Video Prospecting: How Chris Van Praag Booked 15 Meetings a Month With No SDR

When Vidyard laid off its whole European team in a reorg, Chris Van Praag posted about it on LinkedIn. Within a few days I messaged him to say I was hiring an account executive and ask if he wanted to talk. “I didn’t have the fear,” Chris said. “I had people in my inbox immediately.”

He told Rob Jones that story on an episode of Numbers Known published in May 2026. By then he had been a full-cycle AE on our team for about two years, booking his own meetings with no SDR. Most of those meetings came from video prospecting on LinkedIn: a short recorded video in a DM to one person, with a meeting link on it.

Chris, known to most of LinkedIn as CVP, brought three numbers: 15, 15,473 and 2. Rob brought three of his own for Chris.

Why was 15 meetings a month Chris’s north star?

“15 is my goal for net new meetings booked a month,” Chris said. “I’m a I’m a full cycle seller here. So we don’t have SDRs.” He runs his own deals too, and he said the deals are the easy part. The meetings take the effort. “The thing that takes up the most amount of my thoughts uh and um efforts in my sales day-to-day is ensuring that I hit that number of 15 because that means that I have enough pipe to be able to close and hit quota.”

Some of the company’s leads come in inbound, especially from HubSpot agencies. Chris does not count on them. “I don’t rely on getting any percentage of that number delivered to me inbound,” he said.

“When I hit it, I feel good. And when I’m not close to hitting it, I don’t feel good.”

For a full-cycle AE, a thin prospecting month turns into a thin closing month later on. Chris handles that by keeping one number in front of him and prospecting every week, which is the habit our sales prospecting guide is built around.

How did video prospecting book 85% of his meetings?

Rob asked where the 15 come from. “It’s been about 90% LinkedIn,” Chris said. He connects with a prospect and sends “a well-thought through DM typically a video. I would say 95% of the time I would shoot a video.”

After that, he keeps bringing them back to the video. “The intention is always getting them to watch that video and going back to that video.” He might comment on their posts or send them other material, and it all leads back to the first video. “I would say 85% of the actual meetings that that end up getting booked are from people watching the first video that I sent them and using the meeting link on that video.”

He does not look at a prospect’s follower count and decide they are out of reach. He ranks prospects by how likely they are to need the product, starting with their role and what they have posted. “If someone posts something that we directly solve for I’m going to just chase that person down until they book with me or they tell me to go away.”

Vidyard, where Chris used to work, publishes customer benchmarks on this. Its 2026 Video in Motion report says BDRs who use video for first touches get 5x more replies (Vidyard, 2026). Vidyard sells video software, so take the figure as a direction. Chris’s 85% is his own count from his own pipeline.

How do you start video prospecting on LinkedIn?

Chris’s method, in the order he runs it:

• A connection request first. He connects before he pitches, so the DM reaches someone who has accepted him.
• A personal video in the DM. He records one for about 95% of prospects, with a well-thought-through note around it.
• A meeting link on the video. The link sits on the video itself, so a prospect who likes it can book without writing back.
• Return trips to the same video. Comments on their posts and links to other material all lead back to the first video.
• A ranking by need. Role and recent posts decide who gets chased hardest. Follower count does not.

How many times should you follow up with a prospect?

Chris follows up a lot, and he is comfortable with it. When a rep knows the product solves a problem people like the prospect have, and holds a clear point of view, “that makes the constant follow-up more, um, I feel I feel fine with it. I’m absolutely fine with continually banging.”

He had an example from that morning. A prospect had ignored his video. Chris was so sure it was something they needed to see “that I just kept going back to it until they eventually booked and they actually booked today.”

Rob added a Gong finding a guest had brought to an earlier episode: reps tend to give up after three attempts, and responses jump on the fourth. RAIN Group’s research on 489 sellers who prospect puts the average at 8 touches to get an initial meeting with a new prospect, and 5 for top performers (RAIN Group). Chris spaces his touches out as a sales cadence, and each one leads back to the same video. When a prospect replies, a plain sales follow-up email carries the next step.

