
I'm doing something like selling my brand, trying to get sign ups for a

(19:30):
new cohort, trying to get consultingdeals or something like that. It's actually
way easier if I put it ina funny infomercial and push that out there
publicly. You know, I can. It's a spoonful of sugar helps the
medicine go down. I can geta lot more information to the audience if
I wrap it in a package that'sa little bit delightful. Yeah, and
move some of the most fun stuffup front. By the way, bleeped

(19:53):
out swear words are almost always funnierthan the word itself. Yes, I
will even and sometimes if I havea guest bit because it says in the
script whenever I do a sketch withsomebody, it says in the script like
read all the swear words as written, I'll bleeps them in post. But
sometimes I bleep words that aren't evenswear words. Yeah, and I make

(20:14):
it sound like they're swear words becauseit's just funnier, Like it sounds way
more vulgar. And it's like theunbleeped version isn't even bad. You know,
this one just sounds terrible because youjust you just cut it so you
hear half of the hard consonant sound, and then the audience you know,
fills in what awful thing they thinkwas said totally, so good, so
good. Before we get into thebenefits of comedy and improv for really any

(20:40):
sales motion, including video communication,I want to get back to that fear
thing because you know, ultimately I'veobserved, and I wonder how much you've
observed similar that this fear comes upin a variety of different ways, and
it really is masked through a varietyof different uses. And so what I'd
love for you to do is kindof take down this idea that you don't

(21:04):
need to be a singer or aperformer or an actor. You've already said
it, but feel free to goback at it again, and feel free
to share some of the ways ifyou've observed the same as I have,
that fear comes masked as other excusesfor why this isn't useful or appropriate for
me or my team, or mycompany or my audience, even though I've

(21:26):
never tried it, like knocked onthe objections, and then maybe give a
couple tips on overcoming the initial fear. Yeah, so I will say the
most common excuses I hear is solike, oh, you know what,
I need a better camera. Ineed a better microphone, I need a
better this, I need a betterthat. You know, I've got a
friend who's a really good editor.They're going to help me later on with
some stuff. And you know,you can do so much with just your

(21:49):
iPhone, you know. And Iknow people who are professional content creators.
They've literally got an entire video productionteam. They've got you know, these
ridiculously defensive cameras, and they dohalf their stuff on an iPhone anyway,
because it's there and it's HD video, you know, and it's it's good
video quality. So if you showup well framed and you're confident and you're

(22:12):
looking at the camera, you looklike a professional video star. They don't
know that you're not qualified to betalking to them, because there you are.
You know. I firmly believe anybodycan be good at this. I've
got some examples of people I knowwho just unexpectedly discovered they were really good
at this, and now it's it'skind of changed their lives. But yeah,

(22:33):
you know, people don't google things. I wish they did. Sometimes
I see some morons spouting off andI'm like, gosh, I wish that
person would shut up because they don'tknow what they're talking about. And people
are like, oh, well,they sound pretty smart. Let's sound confident
there, and it like it likeI want people to go google my stuff
when I'm talking about video. Iwant them to be like Chris Bogue,

(22:55):
that guy qualified talking about video.Why don't I go google his life's work?
You know, whant to go watchall his wonderfully prepared video content.
They don't do that. They listenfor thirty seconds if you're lucky, I
mean, you gotta get them forthree seconds first. But they're gonna sit
there and think about whether or notyour message is relevant. That is the
only thing they care about. Youknow, if people tell me they have

(23:17):
they talk about a quote boring topic, I say, well, it's not
boring to your audience, now,is it. You know, if your
life is mortgages, if that's howyou paid for your house and your car,
and that's how your children eat,and like this is what you've spent
your career on, it's actually notthat boring. You actually probably have lots
of interesting insights that the average persondoesn't have about why it's important you know.

