sales

236: Steve Pacinelli: It’s the beginning of rehumanizing business

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader podcast where we uncover the leadership life hacks that help you to experience breakout performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host customer and employee engagement expert & certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach. 

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Okay Fast Leader legion, today is going to be a fantastic episode because we’re going to get in to some things that are actually going to question what you’ve been doing in order to be able to connect with people from a customer experience perspective sales and service perspective. 

Steve Pacinelli grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania with his mom, dad and two older sisters Jennifer and Amy. Jennifer, nine years of senior acted like another mother figure for Steve the relationship dynamic was less than an annoying sibling relationship and more of a mentor relationship. She would take Steve everywhere she went and he loves spending time with her. However, Amy four years his senior fit the bill for good old sibling strife, but in a good way. She taught Steve how to handle conflict in a mutually beneficial way which suited him well later in life. 

Amy was born in Korea and adopted by his family. One of the things that Steve remembers most from his childhood is the constant teasing she would receive for being different in a predominantly white neighborhood. There were some more important early lessons there that Steve picked up about people, their fears, compassion or the lack thereof, and kindness. From an early age Steve was a salesperson of Ana marketer. He also had a love for magic and being on stage performing. This required constant trips into Philadelphia to the only magic shop which is about 40 miles away to hone his craft. Negotiating, marketing, and selling was key in getting his parents or sisters to make the trek then spending hours at the store while he learned new tricks and bought new props.

Almost every job Steve had from his teenage years straight through to adulthood were sales jobs. He had sneakers, knives, cars, long-term care, and finally software. Sales is similar to performing magic you need a compelling story you need to make someone believe something that they probably didn’t at the outset of the interaction and it needs to be mutually beneficial for both parties and it should be fun. Steve is the chief marketing officer at BombBomb and co-author of Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience. Steve believes that contrary to some beliefs sales can be done in a kind empathetic and fearless manner those are also the qualities that he wants his kids to embody in anything they do. That’s what he wants to pass on to Grant, Owen and Sophia, his three curious, silly, and loving children. Grant and Owen are eight-year-old identical twins and Sophia is five. He resides in Downington, Pennsylvania with his amazing wife Gretchen and he’s extremely proud of the little life they built out of love and happiness. Steve Pacinelli are you ready to help us get over the hump?

I’m ready, Jim, thank you for having me on the show. 

Jim Rembach:    I’m glad you’re here and I’m looking forward to this conversation in so many different ways. I’ve given my Legion a little about you but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better? 

Steve Pacinelli:   My current passion has been my passion for a while is video and communication through video. Because before I came to BombBomb, I was actually a customer for four years exploring the topic using it with my sales team communicating more effectively with video all the way back to 2011. And so we were trying to figure out how to convert these online leads at the time. We had the sales team and we had a road show to 48 city, we had a 48 city tour, and we’re like, how can we supplement our road show? Well, let’s do online leads and we weren’t converting any of those leads. I started using video and sending out videos and not just videos demoing the products we were selling but videos introducing our sales people and connecting them as real people and making sure that the online lead was a real person—showing them our sales person was a real person and then facilitating that sale. Over the next four years I had such a passion for video that BombBomb, like wait a second, you need to come work for us let’s join forces here.  Ever since then my passion has been video communication and the psychology behind video communication and why it works and how long the video should be and the types of words that you should use. Because it’s different from telephone communication it’s different from email communication and it’s different from face-to-face communication.

Steve Pacinelli:   There’s so many things that you talk about and as you explain that I would love to go into but I think now we get into a workshop. I want to hit it a high level and really stop for those people that are saying, well, I’m not in sales because I can tell you that when you have an opportunity to read this book and also listen to these things that we’re talking about this is not about sales and it’s not about service it’s really about all of it which ultimately leads to relationships and I think that’s the key that we need to focus in on here.

Jim Rembach:    Any interaction, I took this from Chris Vos’s I was listening to one of his podcasts this week, I don’t know if you if you read his book about negotiation, any interaction that ends with a yes or a no is a sale. If there’s a yes or no you’re convincing somebody. Whether you’re speaking to an employee, a manager, a colleague, a potential client, or just a relationship anything that ends with yes or no it has an element of sales involved and videos can help you in all those scenarios especially with your employees. 

