The Problem With Starting With the Deliverable

A prospect came to us a couple years ago wanting an explainer video. Insurance company. Mid-size, complex product, the kind of sale that takes months and involves three people who all have different objections.

In the first call they told us their biggest differentiator was their people.

We looked at their website before the next conversation. Not a single human face on it. Stock imagery, maybe. Abstract graphics. The visual language of a company that had never quite decided what it wanted to say about itself.

We mentioned it on the call. Not as an indictment, just an observation. If people are the differentiator, they are not showing up anywhere a buyer would actually look before agreeing to a meeting.

Dead silence.

No one pushed back. No one jumped in to explain it. It just sat there for a second.

Then someone said something like, well, that is not really how we think about the site.

Another person tried to clarify what they meant by people. Not in a defensive way. More like they were hearing it themselves for the first time while they were saying it.

The conversation slowed down a bit after that.

We asked a few more questions. How deals usually start. What someone actually knows about them before the first call. What makes a prospect decide it is worth taking that call in the first place.

The answers were all over the place at first. Then they started to line up.

Most of their best relationships did not start with the product. They started with someone trusting the person across from them. The product made sense later, once that part was settled.

You could feel the shift when it clicked. Nothing dramatic. Just less tension in the way they were talking. Fewer attempts to get the wording exactly right.

At some point the idea of the explainer stopped coming up.

We ended up making a brand video first. Something that put real people on camera, showed how they think, gave a buyer something to hold onto before the sales conversation started. They used it at their trade show booth. It found its way into the funnel in a few other places too.

The explainers came later. After there was something to explain toward.

They also redesigned their website. We did not do that. It just happened after.

I do not think that happens if we had just started shooting.

They already knew people were the differentiator. That part was not new.

It just was not anywhere you would run into it.