(23:41):
And this is actually a criticism Ihave of a lot of other comedians
that I see out there doing comedysometime. And a different difference between what
I do and what other people dois I always say I don't make fun
of other stuff. I'm not reallyI'm not out there saying that things are
stupid. And I make fun ofLinkedIn, but I don't make one of
the fact that we're posting on LinkedIn. Like I don't try to act above

(24:03):
the medium that I'm in, youknow. And I find a lot of
times people they want to go outthere and they see the edgy critics criticizing
everybody, you know, and onepart of them is afraid of They don't
want to be on the other endof that. They don't want someone making
fun of them. And then yeah, they get on camera, they don't
really know what to do, sothey just kind of they'll be very sarcastic,

(24:26):
or they want to just talk aboutthe things they hate or the people
they don't like or whatever. Andlike, actually, you just show up
and you're interested in a topic thatthe audience is interested in about. That's
all you need. An example ofthis, I love this. I had
her on my show once. Thiswoman's name is Lydia Allen. She's a
teacher and she's dyslexic. And youknow, she was teaching for a while

(24:51):
and she started her own business.She was consulting with schools, consulting with
parents. She was doing like workon like how to accommodate children with dyslexia.
Got on TikTok and she started makingvideos. And she was walking around
her backyard one day and she's talkingabout dyslexia, and then all of a
sudden, her phone started blowing upand just millions of people were watching the

(25:11):
video. And yeah, pretty soonshe just had a regular audience of one
point four million, and she literallyhad to close down her business temporarily and
say, hey, I'm sorry everybody. We were not equipped to take this
much inbound business. We have togo rework a couple things before we can
get back to you, So I'mvery sorry. We were not equipped to

(25:33):
handle the phone calls and emails comingin. We'll be back. But she's
not an actress, she's not acomedian. In fact, growing up,
all the teachers told her that shewas stupid. They thought she was stupid
and lazy because she was dyslexic andit was hard for her to read.
And you know, this is notDyslexia is not something you hear about,
you know, on TV. They'renot talking about it on the news shows

(25:56):
or whatever like that. But there'sso many people that are dyslexic, you
know. So they get on TikTokor YouTube or wherever they find lydia and
they're like, oh my gosh,it's like this woman is in my mind,
you know, like here's this personwho finally understands, you know,
and she she says, now,she's like, I wish I knew that
was the video I was going tobreak through on. Because her hair was
messed up, she was like wearinga hoodie. She was it was like

(26:17):
complete random thought off the top ofher head, and it really struck a
chord with the audience, you know, and I'm like, that's just she
is a teacher. She is ateacher, and this is something that happened
with me too. I thought allthe skills I was doing were useless.
You know. Then I got onvideo and I realized how powerful it was.

(26:38):
But you wouldn't have known who Iwas a couple of years ago.
I was just some nobody, andI was not making videos. I didn't
have much of a web presence,you know. But yeah, it always
looks like everybody's more successful until youstart doing it and then you kind of
just you're just kind of another personon the screen. Absolutely, that reminded
me of you went a different directionwith dyslexia than I expect. Did.

(27:00):
I really appreciate the honesty of thatfirst video, that being my real hair
in the moment and an honest thoughtoff the top of my head and from
my heart. I'm thinking of twolongtime bomb Bomb customers who've each sent thousands
of videos from our platform, bothof whom were dyslexic, and they felt
like this just saved them so muchheartache, embarrassment, confusion. I can

(27:26):
just talk to people. I'm greatat talking to people, but it's the
idea of like capturing my intellectual thoughtsand communicating them in sentences and paragraphs was
always frustrating for me and potentially embarrassing, with misspellings, misuse of punctuation,
grammar, etc. Being read thesame way that this woman's teachers growing up

(27:47):
maybe read read her. So goto for folks who aren't familiar with this
idea of improv in general. It'ssomething that I am only a couple of
years into being familiar with as agreat training ground for being more confident and
more successful in any customer facing capacity, but in particular in sales. Talk

