Before you sell your product to a consumer, you have to sell that same product to your sales staff. Just like anyone else, they need to be convinced that this is the best product out there. Why? Because if they’re made aware of how good your product is, they can pass that info along to prospective clients! This is where a quality sales training voice-over comes in.
Sales training videos are a useful tool for training sales staff and ensuring that they have a handle on your product(s). Having a great video also means that you can train staff in multiple offices without needing to visit them and conduct individual training sessions. Nothing like a gift that keeps on giving; make just one investment, reap multiple rewards.
But not so fast! After all, what distinguishes a quality product from a bad one, and how can you avoid common pitfalls? All’s well and good with a great voice-over, but what’s the price of messing up?
The most common mistake with a sales training voice-over is poor-quality audio. In practice, this means that listeners quickly lose focus and gloss over important points. The negative impact is twofold; first, it makes you look unprofessional and like you don’t know your stuff. Second, it means that sales trainers then need to conduct follow-up training. Quite often, they have to spend a considerable amount of time traveling to each office and training their sales team one-on-one.
All of this could be avoided with a better quality sales training video, where the audio is clear and understandable, and where the narrator has an engaging voice that keeps listeners focused. The following are five reasons that your sales training videos would benefit from a professional voice over.
1) A Professional Sales Training Voice-Over Gets the Message Across
While the visual element of a sales training video is great for holding people’s attention, it’s what’s said rather than what’s on the screen that matters. But while all sales trainers understand the importance of a good script, many underestimate the value of having a professional voice behind it.
It may be cheaper (or at first glance easier) to use someone in the office for the voice over, but in practice, this often means that key points aren’t emphasized as well as they could be and that listeners have to work considerably harder to maintain their attention during training sessions.
Why, though? Doesn’t everyone talk about that one sultry-voiced dude from accounting who could pass for Morgan Freeman? Well, it turns out that having a great voice (or being a great imitator) is not everything in life. Often, a great sales training voice over will require a pro who really knows their stuff. Talented or lucky amateurs may be able to pull off a convincing job, but that’s not really a bet you want to make. If you fail, you’ll quickly lose your employees’ attention, or worse, have them laughing at your lackluster efforts. Not a flattering look.
Why Is That?
When you create a product that’s ready to sell, you should be understandably proud of what you’re putting out. The investment that you make to back up your product reflects your faith in its success. Your sales video is not just for training employees, but also to motivate them and make them believe in the greatness of the product. What does it say about your product if you showcase your star creation with shoddy voice work? It implies a lack of faith and professionalism, and even worse: it makes you look like you’re penny-pinching.
Trust us when we say that you don’t want to look cheap when educating your sales force about a new product. You want them to go out into the world as true believers ready to preach the good word. If they’re unconvinced or unmotivated, your sales will tank, guaranteed.
Voice over narrators are experts in their craft and can produce high-quality audio that ensures that your script is narrated clearly and coherently. A professional narrator has the experience and ability to find the right pace and rhythm when reading a script, making them considerably better at holding a listener’s attention, and at emphasizing the right points at the right time.
Moreover, it makes you look like you gave your video the right amount of time, attention, and care. Lavishing love (and a pretty penny) into the production already puts your team in better spirits. It tells them that you believe in what you’re doing and aren’t going for half measures. A great sales training voice over is a key part of that strategy.
2) Give Your Team a Confidence Boost
Great audio can elevate an average video from good to great while poor audio can demote it from good to bad. But while most marketing managers wouldn’t use a non-professional to record the audio for their B2C marketing videos, many sales trainers are happy to use non-professionals for their internal training videos.
Poor audio, whether it’s for marketing or sales training videos, can give an unprofessional tone, and this can reduce the listeners’ confidence in the product that’s being discussed. Naturally, you want your sales team to be one hundred percent confident in the product that they’re selling. Having good quality audio presents the product in a much better light, making it easier for your team to have confidence in it.
But, as we stated in the previous point, it’s just one part in the production. Having the best sales training voice over is a moot point if the rest of the production is not up to snuff. Having great motion graphics, or hiring a corporate video production company can increase your overall chances.
Remember: this video is going to be your company’s rallying cry. It all hinges on your sales for being highly-motivated.
3) A Pro Sales Training Voice-Over Gives you Flexibility
While there may only be a few people in your office with voices that are suitable for using in a voice over, using a directory of professional voice-overs or a voice-over agency gives you access to hundreds and potentially thousands of suitable people.
Use this variety to your advantage. You could use the same voice actor for all of your videos, giving a sense of unity to your presentations, or use different voice actors for different videos to keep things interesting, and to hold your sales team’s attention for longer.
If you’re training an international team of salespeople, it’s paramount that you choose someone with a voice and accent that’s easily understandable – something you’ll have access to when you work with a larger database of voice actors. If your team is only regional currently, this may not seem important, but it’s something to consider if you’re expecting your sales team to grow – particularly if you’re expecting it to grow internationally.
Our “Voice Over Talent – Choosing the Perfect Voice” article gives you a few more tips:
The most important element when it comes to voice over talent is matching the voice with the project. As 90 Seconds explains, for example, a voice over for a public service announcement needs to leave an emotional impact. On the other hand, a voice over for a commercial for a vacation cruise needs to show excitement and enthusiasm for the product.
Some basics when it comes to finding just the right voice over talent are things like the age of the actor or their gender. But other things to consider are factors such as tone and tenor of the speaker, dialect or accent, and the cadence and richness of the voice. Think about the character or tone of the project and match the voice to that. And that can run the whole gamut from the voice of an over-caffeinated young mom to that of a trustworthy older man or a child suffering from a cold.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to try a couple of different voice actors with different characteristics. This way you can see which one works better. You may have an image of something but in reality, another voice may convey your message better. It may even be a case of the same voice actor reading the script in a few different ways. In essence, the voice over talent will make your script come alive and convey the message you are striving for.
4) Save Yourself Time In The Long Run
Initially, it may seem faster to just ask someone in the office to record the voice over as opposed to going through the process of finding and working with freelance voice artists. In practice, the opposite tends to be true.
In-house audio recordings tend to be recorded with low-quality microphones and in rooms that aren’t properly equipped for recording sound. More importantly, they’re not recorded by professionals who have the training and experience to read a script properly.
While Sally from reception or Paul from IT may have nice-sounding voices, when you actually come to listen to their recordings, you may come to find that Sally hisses her Ss while Tim pops his Ts. More importantly, neither of them are used to speaking for long periods of time, which often leads to their attention spans audibly waning during the recording. It’s also that they very likely don’t know how to properly care for their voice. This could leave to vocal injuries, and open up a whole other can of worms — legal repercussions, for one.
Examples like the above while anecdotal are highly common and mean that sales trainers often have to spend large amounts of time trying to find audio tools that can tidy up the sound quality. This is obviously time that could better be spent elsewhere.
A sales training voice-over is meant to streamline the training process and make things more efficient. Don’t make the mistake of assuming it’s quicker to find a non-professional to record your audio, as in the long run it rarely is.
5) The Right Sales Training Voice-Over Goes a Long Way
If done right, the process of finding a voice over artist and working with them can be a very straightforward one.
It’s worth getting that process right now. As the company grows, and your responsibilities extend to producing sales training videos in different languages, it’s inevitable that you’ll need to work with external freelancers to make that possible.
Combined with the other reasons for getting a professional voice over artist, it makes sense to get that process right now, so that you can create a streamlined process that’ll save you time in the future.
To add the finishing touch to your sales training video, check out Bunny Studio’s professional voice over artists from around the world!
