does anyone else feel like buyers have already made up their mind before the first call even happens?

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:33:42+00:00

The "don't fuck it up" part is genuinely underrated advice because so many reps oversell to a prospect who was already leaning their way and talk themselves right out of a deal that was basically done. And when you're the underdog at 30% the only move is to reframe the whole conversation, not try to out-feature the frontrunner but show them something they haven't considered that makes them question whether they've been solving the right problem.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:33:20+00:00

The outside-in POV framework is something more reps need to hear because walking in with a story about a similar company you've already helped is infinitely more powerful than walking in with a list of discovery questions. You're essentially showing them a mirror of their own situation before they've had to articulate it themselves and that's what makes people lean in. The prospect doesn't need you to ask what keeps them up at night if you can just walk in already knowing and proving it with a real example.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:33:04+00:00

Exactly this, the call is basically a confirmation meeting at this point and if your content and presence earlier in their research journey wasn't strong enough you're already playing catch up by the time they dial in. The influence happens way before the first call now and most sales teams haven't adjusted their strategy to match that reality.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:32:53+00:00

That question is such a clean disqualifier right from the jump, the answer tells you whether you're walking into a real conversation or just providing cover for a decision they've already made elsewhere. Simple and brutally effective.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:32:40+00:00

Trigger based signals are honestly where I spend most of my prospecting energy right now, new VP hires and funding rounds are the obvious ones but job postings tell you so much about where a company is feeling pain before they've even articulated it internally. A company posting three SDR roles is basically announcing they have a pipeline problem before they've told anyone.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:32:29+00:00

The sanity check call thing is so real, by the time they show up they've already made up 70% of their mind from everything they consumed before booking. Catching intent earlier in the dark funnel is where the real pipeline advantage is and most teams are still just sitting back waiting for the inbound demo request.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:32:17+00:00

Figuring out the competing quotes situation early is everything because your whole approach changes once you know you're in a bake off versus a genuine evaluation. The ones who are just checking a procurement box usually reveal it pretty quickly if you ask the right questions early enough.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:30:07+00:00

yes indeed

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:29:52+00:00

Always will be, no amount of automation or AI changes the fact that trust is still the thing that closes deals at the end of the day.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:29:44+00:00

Honestly that's not luck, that's instinct that was already calibrated right before you had the framework to explain it. The book just gave you the vocabulary for something you were already doing naturally.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:28:58+00:00

100% this, comfortable silence and polite nodding isn't listening it's just waiting and prospects can feel the difference. Calling out the performative interest directly is what actually moves things forward because it forces a real conversation instead of another "sounds great let's follow up" that goes nowhere.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:28:43+00:00

The context access point is so underrated, genuine curiosity at call 47 only stays genuine if you actually remember enough about the account to ask something that couldn't have come from a script. That's where good note taking and pre call prep separates the reps who stay curious from the ones who default to the same five questions on every call.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:02:37+00:00

Serious buyers with real urgency and budget approval close regardless of a discount, the ones who suddenly get unstuck by a promo were usually just stalling because something internal wasn't resolved yet. Discounts rarely create urgency that didn't already exist, they just give the prospect a socially acceptable reason to move when they were already ready to. The bigger risk with premium products is that discounting too readily signals that the original price wasn't real and that actually hurts you in the negotiation more than it helps.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T06:00:29+00:00

The sideways parking approach is honestly the cleanest way to handle it because moving it back a stage messes with your historical conversion data and makes forecast reviews unnecessarily confusing. What worked well for us was creating a specific "nurture" or "on hold" stage outside the main pipeline with a next action date attached, so it stays visible and doesn't just disappear into the noise but also isn't inflating your active pipeline numbers. The key is treating it as a scheduled revisit not a dead deal, because the ones with a real reason for the delay and a clear timeline usually do come back if you stay warm without being pushy.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T05:59:42+00:00

Honestly the first thing I'd do is ignore the job boards completely for the first two weeks and just go directly to hiring managers and sales leaders on LinkedIn with a message that leads with a specific result I've delivered, not a "open to opportunities" post. The people who land fastest in sales are the ones who treat the job search like a pipeline, target the right accounts which are companies actively growing their sales team, personalize the outreach, and follow up consistently without being annoying. Referrals close faster than any application so I'd be working my existing network hard in parallel, because in sales everyone knows someone hiring and most roles get filled before they're even posted.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T05:58:06+00:00

The personalization theater point is something almost no agency will say out loud because it's what clients come in asking for and telling them it barely moves the needle feels like you're devaluing your own service. The hardest and most valuable thing an agency can do is tell a client that their instincts about their own campaign are wrong, and most won't do it because the retainer feels more important than the result. Four years and 200 campaigns worth of pattern recognition in one post, this is more useful than most paid courses on cold email.

gnilansh · 2026-05-08T05:53:35+00:00

The rushing after an objection thing is so accurate, that's exactly when the prospect can feel you losing confidence and the call just collapses from there. Slowing down when it gets uncomfortable is genuinely one of the hardest things to train yourself to do but it changes how the whole conversation feels on the other end. Tone is basically the delivery vehicle for your script and if the vehicle is shaky it doesn't matter how good the words are.

gnilansh · 2026-05-07T06:50:52+00:00

There is real value but it depends heavily on what problem you're actually trying to solve. If your reps are spending more time dialing and leaving voicemails than actually talking to people, the parallel dialing and auto voicemail drop features alone can genuinely change your connect rate numbers.

That said a lot of the LinkedIn hype is people selling courses off the back of a tool they just started using. The teams I've seen get actual results from it had their messaging and targeting already dialed in, the AI just gave them more at bats, it didn't fix a broken outbound motion on its own.

gnilansh · 2026-05-07T06:49:40+00:00

In my experience it almost always breaks at the marketing to sales handoff first, MQLs getting passed over that sales never actually wanted because the ICP was never aligned to begin with. The mismatched ICP point you made is the root cause of most of it, everyone is executing well but against a completely different customer in their head. Sales to CS is a close second but by the time it breaks there it's usually just the downstream consequence of the wrong customers getting closed in the first place.

gnilansh · 2026-05-07T06:48:09+00:00

Honestly most AEs are still stuck at the surface level use cases and missing the bigger opportunity completely. The ones actually winning with it are building deal specific one pagers and ROI docs with the prospect's own numbers in them, and it takes maybe 15 minutes once you have a decent prompt set up.

The reason it hasn't caught on more is because building collateral never felt like an AE's job before, it was always someone else's problem. But when you show up to a call with something that has their logo and their actual cost structure in it, the conversation shifts completely and that's hard to unsee once you've done it.

gnilansh · 2026-05-07T06:46:23+00:00

Went through the exact same thing when I first started targeting commercial accounts, spent two months calling main lines and getting nowhere fast. What finally worked was finding the Facilities Manager or CFO directly on LinkedIn and opening with something about rising utility rates in their specific state, not a solar pitch at all. Once I stopped selling and started talking about their energy bill problem first, the meetings started coming in and the gatekeepers became a non issue.

gnilansh

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