(28:11):
about the benefits of your background intheater and an improv to your and let's
even go like pre video to yourinitial you know, handful of sales jobs.
Yeah, so the word improv hasa lot of misconceptions about it.
Good. Yeah, let's knock thatdown first. Yeah, improv is not
about jokes. It's one of thefirst things I teach. What I'm teaching

(28:32):
improv. I tell everybody, Igo, we're all going to breathe in.
Now, breathe out the need tobe funny, you know, just
breathe out the need to be likebreathe out. They need to impress your
audience. It's not about telling jokes. Improv is about listening, and it's
about supporting a partner and supporting yourscene. And it's not about trying to

(28:55):
make yourself look really good. It'sabout making the other person look good.
This is something and you know,as an improviser, you think of it's
like Okay, well, you know, if if the goal here is to
make the best scene possible, youknow, which means that like, for
the sake of the show, mypartner is a genius, I need to
treat everything they say as if it'sgold. And yeah, we got to

(29:17):
build a relationship on the spot,you know. So it's like you hold
on to your character and you pickyou know, you pick your point of
view, and the goal is youjust have to say yes and move the
action of the scene forward. Andyou know, it's really a listening game
because especially in Chicago, which islike, i mean, the Second City
was created here in the nineteen fifties. It is a theater where half of

(29:37):
you know, the cast of SaturdayNight Live traditionally comes from. And yeah,
it's so much of it is listening, and so much of it is
you know, like improv. Olympicwas another big theater where Tina Fey and
Amy Pohler and all them came from. And that's long form improv. That's
like you get one word from theaudience and you go for like thirty or
forty minutes. Wow, you know, and how that work because there's an

(30:00):
idea generator in the beginning, andyou know, you're kind of maybe it's
a storytelling thing. There's a lotof different ways to generate ideas, but
you really want to listen closely,you know. And that was something I
learned on the stage, is like, if there's an incredibly specific thing that
the audience yells was a super specificdetail from one of those starting stories,
and twenty five minutes later into theshow, you bring it back. You

(30:23):
know, someone mentions their diet doctorpepper or whatever, and you're like,
did someone leave a diet doctor pepperin the shower? The audience cracks up
because they remember that little turn ofphrase. And there was always something I
did in sales too, where it'sjust like I always want the prospect to
see that I'm listening. And alot of that comes from like using their

(30:45):
language as they talk, asking alot of open ended questions to get them
really like out of their head.And yeah, I found that if,
like, you know, twenty minutesinto a car, I was like,
you know, Ethan, I'm goingto go back to something you said ten
minutes ago, you said earlier blahblah blah blah blah. Now I'm going
to show you this next slide youknow, and that's so much more like

(31:07):
impactful than just like running through aslide deck when you can tailor it to
someone for their reason, their ownreasons. So yeah, improv taught me
to listen, and as a contentcreator, improv taught me like it's different
than traditional theater because the audience ispart of the show theater production. You
could just do it with no audiencein the room. Everybody knows their lines,
everybody knows their cues. Improv needsan audience. You need to get

(31:30):
the suggestions from somewhere, you know. So the oldest trick in the improv
book is to break the fourth wall. If you want to get a laugh,
walk off the stage and go sitdown at a table with some of
the audience members where they're having drinksand just like pull them into the scene.
It blows their mind. Same thingwith the content, you know,
I teach people. I'm like,you should be going out there regularly getting

(31:53):
questions from your audience, have opportunitieswhere they can interact with you. Use
those interactions to create new content.But yeah, these are these are the
principles I follow. It's about listening, it's about your audience. It's about
the other player. I am theleast important person in the show. You
know that goes for me on videotoo, I always say, even if

(32:14):
it's just me talking to a prospect, this is a two person video.
I am one person, the camerais person number two, and the camera
is actually the main character. Theprospect is actually the main character. I
am the supporting player. That's thereally play on LinkedIn too, and you're
listening to things that obviously aren't beingsaid back to you. I just I
would love for you to just spendanother minute in this because I like you.