Jim Rembach:    Also we’re talking about it being a more globalized world. We have dispersed workforces, even when I see it in in the contact center world that I spent so much time in, you have many customer care and support operations, internal sales operations, that nobody is in any type of unified single location they’re all over the darn place.

Steve Pacinelli:   Right. And we’re zooming right now we’re on zoom, I can see you. I worked remotely at every job I’ve ever held since I graduated college which has been 20 years now on every single job and it’s been easier to work remotely in the past eight years ten years than it’s ever been. I’m the CMO of BombBomb and BombBomb’s in Colorado Springs and I’m in Philadelphia. 

Jim Rembach:    That‘s a great point. One of the things in the book to me that I just really was sucked in to the data that you were revealing and the realities associated with the millennia of human brain training, can you share with others what that really means?

Steve Pacinelli:   We’ve been speaking for about 100, depending on who you believe, for about 150,000 years. We’ve been writing for about 5,000 years. Most people have been reading because most people couldn’t read for the majority of humankind for about 500 years. And so when you look at that the way that we communicate we are conditioned to communicate face to face. We’ve been doing that so much longer than reading something in a book for that matter but especially reading something on a screen or on a phone. And someone decided 25 years ago that—and here’s the next day this is probably the most important date out of all those because it’s the most recent, but 20 to 25 years ago someone decided that our most important business communication was going to be relegated to the text on your screen and it’s going to be sent through email or it’s going to be sent through text messaging which removes the most important part of any message which is the messenger. 

When the messenger is now removed from the message the thrust the meaning the emotion behind the message is also removed and that’s really been the biggest turning point. And so we’ve been communicating that way ever since and we’re missing out on tonality we’re missing out on cadence and rhythm of speech we’re missing out on body language we’re missing out in just the way that you show that you’re paying attention with somebody or to somebody by looking them in the eye and there’s so much natural and rich communication that’s been removed in the past 25 years.

Jim Rembach:    That actually causes me to really stop and think about something that I’ve been working on here recently, I had shared this with you off mic. I’m currently doing virtual summits as well and what we’re doing is flipping, the typical concept of an event and in converting it into a learning system. Oftentimes when we go to any type of conferences or events it’s like a one-and-done, hey, I went there I attended a particular education class and I’m done and boom I can’t do anything with it anymore.

Steve Pacinelli:   And now I’m not going to implement anything I learned. 

Steve Pacinelli:   Exactly right. And I also too—talking about hectic schedules people can’t get out and do those things but I don’t get into that real deeply. So I have the contact center virtual summit and we have the CX success summit, which is about customer experience more to enterprise level. I do load much like we’re doing here an interview format with these experts talking about these subjects and topics and I get just as much feedback on me as an interviewer and a moderator as the subject matter topic itself. And I have found that to be quite amazing but it leads right into what you’re talking about.

Steve Pacinelli:   Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s funny another Matthew Brodsky who was conducting some research for Harvard on video communication for us and we gave him I think, 500, these numbers were accurate, about five hundred customers and he was tracking all the video communication. One of the most interesting elements about video communication wasn’t just the way that the recipient felt about the sender because you think, oh, I’m going to send Jim I’m going to send you a video and I’m going to wave and say hi and introduce myself, if you were  a new leader a new employee or something but it’s the way that the sender it changed the feelings that even the sender had about the recipient. When someone shows vulnerability and when people get on camera like this they get scared they get a bit nervous and when you’re vulnerable with someone else it connects you to that other person and it’s actually a two-way street. So as you’re interviewing and as you’re doing these virtual interviews the relationship is being built on both sides.

Jim Rembach:    I think that’s an extremely important point that we all need to really think about when we start talking about—really in the book you say outsmarting our mental shortcuts. So you talked about the dual theory of the mind, what is that exactly? 

