The Disneyfication of Video Calls
Mid-'22 and the Disney streaming empire (Disney+, ESPN, Hulu) surpasses Netflix for subscribers. Leading the media world to herald an epoch passing.
The latest case of tortoise overtaking hare?
Our selling space seems to bear witness to similar. Gratefully embracing Zoom as our saviour March '20. Only for the ubiquity of Microsoft's Teams videoing to take over within two years.
This, salespeople, is a disaster.
Analysts' nickname for Netflix now usurped, is Debtflix. In an echo of this, it makes you realise that we're up against less MS Teams, more BS Teams.
Corporate IT departments somehow wrest control of how we conduct business when they express neither idea nor interest in what's the best way for us to do so. Even worse, they revel in the belief that it's "free".
That myth really needs nuking.
Just because you've gone for the latest Office-plus suite does not mean you've a nice little video bonus thrown in.
You get Excel free too then, right? So you run your company accounts on it then, yeah...
A sentiment I've blogged before.
It is not the method at fault, it is very much the prevailing mandated medium constraining us solution sellers.
Meaning it's not videoing that is holding us back, but videoing using what the pol-IT-buro command.
Microsoft is now jostling to be our chief anti-sales officer.
Take a top three of horrors.
The trauma when anyone outside the host 365 organisation joins.
The difficulty in progressing beyond a mere phone call with a 2-D thumbnail participant portraits on show. Not least due to uptime instability, bloatware interference or share limitations.
The simple fact that it is not a video platform at its core, but a supposed 'productivity', 'collaborative', 'comms' platform, one where video is tagged on as a tick-box afterthought.
Teams is becoming the VHS of corporate videocalls.
— Rory Sutherland (@rorysutherland) November 19, 2021
Apologies to anyone under 30 for the confusing analogy.
The thrust of the comments on the above tweet can be summed up with; 'it's slow, clunky, always crashes - dislike is so great'. With adjacent theme that a distribution stitch-up enabled a technically inferior, lesser quality (as in 'fitness for purpose') option to sadly become omnipresent.
If you're serious about selling, in a way that matches the best medium for the task in hand, then you'll not be using Teams.
Let's not though put cart before horse. The first part cannot be skipped. We must initially realise which conversations with prospects are better done over video than any other means. In a way which makes us both distinctive and elevates us so that when doing so, we are getting closer to guaranteeing we win the deal.
A fiendishly tricky assessment to both make and enact. But oh so well worth it you must try.