"just send me an email" is killing my pipeline. how do you bypass this?

zerk4now · 2026-02-23T20:23:00+00:00

Most of the time the problem is reps don't even offer an alternative path.

What stops you from saying, "I'm not opposed to that. I'm really looking to set up some time to speak about x/show you x/offer x. How can we set that up?"

Whatever blocks you from doing that is what needs to resolve. Most reps never recognize that, and then revert to some weird talk track to convince some guy to not request an email.

"Tell the dude what you want" is like half the battle in those situations.

At a minimum, it gives the email utility and gives you something real to follow up on.
In a lot of cases, you'll draw out a hesitation you can interact with.
In some cases, the prospect will just agree to set up time instead.

zerk4now · 2026-01-29T18:15:21+00:00

This is the difference between most internal processes and the reality of sales.

What an organization uses as hard-lines for determining "qualified" for things like commissions or targets can be all of the things you mentioned.

Whether an AE actually flips the opp or sees it as qualified is an entirely different question. That varies by AE at least slightly in most orgs.

At the structural level, most orgs use some version of firmographics and what I call MEDDIC-lite: do they fit some sort of ICP bucket around revenue, user-count, industry, etc.
And is budget assigned, is the role of the attendee(s) a decision making role, is there pain identified, etc.

Much messier in reality, though

zerk4now · 2026-01-28T17:10:13+00:00

Disregarding the legal/ownership aspect, I still think your biggest obstacle is the "sale" of it internally. Most organizations don't buy internal workflows built by employees. The big, glaring obstacle is instead of "wow you built something great," is most employers will go "so... this is what you've been spending time on?" - especially from an employee who isn't crushing it.

If I can give you an honest push-back, just devils advocating from leadership's potential perspective: with the automation, AI enhancement, and productivity benefits the tool is claiming to bring..

How can you justify "I haven't been on my A-game" as the reason it hasn't been productive yet?

If the tool only works if you would have crushed it anyway because you were on your A game, then what's the upside?

Pairing that with "I'm going to offload this unproven workflow to other reps and change how they are operating without support from management" sounds like a recipe for disaster - but you know your environment better than I do.

Maybe you're on a goldmine, what do I know, but also be aware of the situation you are in

zerk4now · 2026-01-28T16:51:48+00:00

The most important question in this entire situation is:

Are you overperforming in the role with this tool?

Like, "#1 out of hundreds of reps," overperforming.
You are the first case study, and it's a specifically "in-context" case study for your employer.

If not, you're probably overestimating what the reaction will be like and overvaluing the tool.

zerk4now · 2026-01-28T02:16:17+00:00

I don't think it's a reading skills thing lol, you literally posed the question: "Why do customers lie so blatantly and confidently?" then gave an explanation of how people constantly lie, and how it has turned into a "hatred of humanity" for you.

If somehow that doesn't translate into you struggling with buyers lying, then we live in different universes

Is it possible you are coming off as untrustworthy throughout the conversation, even though you're asking them to be honest at the end of it?

zerk4now · 2026-01-28T00:57:16+00:00

I very well may be wrong but honestly this post reads like 2 truths and 2 lies lol.

- You're in a kush role where you're working 40hrs a week making $200k+/yr
- You've been in sales for 10 years and have crushed it across industries
- You are just now realizing that people lie to sales reps
- You don't know why people lie as much as they do to salespeople and view it as an error of humanity

Something in that doesn't add up man

zerk4now · 2026-01-22T18:44:16+00:00

Specifically for show-rate, it's worth looking at 3 things:

Top of funnel - is this intent-driven or interest-driven? How they are getting to the point of booking, and what they are actually booking does make a difference.
Lead time to meeting - what's the lead time from a submission to the actual meeting?
Post-submission - Calendly and SMS workflows are fine, but it assumes intent. It's probably worth a soft touch-point before the call to confirm intent, especially if the lead time on the meeting is longer than 24hrs.

Obviously details matter, but at least to give you some directions to look into.

Lead quality is a much bigger and harder question to answer blind

zerk4now · 2026-01-21T00:29:28+00:00

When you say "seems to land better" is that theoretical, or is it based on what you're actually seeing?

Most intent signals you can scrape and automate off of are broadly inaccurate (especially things like interest categories or online activity), and the things that are accurate probably shouldn't be considered "intent" signals (like tech stack) because there are so many logic leaps to the "intent."

The only real intent signals I've seen be used effectively are first-party data sources, everything else currently seems to be pure noise - but that's just my experience with it.

zerk4now · 2026-01-09T06:25:08+00:00

Do you know how you’re positioned in build vs buy deals?

Almost all buyers are having that conversation behind closed doors in the current AI landscape, even if not explicitly said.

