Put a video sales letter before every conversation

1. What your video is for

The point of your video is to make your pitch the same every time and leave the salesperson to deal with the specifics of each prospect.

Four jobs. Your video should make a prospect likelier to schedule, to show and to buy, ideally sooner; and, the job people miss and, in this view, wildly understated, get the wrong people to rule themselves out. Measure it by the sale, not the call: SOP 208, section 8.

Many of you believe nobody can sell the way you do, that your sale is too specialized. The answer here is blunt: it is not. There is a set of things you tell a wide range of customers again and again. Write them all down, which takes work, and put them into a video that every prospect has to watch, with visuals, graphs, analogies, demonstrations, stories and proof. Your team can then close, because every prospect has been educated the same way. What is left for the salesperson is, to use an image, a six-inch putt.

Why not have one person sell it all. Many of you try to get one salesperson to take a prospect from first contact all the way to the sale. That costs twice: such people are harder to find, and you have to pay them a fortune. The more of the process you can turn into a machine, the less skill a sale needs, the faster people are trained to it and the less you pay them; and your conversion goes up and your sales process scales better. The count offered: it solves like 10 separate problems.

What changes on the call. Giving the same pitch to every prospect is dreary and draining; they are tired of hearing it and you of saying it. So put the best version of it in one video, and it never has to be said again. The call can then open close to the end of the sale: they watched it, you think you can help, and you get going. The whole conversation goes to the sale, not to educating.

For many of you, it is claimed, this will lift conversion more than anything else you can do: work done once for a lasting increase.

SOP 207 section 2 makes the same point about the repeated material. Laying selling out as a process anyone can run is SOP 238 — Open every call the same way and keep the script short, section 9.

2. Where your video goes

The layout has a name of its own; in plain words, it puts a video in front of every conversation. Phone, Zoom or face to face makes no difference: whoever you are about to speak with watches a video first. Talk to them a second time and there is a second video. SOP 207 section 1 gives the same rule, one video per call.

Fewer conversations. If you now talk to someone three times and have no videos, you could probably get from three conversations down to two, or even to one. For many of you, needing several conversations to close is the symptom; if that is you, you probably need a video, or several, or a longer one.

A normal flow. Someone watches a video, then schedules; after scheduling there is another video, then the conversation. Two videos have gone in before you ever talk, and those two might stand in for the first and second calls. This, as offered here, is how you shorten the sales cycle and leave the short putt. The shorthand for the flow: video, then scheduling; video, then the conversation; video, then the close.

Two steps of different kinds. If one step is virtual and one is in person, you have two videos; you might have to text one, and the other is placed on the thank-you page.

Does this work for your business? The claim here is that no business has yet been found that does not gain when a customer learns more about what they are about to buy, whatever it sells.

Every conversation that repeats. The rule here goes further than most: ideally, a video before each conversation repeated from customer to customer, sales or not. Those videos, where each sits, and a version per avatar are on SOP 282, sections 1, 3 and 4.

Booking the next conversation before the current one ends is SOP 89 — Run the seven-day follow-up cadence, section 6.

3. Make sure they watch it

A small ask inside your video. Ask them in your video to message you something: the shirt size they want, where they like to get coffee, the color of something they want. What it is does not really matter. A brick-and-mortar business can make it a small gift in person; a business that sells to businesses, some personal touch around a piece of value it will add for them. The square footage of their facility works too. Build the ask into your video as its own call to action. When they watch, they text you the answer, and you know they watched. The keyword ask before an in-person meeting is SOP 207 section 6; the shirt waiting for each lead is SOP 87 — Lift a show rate with incentives, section 1.

The question at the top of every call. Open every call by asking whether they watched your video. Do not say VSL; say video. If for some reason they did not, tell them not to worry: you will go and get a coffee, put it on for them, and be back after. This is why the preference here is for videos of, like, under 10 minutes. It also means one sales script, not one for prospects who watched and another for those who did not.

With setting and closing. If you have someone doing setting and closing, you can ask whether they would rather watch your video on their own or with you. Everyone, the claim goes, would rather watch it on their own. Then, if for whatever reason they do not, watching it with them is not awkward. SOP 207 section 7 carries that script.

4. The first minutes

Give the first minute or two of your video special attention, as you would the start of a piece of content: that is where a large share of viewers drop off, or stay. In one example, rewriting only the first few minutes of a much longer webinar brought a lift in sales from that alone.

Putting most of your effort into the opening seconds of an ad is SOP 34 — Front-load the opening seconds; writing the hook is SOP 121 — Write a hook.

5. Keep it simple

The encouragement here: do not overcomplicate this. Many people want to sell you these videos as a solution, and there is no magic formula; it is very plain work. Going from no video to a video gets you 80 or 90% of the benefit, set against a good video or a great one. A lot of it comes down to the basics.

6. What goes in it, and in what order

The hook. Get to the point at once and say what is coming.

The five P's. The opening carries promise, pain, proof, plan and picture, the parts on SOP 207 section 3. Here the five need not come in that order; what has been noticed is that all five must come early. Typically plan and picture come after proof, promise and pain. Pain or promise can go first, which does not really matter. Then proof of the claim just made, then your plan for how it will work, and then, as one preference, some kind of visual roadmap of what the viewer is about to go through. SOP 207 leaves the order open (section 11); here is one order.

