One year ago TechCrunch proclaimed that 2016 would be “The Year of the Sales Stack.” They were right; the technology a company adds to its sales stack can really make or break its competitive edge.

As we near the end of 2016, we were excited to be featured in the recent Sales Acceleration Technology Summit, hosted by InsideSales.com. The summit featured more than two dozen industry thought leaders who shared how they use the newest sales technologies in their organizations. Consensus co-founder and CRO Matt Behrend’s session focused on why personalized video for sales is the biggest game-changer since the auto dialer. Here’s the video and our breakdown below:

The buying equation does not add up.

You take 6-8 months to train your new sales rep and then expect your prospect to sell internally to their organization after an hour-long demo? Something doesn’t add up here. According to the Challenger Customer, 80% of buyers want more support.

Buyers need sales enablement just as much, if not more, than salespeople. They’re the ones who have to pitch your product to the rest of their colleagues for approval. Even if they’re interested in your product, most prospects aren’t prepared or motivated to fight for it when they pitch it to the rest of the buying panel. It puts too much pressure on that single champion to get the deal done for you when they feel like they’re going at it alone.

Personalized video changes the sales process because it is:

1. Persona(lized)

Based on your buyer’s persona and interests, they’ll receive a unique demo experience. Dynamic, tailor-made content that answers their immediate needs and questions allows buyers to buy the way they want to. By including a personalized demo in an email and calling it out in the subject line you can get click-through-rates as high as 33%, which is 5x better than most other tactics. Personalized video content also converts up to 2x better than text-based PDF collateral.

2. Shareable

“I’m busy, send me something.” How often do you hear this from a prospect? About 40% of SDR conversations end this way.

Today’s buyers don’t want to meet with an account executive; they prefer to self-educate. Personalized video demos are the perfect way to help them learn on their time. What’s amazing is that personalized video gets shared 61% of the time. Since you’re actually selling to a whole buying group, this is the best way to ensure each stakeholder has an accurate, positive experience learning about and evaluating your product.

Reference the demo in an email, mention it in a voicemail; whatever channel you use, let your prospects know committing to watching a video is even easier than committing to meet with an account executive.

3. Insightful

What do you know about your stakeholders? You probably have a tool that lets you know when a prospect views a piece of content, or how long they watched a video. However, it doesn’t let you know who else watched it or who they are so you can identify the rest of the buying group. Personalized video tells you exactly who is watching your video and what is valuable to them.

4. Integrated

Using personalized video is a natural addition to your existing processes. Social media, email, cold-calling, landing pages, events; the list of possible applications goes on.

To learn how Consensus empowers sales and stakeholders to work more effectively together, click on the orange “Watch Demo” button below.