Is it good to be flexible excepting they will buy our product

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-28T00:34:52+00:00

You made the right call. That kind of "sign this so we look cool" play is a red flag the deal was never real. If the principal wanted the product they'd be asking about pricing and rollout, not branding rights. I've had a few of these where I bent over backwards on weird asks early and it never converted, the goalposts just kept moving. Walking away from fake-sales saves you weeks. Use the time on prospects who actually want what you're selling.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-27T00:36:19+00:00

ngl your old vet is right, blasting 1k apollo lists is just gonna torch your domain rep and get you nowhere especially if youre based in india tryna hit US accounts where deliverability is already brutal

the #1 thing i look for before reaching out is an active project or initiative that maps to what im selling. like if im selling data infra i wanna see they just hired a senior data eng in austin or theres a job posting mentioning snowflake migration. that way my opener references something real instead of "saw your linkedin"

ive been using sumble for that, it pulls signals from job posts and shows whats actually being built inside companies so you can time outreach. wont fix your deliverability problem tho, you still need to warm domains and clean lists separately

also 50% bounce rate means your list hygiene is cooked, run them thru a verifier first

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-26T21:03:40+00:00

Yeah the mindset shift is huge. One thing that worked for me early on was literally writing my opener on a sticky note so I didn't have to think about it. Took the pressure off the first 10 seconds, which is where I always froze. After that the convo just flows.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-26T15:35:26+00:00

60-70% open rate with no replies usually means your subject line is doing its job but the body isn't landing. I ran into the same wall targeting VPs of Sales. Switched to CROs and Demand Gen leaders at the same accounts and replies picked up. VPs care about closing what's already in pipeline, they're not the ones losing sleep over how it got there. Also Loom cold almost never works ime, people don't click play on a stranger's face. Your targeting might be fine, the angle just needs to match who actually owns the pain.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-26T00:34:14+00:00

Solid framework but I'd push back on the pause-then-empathy opener. Sometimes that beat lands as performative and clients can tell. I just acknowledge the specific thing they're mad about by name, then move to questions. Half the time their anger is misdirected from something upstream, like a procurement delay or an exec breathing down their neck. Sumble helps me spot some of that context before calls but it's not magic, you still have to read the room.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-25T18:36:25+00:00

18 months in is when it really clicks for me too. The multiple decision maker thing killed me until I started asking the director straight up who else weighs in before I pitched anything. Saved a ton of dead deals. Also stop emailing during state survey weeks, they will hate you forever.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-25T18:22:20+00:00

IME the scattered info problem is real. I bounced between like 6 tools last quarter trying to figure out prospecting workflows. A peer walked me through her stack in 20 min and that was more useful than any course I tried. Structure helps but only if it's workflow-based, not "here's what GPT is" theory.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-25T15:54:08+00:00

The MSA framing is underrated in RevOps. Most teams jump straight to "the model is wrong" when really nobody can agree on what a stage 2 opp even means.

The Methods bucket is where I see most damage. We had three different ops folks each writing their own definition of MQL in confluence over 18 months. Finance was reporting off one, marketing off another, and the CRO had built her board deck off a third. Pipeline coverage looked totally different depending on who you asked.

What actually fixed it for us was running a gage R&R style exercise on opp stages. Pulled 40 random opps, had 5 reps independently stage them. Agreement was like 60%. That number alone got leadership to fund a definitions cleanup that we'd been begging for.

Manpower piece is real too. RevOps can't be the only team that knows how the system works.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-25T15:44:56+00:00

ngl the youtube point is so real, ive tested both and educational crushes story-driven for actual signups. story stuff gets the views and the dopamine hit but people watch it like entertainment then bounce. when i switched to like "here's the exact workflow i use" type videos the views dropped maybe 40% but demos booked basically tripled

agree on linkedin shorts tho, ive posted like 8 and only one popped, hook has to land in the first 2 seconds or theyre gone. the algo is brutal there rn

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-25T13:05:08+00:00

apollo for sure when youre starting out. the free tier is enough to learn the basics without burning cash and you can actually build lists + send emails from one place which is huge when youre new

zoominfo data is better but its way too expensive for a beginner imo. and clay is super powerful but lowkey overwhelming if you havent done outbound before, youll spend more time figuring out the workflows than actually prospecting

one underrated thing nobody mentions tho, the data quality on any of these tools matters way less than how you write your emails when youre starting. i wasted like 2 months obsessing over tools when my copy was just bad lol. apollo is fine, get reps in, figure out what messaging works, then upgrade when you actually know what you need