(32:37):
I'm sure everyone thinks they're going tobe fine in video messages because they're
on Zoom every day or teams orGoogle meter or whatever. But that is
this live, given take that isa lot more like a real conversation.
And this is different in two ways. One, I can play it back
before I send it and over judgeevery single frame of it and choose not

(33:00):
to send it. I've heard thatstory too many times. And then the
other one is developing this unique skillof communicating with someone as if they're there,
based on because your observation about listeningis a real thing. That's why
you want to create those interactive momentsbetween video messages, get questions so that
you know what's really on people's minds, and people what's on people's mind today.

(33:23):
It could be the same question,but they're asking it a little bit
differently now than they were six monthsago or whatever. There's all this feedback
we can use, and there's evenof course prospect and customer feedback loops that
can inform us when we're treating thatcamera lens as a human being. But
just talk about the different dynamic ofcommunicating in a recorded video versus communicating what

(33:46):
you and I are doing right nowlive synchronously on a video call. Yeah.
I guess the nicest way I cansay it is most people aren't as
good on zoom as they think theyare. Most people aren't looking for the
feedback because they don't want to dothat level of self reflection. And this

(34:07):
is something if anybody wants to goout there and be a video content creator,
this is something you're gonna have toseriously think about. But I am
a believer that you should watch yourown stuff, like you have to watch
your own stuff. If you don'twant to watch it, you know you're
gonna get an audience to watch it, like, I don't know. The
only reason why I'm able to dowhat I do is because making a video

(34:30):
is like five different steps. It'slike a process with five different parts,
and I divide those up very deliberately. You know, when I am writing,
I'm not editing, you know,I am right, I gotta get
start to finish. I just gottaget the thing written. When I'm filming,
I'm not dealing with camera stuff orwhatever. I'm fully focused on my

(34:51):
on camera delivery. And then whenI'm editing, I am fully focused on
the edit. How do I getthe most effective edit out of this possible?
So when you watch yourself, youcan see if you're fidgeting. You
can see if you look nervous.You can see if you're moving around too
much. You can see if you'retoo aggressive. You can see if you're
too overly energetic. You'll see rightaway because you'll cringe. We all cringe,

(35:13):
you know, But that's how youget better. You have to be
able to improve. So for me, it was watching myself, it was
having to edit my own stuff.And you know, I was on a
three year creative dry spell before Istarted doing video content. I thought I
was done with comedy forever, andyeah, I noticed. I'm like,
oh, I'm funnier than I thought. You know, because I record,

(35:35):
I still record my lines like anactor. So you know, if I'm
doing a character, I'll give threedifferent recordings of the same line. You
know. I had this ad onetime where it was like, it starts
with me and I'm like, I'mChris boo boo boo boo boo boo boo,
and then it cuts to like meon a couch watching that version of
me, and I've got like popcorn, I throw it up in there and

(35:57):
I go, that could be me, And then it stopped and the ad
starts. Well, I tried threedifferent recordings of that same line, you
know, I try. I tryone where I go, that could be
me, and then I tried thatcould be me, and I tried that
could be me, And I watchedall three in I'm like, why number
two, for some reason, isfifty times funnier. So that's the one

(36:20):
that goes in the video, youknow. But I had to watch it
with an objective. I I hadto watch it and be like, which
one of these do I think isthe funniest and you know, I'll watch
my old videos and they're not bad. But every time I repost an old
video, it gets shorter. Becausethe more I do this, the more
I have an objective I to belike, you know what, this moment's

(36:42):
a little repetitive. This sentence isbasically saying the same thing I already said.
Let's just cut it. You know. Now it's going to be a
forty six second video instead of afifty three second video, and that's even
better, you know, But Ihad to watch it enough to become dispassionate.
I had to be able to separatemy performance from my feelings of self
worth. You know, just becauseI made a video that didn't perform well,