Steve Pacinelli:   Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, a great book, and it breaks the mind down into two parts and he calls it the system one and system two. System one is the emotional side of your brain. It’s that gut feeling that you get when you meet someone and within like a second you’re like, oh, yeah I like that person. But you don’t know why right it’s the part of your brain that you don’t have access to he calls it also the primitive or other people also call it the primitive part of the brain. And then you have system two, that’s the analytical side of your brain. The side of your brain that is thinking everything that you’re thinking right now you know your thoughts and the part that you have control over. System 1 and system 2 together most people think that system 2 makes the decisions, it’s the analytical part of your brain. I was about to say buying decisions but again it’s not just for sales not just for buying it’s making decisions but system 2 is a slave to system 1. Because it always starts off somewhere on a level and you always start off with a feeling and then system 2 comes in and adjusts from that initial level. And so the only way for system 1 to be active—so if I send you an email, Jim, and I type it out and let’s say it’s an interdepartmental email or I’m conveying some new information or scary information to my employees and I type out that email only system 2 is engaged for that recipient so they’re not feeling anything they don’t have a place to start on that scale they have no emotion to go off of. So what ends up is however that recipient is feeling, and this is why messages can be interpreted in so many different ways, because if that message went out to 15 people in that department and John had a fight with his wife this morning Susie had problems with the kids getting out the door and then Mary had an amazing day they are starting that conversation they are reading it and the analytical part of the brain with whatever they’re feeling at the time and that’s where that conversation starts for them.

Now the difference is by sending it through video you can start with that system 2 or the system 1 in place and get that emotion across and they can see if you’re happy, if you’re excited, if you feel confident, in delivering that news it could be bad news but are you confident and do they see it in your eyes and now you can deliver that message with the intended emotion behind it and you’re not leaving it up to the recipient to decide how you’re feeling. If you ever had an email misconstrued, which everybody has, then you know how it can work.

Jim Rembach:    Absolutely. In the book you talk about several different case studies associated with everything that you’re talking about here and it gets also into the science and you mentioned at a moment ago as far as length this that and the other you even mentioned something about the different types of communication style like highly transactional that is going to be left in neo left for text and short messaging and things like that. What I’m getting into things that require that complexity component that connection component that relationship component if I want referrals if I want customer retention if I want a better customer experience I really need to be incorporating all of this video and face based communication.  I say face because that comes in a lot of different forms and formats into our (15:13 inaudible)

Steve Pacinelli:   I love how you put that I don’t think we put that into the book, face based in communication. We always say face to face but that sounds better wish I would have had that in there. 

Jim Rembach:    Let me copy right there real quick before you. And so we’re sitting here and saying is this right for me and in Chapter four you talk about the six signs this new approach is for you and your business. Could you kind of just run through those a little bit because for me I think that’s also important for us to talk about so that people don’t have a misperception about this.  

Steve Pacinelli:     I’ll go through in my opinion what are the most important ones. If you are, and they’re two which could which could go either way, if you are dealing with someone and any type of emotion whether positive or negative emotion is involved that is a perfect opportunity for sending them a video. Because again, and for the last example that we just gave, you can start off that conversation at the emotional level that that is required for that particular conversation. If you’re trying to build trust if you’re trying to build rapport with someone –so for example, if your sales team does have a brand new lead that comes through the door then rather than just typing up a text response show them that you care hit the record button send them a twenty second video does wonders for supplementing the text information that you were already going to send out. Hey, Jim, thank you so much for checking out the website I just want to let you know that I’m a real person I’m here to help if you have any questions I can handle any questions that you have in the meantime check out blah, blah, blah, blah below and you send that message out. 

When someone’s deciding to work with the company or not they need to know if they can trust that company if the values aligned with that company and they can only do that through the people at the company. And so if you had a chance to get face-to-face with someone earlier and more often would you do it and that’s really the value of video. And so trust, rapport, anytime emotion is involve like I mentioned and if you want to get into a really good one negative news or bad information or an apology is done so much better through video than over the phone through email or in person. Do you want to touch upon this now or keep–? 

Jim Rembach:    Oh, please do it. 

