Sarah has high-profile clients in New York, Houston, and London. She would love to meet with them every time they have a question or need services. Her company, however, is one of many that has cut its travel budgets to reduce spending. Now Sarah worries that she won’t be able to meet her clients’ needs.

According to Salesforce’s Second Annual State of Sales research report, the second-largest challenge experienced by sales representatives is lack of time for face-to-face selling. But what are the benefits of face-to-face sales? And how can you get more face time with your clients?

The Benefits of Meeting Face-to-Face

According to the Harvard Business Review, 95 percent of those polled said that face-to-face meetings are crucial to “building and maintaining long-term relationships.” Another 89 percent agreed that face-to-face meetings are essential for “sealing the deal.” The majority of those polled (88 percent) believed that successful sales depend on facetime.

“Regardless of how tech-savvy you may be, face-to-face meetings are still the most effective way to capture the attention of participants, engage them in the conversation, and drive productive collaboration,” says Michael Massari, Caesars Entertainment’s SVP of national meetings and events. “If we don’t continue to nurture strong and positive personal relationships with our clients and coworkers, we won’t build trust, understanding, or a sense of a shared mission—all of which are critical elements to successful partnerships and business success.”

How Video Saves the Day

When you have clients all over the country or even the world, though, meeting in person just isn’t practical. You run into the two major obstacles to any business: time and money. Fortunately, you can sidestep both of these problems by using short personalized (Snapchat-like) videos to communicate face to face with customers. Here’s how:

Cost

The recent economic recession had companies scrambling to cut costs however they could, and travel was one of the biggest expenses to get the axe. Things haven’t changed much. According to the Harvard Business Review, 69 percentof respondents reported a decrease in travel budgets. Most of those polled added that they believed the cuts would negatively impact their sales.

Video was and still is the obvious go-to for solving this problem. “If we cannot go directly to the customer, we’ll go directly to the customer’s screen.” You immediately cut out all of the costs of gas, air travel, hotels, etc. Certain video engagement platforms will enable you to communicate face to face with your clients, all for the price of a group lunch.

Time

Almost any video conferencing service can solve the problem of cost and distance. But scheduling is a problem whether you meet over video or in person. Especially when your client lives in a completely different time zone than you, it can be maddening to find a time when you are both available, let alone awake. You want to sell, and your client wants to buy. But if buying means jumping through hoops just to accommodate you, your client may be tempted to take their business elsewhere.

Asynchronous, short, Snapchat-like videos solve this problem. All it takes is a few minutes for you to record your pitch via video creation/engagement platforms like OneMob and share this with your clients to view at their leisure. Not only that, but clients don’t even need to be in the office to view your video. All they need is a smartphone or tablet, and they can view your video message. And with tracking, certain engagement platforms will let you know exactly when they’ve seen your video, so you can then follow up as you see fit.

When you can’t be there in person, your clients still need to see your face. Platforms like OneMob put you in the room with them—on their computer or on their phone, in their office or on the go.

This article was originally published at blogs.salesforce.com.

Ever play a game of telephone? Sometimes the words you say don’t necessarily make it to the other end. But miscommunication doesn’t happen only in games, it happens in almost every aspect of our lives! There’s no better way to present your thoughts than to be able to point and say, “Look here. This is what I’m talking about.”  And with OneScreen, you’ll be able to do just that!

Today we are proud to present you with OneScreen: a Chrome extension that will allow you to record your computer screen. The possibilities are endless:

• Create seamless how to videos for complicated digital tasks.
• Save time by recording your presentation.
• Don’t write a novel on how a problem can be solved– send your customers a quick 60-second tutorial video.

Add these on a landing page, and you end up with some dangerous combinations:

• Sales Example
• Product Comparison Walkthrough
• Customer Support

OneScreen is free to download in the Chrome web store. To learn more about our new Chrome extension, check out our support page.

Just like a news anchor, you can now read your video scripts on your screen when using our iOS mobile app! This means no memorizing, which means less re-takes, which means more time saved for you!

1. From the Web: Create, edit, and share your scripts from your Library page
2. From your iOS: Select a script from the new Scripts tab, or insert a script from the recording screen
3. Deliver the perfect presentation or speech without having to memorize a single line!

Click here to learn more about Video Scripts on the iOS OneMob app.

Other changes from this week:

• We’ve changed our pricing plans!
  Overall, we made everything cheaper, and removed a lot of the limitations we had before.
  • No more limits on number of videos, landing pages, or activities!
  • Individual and Starter plans are now “Professional”
  • Professional plan is now “Team”
  • Enterprise Plus plan has been merged into “Enterprise”
  • Click here for more details on these new plans

Company culture is top of mind for most CEOs today. Culture contributes significantly to productivity, as companies with happy employees consistently outperform their competition. It also contributes to lower turnover, which in turn increases profits significantly. Ultimately, a positive company culture drives profitability and growth.

One way to enhance your company culture is through video engagement. As a recent McKinsey study found, CEOs must lead the discussion of transformation, vision, and culture to effectively bring change to their organization. You and your top-level staff cannot physically be everywhere at once, but you can use video to engage meaningfully with employees. Here are three ways video engagement can enhance your company culture.

1. Engage employees directly.

In 2015, 45 percent of employees in the United States worked from home. With so much of the workforce being remote, it is difficult to develop a cohesive culture with strong corporate values, transparency, and a commitment to employees’ personal growth. Video, however, can bridge the gap and increase cohesiveness.