(37:05):
or just because I didn't look particularlygood on video once doesn't mean I'm
bad at what I do, andit doesn't mean that, you know whatever.
But yeah, I actually had todo that. And then here's the
other part too, that I thateverybody who wants to do video content,
I'd swear to you please do thisis ask for feedback. If you see
other content creators and you're intimidated becausetheir content is better, actually just see

(37:29):
if they'd be willing to give youadvice. You know, one thing that
I did early on was I justsent myself to everybody. You know.
I had all these friends. Theywent to Hollywood, they got, they
got in movies, they got youknow, they started businesses. Some of
them did very well for themselves,you know, I know people who started
companies, who've exited companies, atall these very successful lives. And at

(37:50):
first I was like, oh mygosh, I'm such a loser. All
these people are so much more accomplishedthan me. But then I started saying,
wait a minute, I'm connected toall these accomplished, cool people.
May maybe that's to my advantage,you know. So I started making video
content and I started sending it tothem, being like, hey, I'm
doing this new thing. You know, if you're interested, i'd love for
you to give this a watch.And people started replying being like that was

(38:14):
good, Like that was good.You know, And people I know who
make a very good living for themselvesas professional content creators, yeah, they'd
they'd be like, hey, youknow, here's a couple tips to make
this better. You're gonna have tomake a few hundred of these, you
know, if you really want topick up steam. But like keep going.
And the fact that I was ableto hear somebody or you know,

(38:37):
even if they're just reading that,the fact that somebody was able to say,
no, I got value out ofthis. I liked it. I
liked the joke. I understood thepoint. I thought it was an interesting
point that kept me going, andthat gave me insight as to what is
landing and what's not landing. Butmost creators don't ask for the feedback.
They're they're they're afraid of it.Yeah, watching it back and asking and

(39:00):
being open to being open to thekey asking is one thing. It's useless
if you don't listen to it.Feedback is so critical. And I would
assume that you're coaching the same processfor the style of video that isn't edited,
you know, where you're not goingto take six or seven seconds out,
but you're gonna do approximately this videofive to ten times a week,
and so by week four you shoulda have gotten some feedback maybe from your

(39:22):
peers or your boss, or evenfrom some of your prospects or customers.
Yeah. No, and you couldget that feedback in your watch raids.
Yeah, absolutely good. Call peopletell me they're like, huh, Well,
my prospect only watched ten percent ofmy video. I go, okay,
what happened to the ten percent mark? You know, if they dropped
out seventeen seconds in, I wouldgo seventeen seconds into the video and get

(39:46):
very curious about what happened there,you know, And the numbers don't lie.
And that's I've noticed most of myvideos when I send them out,
the prospect either watches zero percent ofthe video or one hundred percent of the
video. You know, if they'redropping off, there's usually some kind of
a reason. And yeah, again, sometimes maybe it's too long to get

(40:06):
to the point. Oftentimes it's becauselike it's not a personalized video, and
there's a lot of different ways thatpeople try to pretend like it is.
You know, it's it's And Idid this too when I started off.
I would make these videos where Iwould just record myself saying one person's name,
and then it would like have acut and then it would jump to
like a more generic kind of video. That edit point was where the drop

(40:28):
off was, you know, theaudience, Oh, this is a generic
thing. I could probably go readit on his website or whatever, and
they just stopped, you know,But that is feedback. If they're not
opening the video, if they're notwatching it fully, that is a huge
signal that you're you're not doing enoughto show them that this message is for
them. Yeah, really good call. And the other thing because there are

(40:51):
people now doing fake first name videoswhere they're just completely faking it all together,
and in my opinion, it mistreatsthe person name is the thing that's
relevant to them, when in factit's not. You could still say their
first name in a personal video,but if it's a poorly targeted and poorly
structured message, it's not going tobe to your advantage at all to have