Steve Pacinelli:   This is one of the most interesting ones. Negative information or bad news is more psychologically compelling than good news. I’ll give you a scenario here Jim where I’m sure you’ve experienced this before where you gave someone some bad news and one of two things happened they either sat there in silence and they’re trying to process and they’re thinking and you’re like, what do you think? What do you think? And you need an answer and they’re not providing an answer. Or it’s the exact opposite end of the spectrum and what happens? They go off the handle, what’s going on? I can’t believe this. And it’s because they don’t have time to process that information scientifically proven that bad news takes longer to process. One of the things that we talked about in the book and then we talked about in our presentations as well is when you have bad news to give you want to give someone that time you want to give them the luxury of the time to process without providing an answer so they can process it emotionally then process it analytically as well and process it rationally. If you send a video, here would be a great example, we have a lot of real estate clients so I’ll just use a real estate example, if a real estate agent has to tell their client that they think they should have a price reduction to their home not the best news ever they would send a video first and they would say, hey, Jim, start off with a little personal note, hey I just wanted to let  due to this that and this I am going to recommend that we lower the price to your home to this because of—being one of most powerful words in the English language, because of this this and this. I’m in a meeting or I’ll be in a meeting here this afternoon but I want to have a chance to talk with you about this, I’ll give you a call later on this afternoon.

Now what that does is you provided all the necessary informational points, you did it in a kind and empathetic manner through video which you can’t do through text and they weren’t required to give a decision or even respond, people don’t know how to respond right off the bat. If you have bad news to give and you follow that format and then you follow up with a phone call or an in-person meeting after you’re going to find that that phone call or in-person meeting is going to be infinitely better because they had a chance to truly understand the real reasons for your request and that can be giving bad information to an employee or anyone within your company.

Jim Rembach:    And to bolster that even further the same thing applies when we start talking about an escalation scenario in a customer care or customer support environment. If a customer’s upset and you need to escalate a call the person who that gets escalated to, whether they’re in a managerial position or just a recovery team, should not be trying to  get details about the situation right then and there because of the emotion just inflame it further. It’s a better practice to say, let me get some information, let me do some research, let me find out about that and get back to you because it allows for that diffusion to occur.

Steve Pacinelli:   Your goal there is to show them that your, one, listening and two you understand. They’re not necessarily looking for that immediate response.  Am I being heard? Obama, we have a saying, be seen be heard be understood and that’s what video allows you to do seen heard and understood and all human beings want to be understood. 

Jim Rembach:    That’s a great point. So then you talk about as well customer experience, so get into that a little bit because it’s so important for us the Fast Leader show.

Steve Pacinelli:   Throughout the entire customer experience lifecycle from where you start off, you don’t have a relationship with that person and it’s a lead and then you do have a relationship with that person it may be they signed up for your service or your product, following up regularly, and this is one of the top 10 times video beats text, at important moments of that relationship they have with that customer may be the day that they signed up. Sometimes I get an email every once in a while it’s like, hey, you’ve been with us for a year but most of the time that email is just like, hey, you’re being billed again and that’s the congratulations you’ve been with us for another year it’s here comes the bill. There’s scenarios where, again it doesn’t have to be long it doesn’t have to take a ton of time a 15-second video at that point in time when the bill—hey, your upcoming annual bill is coming up I just wanted to say Jim that we loved having you as a customer it seems like you’re getting massive value from our system we hope you absolutely love it. Just 15 seconds going out will make a massive difference. And then you were talking about if anyone has issues or problems, we have a cool Zendesk integration too which allows people to send videos out of that system which is pretty neat and time to resolution when video is used in certain scenarios is reduced by 70%. So you send a video and you’re reducing the amount of time and you’re reducing the amount of threads within the back-and-forth within that conversation as well. Video is not only about you and me looking at each other face to face but it’s about conveying information more effectively too and screen recording videos in that sense are immensely powerful.

Now it’s beneficial if the person can still see you in the bottom corner or if there’s a square or a box depending on whatever system you might be using to record your videos and then they can see your screen but if someone’s phoning in and they have an issue with your system or they don’t know how to do something showing them with a quick video on the screen and allowing them to see who’s teaching them is a powerful component too. The personal moments, the birthdays, the anniversaries, other great times to send personal videos where everyone’s just writing HPD on Facebook it’s like, great thanks for spending so much time wishing me happy birthday, a 15-second happy birthday video. We have clients that they only use video, Mark and Laura Anderson would be one of them, they’re out of Minnesota, their primary use of videos to send happy birthday messages and they sent over 4,000 of them. 

Jim Rembach:    Wow! 

Steve Pacinelli:   And they you benefit from that and that’s customer experience that is they’re sending it to their leads or sending it to their past clients or sending it to their prospects whenever they get a birthday that’s what they do and they make that connection and people are reminded why they like them.

