In this vlog recorded on his last day in Vietnam, Nir Zavaro shares five concrete, intentional sales practices to improve closing rates. He begins by emphasizing the danger of improvisation and the need for preparation. The first tip is to record your own pitch before delivering it to a client, then compare the transcript to ensure the intended message matches what was actually said. The second tip introduces a phase‑based proposal structure: break work into clear phases with defined outcomes and timeframes, removing hourly uncertainty and setting client expectations. The third tip focuses on selling the feeling rather than the service—ask clients to visualize the end result and articulate the emotional benefit, which allows you to price higher. The fourth tip advises standing next to the client, co‑creating the decision rather than positioning yourself as a distant seller, and presenting pricing confidently with a clear value narrative. The fifth tip is to craft a concise "trailer pitch" of about 500 words (3‑4 minutes) that tells the story of the solution, and to write everything down to avoid improvisation. Throughout, Nir intersperses personal travel updates and promotes his book "Fuck the Slides" and a newsletter offering a storytelling email sequence.
Chapters
Be intentional about your sales, because if not, you are improvising, my friends. And if you're improvising—
What is up, beautiful people? My name is Nir Zavaro. Welcome back to my channel. This is it. 6 months are almost over. This is my last day in Vietnam. I'm off to Hong Kong, then Bangkok, and then I'll go to Tel Aviv for a month. Family, friends, and a lot of talks and workshops and some different experiences. We're gonna do also something with Google. We're gonna do something with the book. I'm really excited about everything. But I think what we need to talk about today is being intentional with doing sales.
Now let me explain.
Yesterday I've had this very interesting conversation with a sales guy who has a lot of experience, and we're talking about the way he structures the scope of work or the proposal. So you see, he had this meeting, they were unclear about their needs, their budgets, a lot of different things. And when we were talking, he kept saying things, and when I asked a clarifying question, he said, no, no, yeah, but that's what I meant. Please do yourself this kind favor. Number 1 tip: record what you are about to say to your client, because it's easy to transcribe it today, and then see if what you wanted to say is what you actually said. And the reason why I feel comfortable saying this to you all is because I used to fuck it up all the time. There was a huge gap between what I wanted to say and what I actually said, and it took me probably 4 or 5 years to start closing that gap. And it's still sometimes— it is a struggle. It doesn't really dissolve or disappear. So try and figure out You said it, but did you mean? Because sometimes you wanted to say something completely different. When doing the scope of work, number 2 most important thing: time is a very subjective thing. I know we can all agree, yet we all screw up at the same thing. For years, we would offer services and we would say, this is the amount of hours. In his case, the problem was that the client said, oh, but what if it takes too much? What if it takes over the hours you mentioned?
It's an approximation.
How do we know how much to pay?
How much are you going to You don't want to overcharge us. Now, you have this problem now, right? Because you want to charge as much as you can, and the client wants to ask for as much work for as little pay. So there's a conflict. How do you resolve it?
Today in my offerings, by the way, when I work with big clients, I still have 10, 12, 15 hours in certain cases. But I always say it doesn't matter if it'll take 10 or 12, don't worry about it. Even if it takes 15, I won't charge more. The idea is to get these 4 things done, and the way we're going to do it is to Phases. So you can say it's going to take me this amount of weeks for each phase, or a phase will take about 3 or 4 meetings. But these are the clear outcomes. Where it gets interesting is I explain to them in each phase my requirements. So I take out the uncertainty element, which you are leaving when you have these hourly sessions. I don't know if you guys can hear that, but she's been rambling on the phone.
5 hours?
5 hours, so I'll keep going. So I take out the uncertainty and I ensure that you know that we have a phase, what every phase entails, and what is the clear outcome that we're gonna get. Number 3 that I think you need to consider when discussing something with a potential client: ask your clients what they want to see on the other end. You see, when I used to sell snowboards, one of the interesting things were that How do you sell? It's a piece of wood with a bit of metal around it. What are we selling? And the idea is that we are selling a feeling.
How's that gonna feel on that mountain? That beautiful morning, you see the sun coming out, there's a bit of a breeze, the snow is just right, it's ready, let's board, it's gonna be an epic day.
You understand?
We're selling that feeling. When we are coming to have a sale, This is me standing here. You're standing over there. And I need to push something. And you're sitting like this. Sell me. I'm not interested. My suggestion is try and ask the client, how would it look like on the other side? When we finish this project, what are we going to stand with when we look together at that mountain and feel something? Sometimes when they are able to articulate, 2 things happen. We understand exactly what do we need to sell them so they'll be happy, they will be willing to pay even more. The premium is because they want to have that feeling, not your service. They want to have that feeling when you solve that problem. The second thing that I think some of us are forgetting, there's a big difference between standing in front and standing next to.
A good salesman stands next to the client, and together they decide if that is the right thing to purchase, if that is the amount of service, the amount of hours, If we take 1, 2, and 3, will we get to where we wanted? Because if not, we're stuck. Make the decision together. As long as this is happening, we might have a problem. Number 4, price. Either you know your prices before, and if you ask a budget, you're asking them to make a decision that is very hard for them. If you decide to go position yourself higher, that's great. Know, make sure that you know how to present it in a way that serves the purpose. An hour ago, I had a call with a client and he says, our competition does 1, 2, and 3. We can do it in a different way because 1, 2, and 3. Oh wait, they're also offering 1, 2, and 3. So let's position ourselves as giving that better, doing it in a different way. You see, people are willing to pay a lot of money if your solution, what you offer, will take them to where they want to go. It's upon you during that sales session in a short amount of time to be able to clearly articulate why using your service for that amount of money will take them to that point. If you can't do that, you have a problem. Which takes me to— what are we now? Point number 4, I think. Be concise. In my book, Fuck the Slides, I teach to do the whole trailer pitch in 500 words, about 3 to 4 minutes.
That's it.
In a call I had yesterday, it was funny that when we started to work on the trailer pitch draft, and I'm asking a lot of clarifying questions, and I'm adding pieces, and I'm showing the client how I'm creating the draft while we're talking on the Zoom call, he says, oh, this is amazing, but are we gonna put this? Let's put it. Are we gonna add this? Let's add it. How do we expect— Don't worry. When we finish the first draft, first draft, I'm like, hey, just so you know, we're at 360.
He's like, what? We still have room?
Yeah, we still got room. 500 words is a lot. This is your chance to explain everything. Put it there. If it doesn't fit, if it's too much, if it's too big, Q&A afterwards, discussions, whatever. You want to do a simulation, you want to do a presentation about showing the specific use case, that's great. Different section in the meeting.
Number 5, and the most important thing, write everything down. Be intentional about your sales, because if not, you are improvising, my friends. And if you're improvising, your chances of losing become much bigger. The stakes are higher because you are not prepared. The better you prepare, the chances of closing go higher, and you'd be shocked how easy it is to create. Simple.
Guys, this is a quick last video from Vietnam. It's been 6 months of traveling Thailand, India, and Vietnam. It's been epic. I have no idea what's up next. The book, The Business Catcher, is going well. Please do me this kind favor, sign up to the newsletter. I've just created a 6-email sequence for you to help you scale your business using storytelling techniques. We cover branding, marketing, sales, customer journey, pitching, and Messaging done. And if you haven't sent this video to someone who has a business or is doing sales, please do that now. As always, if you need anything, let me know and I'd be happy to help. And that's it. I'm out. Next stop, Hong Kong. See you guys next week. Have a good one.