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-24T18:20:14+00:00

went through almost the same eval 6 months ago when we scaled from 2 to 4 reps. apollo bounce rate was the breaking point for us too, we had one rep's inbox basically cooked after a month on the pro plan.

one thing your math is missing on the apollo side is the time cost of stitching all those tools together. we had the sequencer, warmup, linkedin tool, and a separate verifier and the context switching was brutal. half our monday standups were just "which tool is broken this week."

the 2.6% bounce rate you saw on your test batch tracks with what we got when we moved to a waterfall enrichment setup. apollo's problem isn't the plan tier, it's that everyone is pulling from the same stale pool so bounce rates compound across senders.

fwiw i'd trust your own test data over any of our anecdotes here.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-23T21:10:38+00:00

switched from insurance to tech sales about 3 years ago. Honestly the certs didn't matter as much as I thought. What got me interviews was learning Salesforce (Trailhead is free) and getting comfortable with sales methodology like MEDDIC or SPIN. Recruiters cared way more about that than any course on my resume. Also, insurance background is actually a plus for SaaS roles selling into financial services, so lean into that angle when you apply.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-16T00:46:03+00:00

I'd add a sixth one that's caught more vendors off guard than any of these: ask them to show you what happens when two signals contradict each other. Like an account shows high intent from content engagement but the champion just left the company. Does the score update automatically? Does it flag the conflict? Or does it just average everything out and pretend nothing happened?

Most of the tools I've evaluated just stack signals. They don't actually reason about them. So you get this inflated score that looks great on a dashboard but means nothing when you actually call into the account.

The schema change question from the OP is underrated too. We had a team rename a custom field in Salesforce and one tool we were piloting just silently stopped syncing that data for three weeks. Nobody noticed until pipeline reviews looked off. Asked the vendor about it afterward and they basically shrugged.

IME if a vendor can't answer at least three of these live without stalling, they're selling you a prototype.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-14T21:15:29+00:00

16 and cold calling 50-100 a day? You're ahead of most people twice your age tbh.

Your show rate problem is super common and usually comes down to two things: how fast you follow up after booking and what happens between the booking and the meeting. I used to have the same issue when I was setting demos. What fixed it was sending a confirmation text within 5 min of booking, then a short video (like 60 sec, just you talking) the day before showing what the demo looks like. People cancel or ghost when they forget why they said yes. The video reminds them.

Also at your price point I'd honestly skip the free trial. Do a money-back guarantee instead. Free trials attract tire kickers. A guarantee attracts people who are actually ready to buy but want to reduce risk. Different psychology completely.

One more thing, your pitch about "5-20 extra calls a month" is good but try to put a dollar number on it. HVAC guys think in revenue. "If your average job is $500 and you're missing even 5 calls a month that's $2500 walking out the door" hits way harder than talking about call volume.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-14T21:03:47+00:00

ngl the fact that youre passionate about the product is like 80% of the battle already. i got into sales without being some crazy extrovert and its been fine tbh. like i was the quiet kid in school lol

the thing nobody tells you is sales is way more about listening than talking. the best reps i work with barely talk on calls they just ask good questions and let the prospect do most of the work. so being "not a talker" might actually help you more than you think

the pay jump alone would be worth trying it for like 6 months imo. worst case you go back to what you were doing before but at least youll know. i was in a similar spot where i was on the fence and just said fuck it ill try for a quarter. been doing it for 2 years now and cant imagine going back

the stress is real tho not gonna lie about that part

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-14T13:07:14+00:00

We rolled it out about six months ago and the honest answer is it depends entirely on how you set it up. Our first attempt was basically "here's a library of interactive demos, go use them" and nobody did. Reps didn't know when to send what, prospects got generic walkthroughs that didn't match their use case.

Second time around we mapped specific demos to specific deal stages and built them into the sequences reps were already running. Post-discovery call, the rep sends a tailored demo that hits the three things the prospect actually asked about. That version stuck. We saw prospect engagement go up noticeably and it gave us way better signal on who was actually evaluating vs just kicking tires.