Jim Rembach:    Okay, when you start thinking about some of the barriers I think you bump into one of the biggest barriers in our society that is linked to a major phobia and fear and that is public speaking, talking about, oh, my gosh I’m on video, you can hear me and see me and I look this that and the other and that whole critical aspect and so therefore I’m not doing that. 

Steve Pacinelli:   So we communicate every person no matter who you—maybe I’ll give a point one percent on this, but almost every person no matter who you are communicate better face-to-face because you’ve been doing it from the moment that you were born. Babies can read faces and that’s also part of the book, babies can respond to faces and interactions. You did that at a very early age you did that every single day of your life you haven’t been writing business communication every single day of your life you are better at face to face communication. Once you know that there is a 99.9% chance that you are better at face-to-face communication then you know that this would be the right route to take now you just need to alleviate the fear in taking that route. There’s a number of things that you can do one. One of my favorite tips is if you’re just—actually before I give that let me back up for a moment—a lot of people when they think of video they think of marketing videos. They think of a green screen and drone or high-end digital SLR cameras and scripts and I am horrible at memorizing scripts I’m horrible at memorizing stuff in general. And I’m not good when I have a DSLR in front of me and I need to repeat verbatim word for word what the script that I carefully thought of and wrote out I’m awful at that and I get I still get nervous when I have to record marketing videos but the type of video that we’re talking about here, these are relationship videos. One, the level of fear is greatly reduced because you’re only speaking to one person it’s not designed for thousands and thousands of people that hit your website. Two, chances are you already know what you want to say because if you were there with that person face-to-face you would know what to say. If the new lead came in you would know what to say if it’s a client experience process you would know what to say if you want to congratulate someone on a promotion or a raise you know what to say so you don’t have to have a script. We do recommend that if you do forget like me, and I am kind of forgetful, it’s okay in the beginning your videos to write down like put down three bullet points or four write down the bullet points here. 

And then in the beginning your video say, oh hey Jim, there’s just three things and you point right to the bullet points and you put it back down. What this does is this gives you the okay and also notifies the recipient that when you’re looking down and away there’s a reason for that. Because if you don’t do that and I’m talking to you like this Jim, I’m not making any kind of connection because I’m reading the page. But if I’m looking at you and I say, yeah, and then the first thing that I want to talk to you about and you look back up it makes it natural it makes it normal. One, the style of video should be easier so it’s more approachable even for someone that’s afraid of being on camera. Two, if you’re still afraid of being on camera and you’re not comfortable with 15 30 second messages there’s some things that you can do directly before you record. One of them is to sit and just close your eyes and think about something that makes you happy. I know this sounds weird but it works and we do this in our training classes we have people send us a 30-second video on why they love doing what they do live during a training class we watch those videos and then we have them redo it and for 30 seconds before they do it they think about something that they’re grateful for they think about something that they’re happy about their family their kids etc., and then rerecord that video. The second video it’s not like two times better it’s like seven times better it is infinitely different because that’s when the emotion comes across and that’s all you’re trying to do. Mike, one of my favorite stories is my wife I she didn’t want to send video she was just like the listeners out there the watcher said she that don’t want to send video and I’m like, honey you’re married to the CMO of BombBomb, you need to use video it would be embarrassing. So she’s like alright. 

She sells skincare products and she was emailing someone in Westchester, Pennsylvania with a video and she had all the products in her hand and she dropped them during the video. And so she pops out of the frame and you can’t see her in the frame anymore she looks at me and I’m like, you keep going, just keep going. And she pops back into the frame and she’s like, oh my god, I’m so klutzy. She didn’t want to send the video at the end I click the send buttons, it went out and she got a call in 15 minutes. It was Susan and Susan was like, oh my god, never talked to Susan before ever this was only digital communication, she was like oh my god I love you I am so klutzy too this one time. And now Susan is actually one of her good friends and it all stemmed from your imperfections are your perfections embrace your mistakes embrace your stutters in a short one-to-one video you don’t want that in a marketing video. But if you make a mistake and stumble over your words that’s what endears you to other people. If they’re not going to think you’re not competent if you smile and you show that you’re real person you’re like, oh sorry about that, and you just keep on going because that’s what you do in real life and that’s what they’re trying to connect with.