What does a zero on the process board mean?

Rob’s first number for Chris was zero, the number of process violations Chris aims to have left on his team’s process board at the end of each day. A violation is any break from the agreed sales process: no outreach to a prospect in five days, no next meeting booked, a close date out of date. “It could be data or it could be behavioral,” Chris said.

Before the board, he checked deals by hand. He set aside “a couple of hours” on Mondays and 20 to 30 minutes on other days to open every deal in HubSpot and look it over. The question in his head was “What am I going to get chewed out on on a on a on a one-to-one or a forecasting call?” Rob said hearing it brought back his own “post-traumatic sales disorder,” because he used to do the same.

Now, “every morning I run the board,” Chris said, and it shows him only the deals that need something. He compared it with tasks, which in HubSpot get used for everything, “so how do you know whether you’ve done all the right thing?”

A clear board leaves him the rest of the day for prospecting. “As long as I’m at zero, I’m then just focused on outbound activity to generate more.” In The State of Sales Enablement 2026, 14% of teams in the bottom quota band rated their deal-execution consistency at the lowest level, and no team in the top band did (The State of Sales Enablement 2026). Our guide to pipeline hygiene covers which rules are worth putting on a board like his.

Why did 15,473 followers take six years?

Chris’s second number was his LinkedIn follower count on the day of recording. “It’s not a small number. It’s not a massive number,” he said. He has posted since 2020 and grown slowly, while he watched others go viral and disappear.

He started because he had no real presence there. “I wanted to just show people that I was a genuine human being.” His first videos, made while he worked at the HubSpot agency Babel Quest, were serious readings of case-study stats. “It just like wasn’t me,” he said. Then he made a funny one about HubSpot, “and it did way better.”

The following has shaped his career. He got the Vidyard job because he made videos on LinkedIn, moved into marketing there the same way, and has been paid to post for other B2B brands. “It’s meant that I haven’t had to apply for a job or like in five years.” His advice to reps who hold back is short. “Just try things.”

Does video raise close rates?

Rob’s second number was 42%. Chris guessed Douglas Adams first, and Rob gave him the point. The other meaning was the average increase in close rates when reps bring video into later stages of a deal. Vidyard’s 2026 benchmark reports a “42% higher close rate on opportunities” for customers who use video across their go-to-market (Vidyard, 2026).

Chris had quoted figures like that when he sold Vidyard, and he would not vouch for this one. “I don’t know about the the close rates thing to that to that exact point,” he said. He does know video DMs still work, years after he started sending them during the 2020 lockdown. “I still get DMs from people being like, ‘Oh, great approach. Yeah, I get it. I’m let’s meet.’”

What do two kids and a tattoo add?

Chris’s last number was 2, his children, then eight and five, who walk into his meetings and think his videos are cool. He gives it 12 to 18 months before they notice none of it is on TikTok or YouTube.

Rob’s last number was 5, the words in the tattoo on Chris’s upper right arm: “hope this finds you well,” inside a small gravestone. He got it to mark the layoff. B2B software “fully completely changed my life,” he said, and the phrase is “a sort of summary of the B2B world.”

What Chris Van Praag’s numbers add up to

• One monthly meeting number. Fifteen net new meetings tell Chris whether he has enough pipeline, and he sources them himself.
• A first video that does the work. About 85% of his booked meetings come from the first video’s meeting link.
• Follow-up backed by conviction. He chases prospects who have posted about the problem until they book or say no.
• A board cleared to zero. A morning check of process violations replaced hours of opening deals.
• A following grown slowly. Six years of posting as himself brought job offers when he needed them.

What should a full-cycle AE copy first?

Pick one monthly meeting number that covers your quota and check it every week. Record your next ten first touches as short personal videos with your meeting link on them, and send every follow-up back to that video. Then look at how much of your week goes to checking deals by hand, because Chris got most of those hours back for prospecting.

Supered is what runs Chris’s board. It checks open deals against your process inside HubSpot and Salesforce, so a rep starts the morning with only the deals that need a next step.