An example opening, in outline, for a product fitted in the home:

1. Name the complaints in the viewer's terms: waking several times a night, being unable to get comfortable in the day, sometimes back pain. If any of those bother you, this video will show in the next six minutes why the cause is probably not what you eat but what you drink.
2. Show people one at a time: one whose problem went after trying things the viewer has probably tried too; a second, a different kind of buyer; a third with the same issue.
3. Say what the next few minutes cover: the four things to do right away.
4. End the opening with the offer to come: if it sounds interesting, you can help install it in their home.

The offer. Next come the big elements of what you sell, then the substance of the offer: who, what, where, when, why and how. The kinds of people it affects, how it affects them, where, why it is happening, and how you will help.

The offer against the questions people ask. The questions can sit ahead of the offer or after it, depending on how simple it is judged to be. For chiropractic adjustments, you can just put the questions after. Set a complex bundle of intangible services against a machine you install on the side of someone's house, which is very tangible: the more explaining the offer needs, the later it typically goes. It is the offer, not the questions, that moves later.

The questions, as a loop. Each runs four steps: what people say that stops them buying (the objection), why that is wrong, what is right, and proof. Repeat until you have used up every reason people do not buy. SOP 207 section 4 gives the same four steps as one block per big objection.

Flag: how many objections. Here the loop repeats until every reason people do not buy has been answered. SOP 207 section 4 says you can go up to five blocks, that the practice there is usually not to go past five, and to try to keep to three to five. This page does not settle which reading is right.

For the home product, a viewer might think their house is in an odd neighborhood, or that it will look strange to wear at work. Think of each, prove it wrong, and give proof, until the viewer decides they should buy.

The call to action, then stories. Then make your call to action. After it, one practice, added later on, is to tack on pure testimonials: viewers are told they have reached the end, and that if they want to watch a lot of stories, they are welcome to stay. The proof roll is SOP 207 section 8.

The whole order, in sum: proof, promise, pain, the big picture; the offer and what it is; what people worry about; the call to action; then a run of happy customers.

7. The short version

If you feel you are still bad at all of these parts, you could make a promise, spend seven minutes on proof and on answering objections, and, by this claim, probably outdo 90% of most people. An example, for a fitness offer:

• Open by asking whether the viewer would like to be toned, and whether they have tried like eight other things.
• Say you have something that could help, and show the people it helped, from skinny to muscular or to toned.
• Say that a lot of people might doubt it, for five reasons, and say why each is wrong.
• Then: if that appeals, book a call or buy.

8. A second and third video

What goes in the other videos? The same thing again, in a different video, with different examples, said a new way. All you are doing is selling them more. Each also meets the questions people often carry into the following call, and repeats the core promise: most of the time, people need reminding more than teaching.

You can frame each a little differently for its step. One will probably lean a little more on what the call gives them, another on what the program gives them; one on why to schedule, another on why to turn up. The strongest is still about the benefits of whatever you sell overall. SOP 207 section 10 holds the same view: two different videos that sell the same thing are fine.

9. Why people make it complicated

People wildly overcomplicate this. The view here is that complexity gives them a cover for putting it off. If it really is that simple, the only thing missing is doing it, which is much harder to face; so they assume they do not know how, which excuses them from doing anything.

What you do instead: say what is true, show proof, and repeat it. Take each belief they held, show where it fails, and prove it. Then ask whether they want it, and tell them to go and get it.

10. What this page does not decide for you

• The 'when' of the offer. The list is who, what, where, when, why and how, with a line for each but when. What 'when' covers: Not established on this page.

11. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Write down what you tell every prospect and put it in one video every prospect watches
2	Give it four jobs: more who schedule, show and buy, and the wrong people opting out; judge it on the sale
3	Put a video before every conversation, in person or not, and another before each later one; ideally, widen it to every conversation that repeats (SOP 282)
4	If a sale takes several conversations, you probably need a video, several, or a longer one
5	Put a small ask inside your video, so the reply shows they watched
6	Open each call by asking whether they watched your video; if not, put it on for them
7	With setting and closing, you can ask whether they would rather watch alone or with you
8	Give the first minute or two special attention
9	Hook, then the five P's; then the offer and the question loop, the offer typically later the more it needs explaining
10	Take each question from the objection to where it fails, to what holds, to proof
11	Make the call to action, then add stories for those who want them
12	For a later video, repeat the message in fresh words, answer the questions people bring next, and restate the promise; you can frame it for its step

12. What this page does not cover

What your buyers say, which feeds your video's words, is SOP 246 — Write a why-people-buy document from the calls that closed. Preparing each call and sending matched proof is SOP 248 — Prep every call with notes and proof matched to the prospect. How much a buyer knows is SOP 244 — Sell to what the buyer knows and lengthen the runway. Whether sales is where to start: see SOP 245 — Check sales is the constraint and fix the worst part first. The call itself is SOP 238 to 242; making proof land harder is SOP 109.

Collecting proof is SOP 123 — Run the standing proof streams. Filming, editing and AI drafting of your video are not covered on this page.