Jim Rembach:    Well, I think the important point too to notice that if some people are put off by that you don’t want to try to do business with them anyway.

Steve Pacinelli:   Right, yeah, that’s a great observation Jim.

Jim Rembach:    Okay, now you started talking about—and we’ve talked many times throughout this about the emotion component. You talked about getting your mind right and mindset right and hold appreciation and then doing your video. One of the things that we look at on the show in order to help get our minds right, focus in on some positives, are quotes, is there a quote or two that you like that you can share?

Steve Pacinelli:   Oh geez, as I just previously mentioned I am horrible with memorization of pretty much anything. But let me think—there’s so many quotes in this book and I remember all the main thrusts but one of my favorite books of all time is, Marketer as Philosopher by Flint McLaughlin and it’s under the radar kind of book. He didn’t produce it to sell a ton of copies because it’s 50 dollars or I might even be 60, it’s leather-bound like old-school like leather like you smell it it’s an experience and you feel it and the entire book is filled with quotes. I remember all the thrusts but I don’t remember the exact words there but it is definitely top three if not my favorite book of all time. It doesn’t really give you anything tactical it just gives you the broad view of marketing and connecting with people and it’s absolutely amazing. So if you want to find some amazing quotes go there. 

Jim Rembach:    That will work, and we’ll do that and we’ll also put that as a link on your show notes page. Okay, so needless to say when we start talking about this learning journey that you’ve gone through and you talked about it. I started here and got to here and now I’m working for the company right and along with that and as well as in life there’s humps that we have to get over in order to find our better direction and make some better decisions. Is there a time where you’ve gotten over the hump that you can share? 

Steve Pacinelli:   Yeah. I worked for a lot of different people in different environments and I wouldn’t say that the first people that I worked with and worked for were bad because they weren’t as leaders as mentors. I was shaped by kind of like a hardened business mentality because that was a salesperson everything’s about that number, there’s no touchy feely emotions that is how I grew up more or less. It wasn’t until that I met Max Pigman who mentored me. He’s an amazing salesperson he’s an amazing speaker he’s an amazing motivator he’s amazing a leader and he showed me that that you can drive and get to the numbers at the same time but you can do it in a more compassionate and kind and friendly way and he just exudes kindness. That was my first experience with that and that was a hump for me because I feel that my leadership style changed immensely and for the better after my relationship with him. He was a national speaker for realtor.com and I was the assistant national speaker and then when he left I became the national speaker and everything that he taught me there. That is when my career really started to skyrocket when I started caring more about people and less about the numbers because the numbers were the byproduct of caring about the people. And so I would say I was in a rut for the first 10 years or maybe 8 to 9 years in my career. 

Jim Rembach:    I kind of had that hard knock and once or twice as well and I could totally connect with that and I’m sure a lot of people can connect with. There’s a lot of studies talking about our impacts around our environment and the fact is that if we’re talking about engagement 70% of that variance engagement is because of the relationship they have with our direct supervisor or leader and so needless to say all of our behavior is definitely influenced by that as well. But when we start talking about influencing behavior when we start talking about doing things a little bit differently when you start talking about re-humanizing where are we now and where is this actually headed?

Steve Pacinelli:   Where are we now? We’re still in that in the early phases. I still go to sales conferences business conferences and video is still the new hot thing and a lot of it is still video for marketing purposes and that is not what we talked about in the book, we do a little bit 5%, but it’s video for relationship purposes. To that is still brand new and it’s still growing and people are still getting comfortable. Zoom has helped with that all the social media channels it’s funny that the younger generation and the Millennials they’re used to communicating through video through all the different social media networks and we find that they take to it pretty quickly. They’re comfortable popping on a camera and recording a 45 second message because they’ve been doing in their Instagram stories and everywhere else. So the wave is swelling right now on video communication and people are like, oh, well when we get saturated with video then videos not going to work anymore and that what’s really insane that’s where I would disagree. Video isn’t the differentiator at all. Now it still is because not enough people are doing it so just the fact that you’re doing it makes it the differentiator.  Just like a telephone when everyone had a telephone, telephones were fairly new or email marketing or something like that and now everyone’s email marketing it’s how well that you do it, and so video not being the differentiator you are and all video does it’s just the mechanism to get you face-to-face with more people more often. Now in the future could there be other ways of doing that and VR and virtual reality and other methods, sure, but where I think the future is going is refining video communication. 