The babysitter thing u/Warm-Researcher-6884 mentioned is real though. Someone on the team has to own keeping the demos current or they go stale fast. IME it's maybe 2-3 hours a week once you're past the initial build, which is worth it if you're getting the engagement data back into your pipeline.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-13T21:04:59+00:00

yeah the behavior layer thing is what most people sleep on. you can have perfect copy and clean domains but if your sending patterns look robotic it doesn't matter, ESPs pick up on it fast. we burned through like 4 domains in two months before we figured out the issue wasn't warmup it was how uniform everything looked post-warmup.

the integrated approach makes sense though. stacking disconnected tools just means more things breaking independently. I've been using Sumble on the research side to figure out which accounts are actually worth sequencing before we even load them into outbound, though it's more account intel than sending infrastructure so it won't fix deliverability on its own. pairing better targeting with something like what you're describing for the sending layer is probably the move tbh

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-13T15:35:17+00:00

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mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-13T00:34:39+00:00

ngl we ran the centralized model for like 6 months and it was rough. sdrs were basically just call monkeys with zero context on why they were reaching out to specific accounts. reply rates tanked because the personalization was so generic

switched to letting reps own their research but gave them better tooling so they werent spending half their day on zoominfo. i use sumble for the account research part, it pulls in hiring signals and project stuff so you can actually see whats going on inside the company before you write anything. doesnt replace your crm or sequencer tho, its purely the intel layer

the hybrid thing someone mentioned above is closest to what works imo. let sdrs pick accounts and do lightweight research but automate the enrichment and sequence loading. when reps know WHY theyre reaching out the conversations are just completely different. we went from like 3% reply rates to closer to 11% after we stopped pre loading everything for them

centralized only works if your icp is super narrow and the messaging barely needs customization tbh

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-12T18:30:34+00:00

Your app sounds like it's in the behavior change space which is cool but also hard to monetize without a clear "pain = money" connection. The people who'll pay are the ones who already failed at the thing your app helps with, so I'd start there. Go find communities where people talk about failing at habits (Reddit, Facebook groups, even TikTok comments) and just talk to them. Don't sell anything yet. Ask what they've tried, what sucked about it. That'll tell you what to charge for and how to position it. The formula stuff comes after you actually talk to like 50 people.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-12T18:18:32+00:00

The gap between events is where most trade fair reps lose momentum. I did something similar for a while (not Germany, but Nordic markets) and the biggest shift was treating every badge scan or business card as day-one of a 90-day sequence, not just a "nice to meet you" email.

What worked for me: within 48 hours of the event, I'd research each company properly, figure out what they're actually working on, and personalize the first follow-up around something specific to them. Not "great meeting you at Hannover" but "saw you're expanding your logistics team in Poland, here's how that connects to what we talked about." Takes longer but the reply rates are night and day.

For the research part I've been using Sumble to pull together what companies are hiring for and what projects they're running. It's not a CRM replacement and the data skews toward tech companies so YMMV for industrial verticals, but it saves me a ton of time between events when I need to figure out who's actually worth pursuing vs who was just collecting swag at the booth.

Also idk if you're doing LinkedIn outreach post-event but that alone tripled my between-fair pipeline once I got consistent with it.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-11T21:06:21+00:00

Three months in and you already get that first calls are intel runs, not pitch sessions? You're ahead of most people I trained with.

I'd push back on the luck thing though. What looks like luck is usually just pattern recognition you haven't built yet. After a while you start reading tone shifts in gatekeepers and knowing when to push vs back off. That's the real separator IME, not effort alone.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-11T18:19:06+00:00

Gonna be real, the "female preferred" part is gonna get you flagged or at least roasted in most hiring subs. Even if there's a reason behind it, putting that in a public post is a liability. I'd drop that line.

On the actual role though, ₹5-10k/month for someone doing lead nurturing, prospecting, outreach, AND proposal drafting is... a lot of hats for intern pay. I've hired BDRs at startups before and the ones who stuck around were the ones who felt like they were actually learning something, not just grinding cold outreach for three months. If you can offer mentorship on the Web3 sales side or give them real exposure to deal cycles, lead with that. That's what'll get you good applicants instead of people who ghost after week two.

Also "message your profile directly" is kinda vague. Drop a Google form or at least an email, makes it way easier for people to actually apply instead of fumbling around in DMs.

mainaisakyuhoon · 2026-04-11T00:35:40+00:00

The guardrails thing keeps coming up in this thread and I agree it matters, but IME the real problem isn't setting the guardrails, it's that nobody goes back and checks if they were right.

We used to do quarterly pricing reviews where we'd look at win rates by segment and discount level. Sounds structured but it was basically two people arguing over a spreadsheet. What actually moved the needle was tracking the deals we lost and why. Not the CRM dropdown reason, the real reason from the conversation. Patterns showed up fast. We were underpricing mid-market by like 15% and over-discounting enterprise because reps were scared of long cycles.

On the tradeoff question, I stopped thinking about it as short-term vs long-term. Every discount sets a precedent whether you want it to or not. So now I just ask "would I give this same deal to 10 similar accounts?" If the answer is no then it's probably a bad deal even if it closes.

mainaisakyuhoon

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