How to Use Video to Close More Contracts

Sara Nay runs The Agency Spark Podcast on a tight rule: guests get twenty to thirty minutes of material and have to compress it into their sharpest points. My topic was one I have used for years to book work, which is leveraging video to close more contracts. The short version is that people do not buy features. They buy when they trust the person selling. Video lets you build that trust earlier, before you have burned a week of emails and calls finding out whether the other side even likes you.

When you meet someone in a boardroom, a coffee shop, or now on a Zoom call, that is where the relationship gets built. The problem is that meeting usually happens on the second or third step, after the cold outreach. A short personalized video moves the connection to the very first touch. Someone can see your energy and how you talk, decide they like you, and save you both the chase. That is the whole reason I lean on it.

Send it where it cannot be skimmed

The easiest place to do this is a social platform that has video messaging built in, like LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. When a video message lands there, it shows up as a big thumbnail of your face and a play button. Text can be skimmed and dismissed. A video almost has to be played. As the owner of an agency I got between fifteen and thirty pitches a week, so standing out matters, and a video does that in a way another block of text never will.

Social also beats email on trust. If you send a Loom link in a cold email, it shows up as a link, and plenty of people will not click a link from someone they do not know because it might be a scam. Going straight to a native social video removes that hesitation.

The two people worth sending it to

There are two ways to aim these videos. The first is direct to the buyer. Figure out who makes the decision, the head of content or the VP of sales or whoever it is, then send them a video. LinkedIn is good for this because job titles stay current, and with Sales Navigator you can see who has been active in the last ninety days so you are not talking to a dead profile.

The second, and the one I prefer, is partnerships. As a marketer I would rather not go one to one. I would reach out to a bigger agency that does branding and web but not paid media, and offer to be the complementary piece they can add as a service and make revenue from. Direct outreach does not scale as well but the accounts are fully yours. Partnerships scale better but you are more beholden to how the other company runs things. Both work. Pick based on your service.

The six-part script that gets replies

I have sent several thousand of these, and my response rate sits around seventy percent. Not all seventy are buyers, but that many people write back, and a lot of them say they cannot believe you took the time. Here is the structure I use. Keep the whole thing between forty seconds and a minute twenty, and remember the only goal is the next step, usually a short call.

• Be friendly. Use their name and thank them for connecting or for watching.
• Disarm it. Say something like "I am sure you get a ton of automated messages like this," so the video stands out for being human.
• Show you did your homework. Name what they do so they know this is not a blast, and confirm they are the right person to talk to.
• Say what you do in one or two sentences. "We help businesses like yours generate more leads," or lower their cost per acquisition. Specific, short, about them.
• Give a reason to say yes. No stats or case studies here, just simple credibility: we have done this, people trust us to do it.
• Ask, do not tell. "I would love to hear back if you think this is a fit." People rebel when they are told what to do. Give them the room to decide.

That last point is the one people get wrong most. The forceful "are you free Tuesday or Thursday" close makes a stranger dig in. Asking gives them the autonomy to say yes, or to say it is not a fit, which is a conversation you can keep having.