When people sign up if they if they do sign up for BombBomb, I’ll see these four minute videos and they’re not structured correctly the messaging isn’t clear if you don’t have a great message video isn’t going to help you maybe they could connect with you a bit more. Absolutely that’s that whole emotional element but all those components need to be in line you need to have a strong message you need to connect with people emotionally you need to make sure that the video isn’t too long. If you send a five-minute video of just you talking to a new league they’re not going to watch that video. If you don’t open it the correct way, one quick tip one of the best ways I like to open my videos is, hey, Jim three quick things for this video. The reason for that is the same reason why you read and see blog posts everywhere that say the seven things because the human brain has a need for completion. And so they’ll go and they’ll look at one two three four five six seven, if you say three things and you listen to two it’s hard for you not to hear that third thing. And so little things like that it’s the refinement of our video communication and the feedback that people are going to get from whatever system that they decide to use, hey, you should send this style video, hey, you should do this in the beginning, hey, make sure you put your CTA at the head call this person now because they watched your video twice or they watched it in their entirety or they only watch 15 seconds of your video send this for a follow-up video and if that AI and that intelligence that’s going to start to come in based off of the actions and the responses from the videos that you’re creating.

Jim Rembach:    I appreciate you open up the door here and leading the way. And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor:

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Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Steve, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Steve Pacinelli, are you ready to hoedown? 

Steve Pacinelli:   I think so but my Enneagram score tells me that I’m not good at fast responses but let’s do it because I’m ready for a challenge.

Jim Rembach:    You’ll be fine. What is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Steve Pacinelli:   Time. One of the things that I noticed in going through my annual review is we’re supposed to be spending 10% of our time on education company hour time. Now I spend more than that off hours but I definitely don’t spend 10% and I think investing into leadership skills and quality I need to do more of that.

Jim Rembach:    Along that lines, what is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Steve Pacinelli:   I’d have to go back to Max Pigmen, my previous example, and it’s show people that you care first and listen. Shut up. 

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? 

Steve Pacinelli:   I have a curiosity about most things and that curiosity drives my passion. If I have a curiosity about video and how it works or curiosity about people. I find that the more curious people are the more motivated they are.

Jim Rembach:    What is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Steve Pacinelli:   Best tools…? I would say, Zoom, because I am remote. I could say BombBomb the easiest choice but I want to say Zoom because I’m remote and it’s a video communication platform it allows me to connect with all my leaders on the marketing team with other people throughout the company and that is the secret weapon. Don’t send a long email, call them up for three minutes on Zoom and convey it more clearly. 

Jim Rembach:    What is one book that you’d recommend to our legion, it could be from any genre, of course we’re going to put a link to Marketer’s Philosopher and Re-humanize Your Business on your show notes page well.

Steve Pacinelli:   Let me let me choose a different one here and I think I’ll go with Influence by Robert Cialdini. I love psychology I love everything about psychology Daniel Kahneman would be up there too. And Thinking Fast and Slow and then Pre-Suasion by Robert Shelby.

Jim Rembach:    Okay Fast Leader Legion you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/StevePacinelli. Okay, Steve, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question. Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25. And you can take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take it all you can only take one. So what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why?

Steve Pacinelli:   Oh, man, that’s a fun one. So what skill or knowledge…? Yeah, I think I’d go with, I don’t know if this is a skill, but motivation should just do it. There’s so many things that I hesitated on that I didn’t do that would have been successful if I wasn’t scared, so I guess it’s overcome your fears it just pushed through your fears. If I could convince myself at 25 to push through all the fears that I have I would be so much further along.

Jim Rembach:    Steve, it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you? 

Steve Pacinelli:   Absolutely and thank you for having me Jim. People can connect with me at bombbomb.com, of course. If you’re interested in checking out how video can help you communicate more effectively and get face-to-face more often. They can reach me online on LinkedIn at Steven Pacenelli or even Facebook or Twitter it’s Steve Pacinelli. 

Jim Rembach:    Steve Pacinelli, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom and the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster. 

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