(41:12):
said their first name and done iteighty five times instead of once for eighty
five different people talk a little bitabout that aspect of it. Yeah,
Well, like I got a videothe other day where someone faked like it
was for me and they made allthese claims about all these things that they
thought they knew about me, andit was like so hollow. It was

(41:34):
just so empty, and it feltto me like too broad a message,
didn't know your audience, it wasn'tclear what was in it for me,
And it also made another fundamental errorthat I know you're very sensitive to which
is essentially trying to sell me aservice that I assume is a five or
six figure service in a video message. But that's not the video's job.
So I guess I'll turn this intoa specific question. As you're looking at

(41:58):
people's videos, let's and again,let's see with the simpler style of us.
Let's just say a sales video,what are some of the most common
pieces of feedback that you give othersin order to help them be more effective?
I just I just teaed up ahandful of them, but take it
anywhere you want. Yeah, morethan anything, I'm just trying to demonstrate
a level of care and attention inthe videos. You know, when you're

(42:22):
going one too many, the biggerthe audience you're going for, the more
you kind of need to dumb downyour message. There's a reason why,
like commercials these days are just likesay, any celebrities and here's a crazy
CGI. It's like the audience isso broad that you have to kind of

(42:43):
go for the lowest common denominator individual. Human beings are smart and I was
always trained as an improviser. Theaudience is more intelligent than you. You
know, play on stage as thoughthe audience is already two steps ahead of
you. And that's what I doon LinkedIn too, That's what I do
with my content executives, people whorun companies, people who are on LinkedIn.

(43:07):
They have more education than the averageperson. You know, the higher
the level of income, the higherthe level of education. You know,
it's like you can just talk tothem like they're in adults. And yeah,
for me, it's not even somuch the words as like I can
send a generic video out as aprospecting video and get emails, but I

(43:30):
wouldn't try to pretend like it wassomething it wasn't. I would send something
out there being like, Hey,the reason why you're receiving this video is
because you've been coming to my livestreams and I'm sending out this exclusive offer
to all my livestream fans before itgoes public. Blah blah blah. Go
to my website here and that,and then like respond to this if you
want to direct message. I thinksomething like that is fine, you know.

(43:52):
And if I was going to deepfake a video and send it to
three hundred people, my first lineswould probably be like, Hey, this
is a deep fake video. I'mnot real here's why I did this,
you know. But I've always gottaget the audience onto my side. And
vulnerability is how you do that,you know, and actually putting yourself out

(44:14):
there. It's like, hey,I'm interested in you. I'm talking to
you because I wanted to put aface to the name. There's inherent vulnerability
in that, and if you doit the right way, your prospect is
more likely to respond because they're like, oh, this thoughtful person actually took
a moment to reach out to me, you know. Whereas the second they

(44:37):
realize that you just sent it outto a thousand people, the incentive to
respond just disappears because they know youdidn't take the time to personally reach out
to them. So why are theygoing to take the time to personally reach
out to you? Whereas, Yeah, the way I do it and the
way I look at a lot ofwhat I'm communicating out there in my style
is it's all about reciprocity. Itook a moment to be thoughtful for that.

(45:00):
So what do you think if they'regonna do They're gonna send something vulgar
and tell me to never call themagain. No, they're probably gonna say
thanks and then if they're interested,we'll have a meeting. If they're not
interested, they'll probably say, hey, thanks, but I'm not interested.
And that's fine. You know,as a seller, if you're not getting
any knows you're doing something wrong.You know, you're probably so off putting

(45:21):
that people don't want to tell youthe truth. You know. Whereas I
come and I'm just on video forthirty seconds and to say, hey,
here's the thing I noticed about you. I know you're working on this.
I know you're working on that.I'd love to chat with you. Let
me know either way, you know, if you if you're interested, respond
to this message with anything. Itell them you could send me a thumbs
up if you want me to,just send you some available times. And