Specifically, personalized videos directly from management can help create cohesiveness in impactful ways. Employees respond best to change management when you, the CEO, are leading the discussion. Videos allow you to interface with your employees directly and to quickly disseminate your vision, news, best practices, and product information. And employees can view your video at their convenience on their time. It doesn’t matter if your company is one office or many; everyone is receiving the same instruction from the same source.

2. Show your appreciation.

According to a 2016 survey, 82 percent of employed Americans feel that their contributions go unnoticed, and 40 percent would work harder if they were being recognized. Expressing appreciation for your employees is a low-cost, high-yield endeavor. According to a 2003 Gallup Poll, recognition improves employee satisfaction and productivity, lowers turnover, and increases customer loyalty. Video is one way to get this done and seen by as many people as possible.

The size and spread of your company likely make it impossible to meet with every single employee and thank them one on one, but video allows you to praise in a personal way. You can have all of the benefits of a companywide meeting with none of the costs or hurdles.

Remember, your employees have to be reminded that you’re not a robot just as much as your customers and prospects do. They need to know that you and the company at large care for them and value their contributions. The personal touch of a video gets that message across perfectly.

3. Provide access.

When employees feel left out of the loop, company culture suffers. According to a 2014 survey by the American Psychological Association, only about half of all employees in the US believe their employer is open with them, and nearly 1 in 4 employees don’t trust their employer. However, a 2013 Harvard Business Review survey found that 70 percent of employees feel more engaged when management keeps them informed and up to date on strategy.

Ideally, you’d like to keep your employees informed and engaged by inviting them to “sit in” on executive meetings, customer meetings, conferences, etc. But that’s not realistic for a variety of reasons such as time, coordination, costs, exposure to confidential information, etc. Through personal videos, however, you can share snippets of these meetings with your employees, providing access to scenarios or instances that they would not otherwise be exposed to. This exposure builds trust and results in employees being more vested in the company’s success.

Also, these videos provide clarified context as well. As Sam Hodges, co-founder and US managing director of funding circle, explains, “When you’re offering a clear view across departments, the sheer volume of information or industry slang can be intimidating and often debilitating for peers in different functions. It’s critical to provide context, commentary, and clarity around what this information actually means for different people.”

Used correctly, videos can be a medium of cultural change. As organizational psychologist Laura Hamill states, “Culture is not a Ping-Pong table. Culture is not having margaritas on Friday. That’s just surface level. What matters a lot more is what happens when people go back to their desk, when they have a meeting with their manager and interact with the leaders of the company. It’s day-to-day interactions, how people feel they are treated, and how they’re valued.” Video can help your employees feel valued, supported, and connected.

Please try to connect with your employees more effectively and work together to enhance your company’s culture. Start by sending them a quick and engaging video.

Originally posted on the Salesforce blog.

We’re excited to announce the following changes that will reflect new activities starting Feb. 5th 2017:

Now Tracking… Video Watch Time

First and foremost, we have added the capability to track how long someone has watched a video. The ability to track video watch time was definitely one of the most highly-requested feature. And today, we’re proud to announce it’s finally available!

This will give you a better understanding of your viewer’s behavior. Instead of simply knowing your video page was viewed, now you can better gauge your audience’s interest: Did they watch the entire video, or did they stop after a few seconds? Did anyone watch your video more than once?

“Video Watched” will now appear as part of your Activity Feed, in the Activity Detail page. Video watch time tracking is available for OneMob videos only (we currently do not track video watch time of YouTube videos).

NEW! Overview Section

Ever wonder which video, URL, or document drove the most engagement? Another new addition to the Activity Detail page is the Overview section.

The Overview section will provide a graphical representation of total watch time of OneMob videos, and the total instances of your videos watched and contents clicked. The total watch time will help you find out which of your videos are found to be the most captivating, while the total watches and clicks will help you find out which of your contents are in demand.

The “Overview” section will now be available in the Activity Detail page. Click on any of the items listed under “OneMob Video Watch Time” and “Watches & Clicks” for preview.

Other Changes:

• Now tracking your LinkedIn and Twitter icon on landing pages.
• The activity event “Button Clicked” will now be counted as “Content Clicked”, and will only be differentiated by the URL.
• The default text for email subject and body has been altered.

All New OneMob Checklist!

Previously, the Getting Started page was used to provide a summary of the user’s statistics (total activities from created links and emails). Frankly, it wasn’t providing any substantial benefits for our users, and was a misnomer considering the statistics didn’t help you “get started” at all. So we asked ourselves, “How can we prepare our users to truly ‘Get Started’?”

After much discussion, we have decided that the most sensible method was to point out the most essential parts of our platform by providing you with list of goals– a checklist.

There are two parts to the checklist: a Starter Checklist and an Advanced Checklist. Finishing the Starter Checklist will prepare you to use our platform. The Advanced Checklist will ask you to perform some of OneMob’s core functionalities.

If you are new to OneMob, we highly encourage you to go through the checklist. By the end of the Starter Checklist, our hope is that you will have all the tools you need to send your first OneMob. The Advanced Checklist should give you a good idea of what OneMob can do for you. If you are a seasoned OneMob veteran… Check out the checklist anyways! Sure, it’s not required, but you can only benefit from having a strong foundation!

You can click here to view the checklist now. Happy OneMobbing!

Questions? Comments? Send us an email at support@onemob.com.