(45:43):
if you're not interested, that's finetoo. Just let me know. You
could even send me a thumbs downand I will mark that you do not
want to receive videos like this,but you know, just let me know.
Thanks a lot, and like that'sthe video. It's short. I
give very clear instructions for what theycan do, including a way out in
case they don't want to deal withme. That is totally fine. How
long does it take to record acouple of videos like that, not very

(46:04):
like the effort it takes to gothrough all the deep faking and stuff like
that. Like I don't know howmany prospects you actually need to hit your
quota. You know, you couldprobably do the work a lot more simply
if you get focused on your people. We are so you and I are
so kin on so many of thesethemes. I'll just restate a couple things

(46:24):
that I just absolutely appreciate about whatyou just shared there. It's not as
much about the words that you sayas it is about the respect and care
that you show to the other,but that you demonstrate for the other persons
such that they can feel it andthey receive the video not as some kind
of imposition on their time or attention, but as a gift of your own

(46:46):
time and attention, which then provokesa mutual respect and some reciprocity. I
love the idea of giving them anout and letting them make the choice.
I appreciate so much this idea ofyou can do whatever you want, just
don't make it act as if it'ssomething else. I think in that deceit,
there is something that is not thefoundation for good relationship building you know,

(47:09):
because it's acting like something that itisn't. And then that came up
with one of our guests, BillAmmerman. For folks who are enjoying this
conversation, which sadly we're gonna haveto bring to a close, even though
do we easily have three hours ofconversation on these themes of topics? Out
of points you to a couple otherones that you might enjoy. Episode one
fifty six with Julie Hansen, whowas featured in our book Human Centered Communication.

(47:34):
We called that one an Actor's Guideto Authentic Videos, and Julie was
a sales professional who didn't This isI'm paraphrasing what she told me about her
motivation to get into acting, whichwas I looked around in my sales role
and I didn't feel as confident aseveryone else looked. And she discovered acting
in improv as a means of developingthose skills, and now she teaches people

(47:57):
how to be effective on video aswell. So it was episode one six
with Julie Hansen, and then alittle bit earlier, episode one thirty with
John Sweeney, who runs a theaterup in Minneapolis, and we talked he's
also a salesperson. We called thatone the mindset of improv and sales.
And so if you, if anyonelistening, enjoyed that touch on improv in
particular. And I just want tosay again, Chris, I love the

(48:19):
way that you broke down the ideathat it's not about being funny, it's
about listening above all and bringing otherpeople into it, making it about other
people. For anyone wants to divedeeper into this idea of improv as an
effective tool for all of your saleswork, Episode one thirty with John Sweeney.
Before I let you go, Chris, I would love for you to
think or mention someone who's had apositive impact on your life or your career.

(48:43):
Yeah, so I'll give a shoutto my Second City coach. Back
when I was seeking classes, mySecond City director Joe Jains really one of
the first teachers I had who waslike believed in me and I'm just a
big fan of him. Anybody wantsan improv coach, hire Joe James.
And then I also mentioned for aLinkedIn content creator, I'll mention Nick Caposi.

(49:05):
I love Nick Caposi. He's agreat video guy. He's a guy
who got on video. He hasa very fascinating story where he was on
a cruise ship and there's like threethree channels on the cruise ship. It
was like the weather channel, ESPNand him and he could just do whatever.
And he's he's a fascinating guy becausehe's another one who learned to talk
to the camera just all the time. And he's you know, the version

(49:28):
of him on camera is the versionof him you get in real life.
And he's just been a big supporterof buying and he's he's a he's a
cool guy. Check out Nick Composi. Everybody at home, if you're if
you're not following him already on LinkedIn. Awesome. I link all this stuff
up in the episode description right downbelow on your podcast player, or in
the writeups we do at bombomb dotcom slash podcast. So I'll link both
of those gentlemen up. And howabout a company or brand that you personally

(49:51):
appreciate for the experience that they deliverfor you as a customer, who's doing
a great job of customer experience foryou. Well, do I get a
chance to promote Chris bo dot combecause I got a course, But yeah,
yeah, okay, companies let methink, who's Like, I don't
want to upset anybody. I reallydo want to just say I'll give a
shout to Adobe. I'm just gonnashout out to Adobe specifically for the captions.

(50:14):
We didn't talk too much about captionshere. I'm a huge believer in
captions. Captions are so powerful.If ever, you upload a video and
there's auto captions, take a momentto edit them. Just go in there
and correct the typos. You notbelieve how much that will transform your engagement
score, Like, you'll thank yourselffor it. More people will watch your

(50:35):
videos if the captions are accurate.And yeah, I am just in love
with Adobe. I make fun ofcompanies that say they'll give you superpowers.
They really do. I can makemyself fly and I could shoot lasers out
of my eyes and everything because Ican edit on Premiere Pro. But there
auto transcriptions are just absolutely fantastic.They're captioning is wonderful. I'm so happy

(50:57):
with them. And we talk aboutexperience. They're customer service people are incredibly
accommodating, incredibly understanding if you haveissues as a small business owner. Adobe's
customer service is actually worlds above whatmost companies are, so I'll show them
some love for the customer experience theme. Awesome, well done. And now

(51:21):
for anyone who wants to learn aboutyour course or they want to learn about
your cohort approach to training, connectwith you on LinkedIn. Any of the
things we talked about. Where wouldyou send people? Yeah, so you
can go to Chris Bolk dot io. That's where you can purchase the Complete
Guide to Selling on Video. Youcan also check out testimonials there. You
can watch the infomercials. They're funnybut educational. Yeah, go to Chris

(51:45):
Bolk dot io. Also, Irun cohorts, so it's group coaching if
you want to learn, if youwant to start making video regularly, I
find that it is the best wayto do it. You meet once a
week as a group. We haveassignments, but most importantly, we support
each other. We grow together,We review each other's videos and give feedback.
So, yeah, you can signup for all of that at chrispoke
dot io, or you could justfollow me on LinkedIn. So if you

(52:07):
go search Cris bo gun LinkedIn,don't forget to ring the bell. You
can follow me. I create sketchcomedy all the time. I'm doing live
events all the time, you know, come check it out. I'm always
talking about video sales, improv oncamera performance, content creation. This is
the stuff I live for, soyeah, follow me and shoot me at

(52:30):
TM too. I'm a chatty Kathy. I'm always out and talk about this
stuff. So I would love foranyone listening to this episode to come support
me, and yeah, purchase thecourse if you're interested. If you show
up with no video experience or nosales experience, by the end of the
course, you'll have your first twentyfive videos, shot, edited, captioned,
and sent through bombomb So check itout. Awesome, your passion and

(52:53):
your expertise are tangible. I reallyenjoyed this conversation Chris, as they have
all the times we've connected. Ithink that's the first one we've recorded.
I'm glad we did appreciate you,and I hope you have an awesome afternoon.
Yeah, thanks for having me here. A marketing futurist from Salesforce,
the first salesperson at HubSpot, anemotional intelligence expert with seven US patents in

(53:16):
the analysis of facial coding data.These are just three of more than a
dozen experts featured in the Wall StreetJournal bestseller Human Centered Communication, a Business
Case against Digital Pollution. The purposeof the book to give you frameworks,
strategies, and specific tactics to createhuman connection across the digital divide. Learn

(53:39):
to break through the noise, buildtrust, and enhance your reputation and revenue
despite the ever increasing digital noise andpollution that separates us all. Get your
copy of Human Centered Communication absolutely freeat bombomb dot com slash Free book.

(53:59):
That's bomb bomb dot com slash freebook. Thanks for listening to the Customer Experience
Podcast. Remember the single most importantthing you can do today is to create
and deliver a better experience for yourcustomers. Continue learning the latest strategies and
tactics by subscribing right now in yourfavorite podcast player, or visit bombomb dot

(54:22):
com slash podcast