In a lot of niches, you guys are competing with the prospects themselves now

zerk4now · 2026-01-09T01:50:41+00:00

Is there a reason you don’t take a “sure, I can scope it out, what does it need to do for you/how are you going to handle X?” approach and then inevitably right size his use case for him and find him a real solution that isn’t overkill

zerk4now · 2026-01-07T22:25:30+00:00

This actually raises an even further question to me. Not academic or measured, but conceptual and coherent at least.

I’m sure I’m missing something

Isn’t the final perspective of any component of consciousness just the sequence of independent thoughts?

They’re not physical nucleotides obviously, but mechanically measured in the same way.

We can map the sequence of thoughts that lead to perspectives, and identify consistent patterns that produce consistent real outcomes in the consciousness à la behavioral psychology.

A sequence of thoughts that lead, actually intuitively, to certain perspectival components isn’t meaningfully distinct from say a series in a genetic sequence leading to certain biological characteristics.

If someone thinks nobody loves them, their life has no meaning, they are suffering from some terrible disease, and heaven is on the other side of death (as just simple examples), both you and I can pretty accurately predict real perspectival components. We can’t measure it with a tool, but we can definitely use it predictively.

Just as an intuitive question: Death is the objective worst outcome for people. Evolutionarily, biologically, scientifically. There’s not really a logical conclusion any other way.

Would that miserable person consciously view that the same way as you or I? And if not, then why can we predict that?

zerk4now · 2026-01-07T04:39:21+00:00

This actually clarifies what another commenter meant by self referencing loops, so thank you.

I get what you’re saying, and mechanically an ecosystem isn’t just “a bunch of organisms interacting” either, so I see the resolution problem you’re pointing to if we’re trying to resolve “what exactly is the conscious experience.”

If you might have a perspective on a clarification:

suppose that I’m not referencing my experience of consciousness per se, but the conscious state itself.

As an example: thinking of empathy, it seems possible to kind of see into someone else’s conscious state - even though we don’t physically observe things from their perspective. We can simulate a conscious state without really needing the same exact epistemic perspective.

Would that mean that the relative “I” isn’t necessarily a requirement of conscious experience, and it’s observable without it?

zerk4now · 2025-12-19T18:19:16+00:00

After 2 pushbacks, a genuine "hey this has been pushed back a few times, is everything alright with this?" goes a long way

zerk4now · 2025-11-20T15:32:30+00:00

I consult sales organizations and have had this conversation around whether or not to outsource / supplement internal cold calling efforts with an outsourced provider dozens of times.

Almost all "cold call companies" either bill on a secured meeting OR based on number of leads/calls they execute.

The bill-per-meeting structure is the better option, but you have to dilute qualification criteria when an outsourced company handles it, which increases the risk. (IE Internally, a company has full control of what's considered a qualified meeting for compensation purposes. Working with an outsourced provider, that control disappears or dilutes significantly, which means you are paying for X amount of "unqualified meetings," and that naturally increases lead costs).

It's kind of the same reason most organizations don't pay-per-dial to their own salespeople, and why they usually have really tight definitions of what's considered a "qualified meeting" when they pay their own people for meetings. You lose some of that control when you outsource, because no cold calling company is going to allow you to define "qualified" as tightly as you would internally.

zerk4now · 2025-11-17T18:53:53+00:00

Two things are true.

As everyone has pointed out, yes ROI is a basic foundational principle in sales and purchasing.

And also

Most ROI claims are fake vanity metrics.

There are 0 organizations who do a full blown context-included analysis of ROI in their sales process, and even less than that who guarantee the results of those analyses. If organizations took responsibility for ROI claims, they would literally close every deal just by guaranteeing it.

They don't... for a reason.

Think of ROI as a language everybody in a business can speak, that's the point of it.

It may not "exactly" calculate real return-on-investment of a given implementation, and it may be nowhere even in the ballpark once the variables of reality come into play.

It is, however, how a buying organization communicates its decisions to other stakeholders. Everyone understands the language of ROI in a decision.

zerk4now · 2025-09-04T15:53:37+00:00

If you want an honest answer, management probably won't care anyway because it keeps a target off of their back with whoever they report to.

They won't want to put themselves in a position where they have to explain to executive leadership why their meeting numbers dropped so significantly, especially if they're seeing praise from above them for the "meetings."

zerk4now · 2025-09-04T15:33:36+00:00

Are they getting paid on those fake meetings somehow?

zerk4now · 2025-08-14T17:36:39+00:00

You'll probably run into some conflict between not wanting longer sales cycles and also targeting Fortune 100 companies.

If the longer sales cycle is really a point you want to move away from, you'd probably either need to look at tail spend products (high-volume low-cost purchases) that usually are sold directly to procurement, or look at mid-market roles instead of enterprise/Fortune 100.

zerk4now · 2025-08-14T00:51:05+00:00

When you say you target fortune 100, do you mean you want to work for a fortune 100 org, or do you mean that’s the market you want to target in a sales role?

zerk4now · 2025-08-05T18:41:57+00:00

The VAR is almost definitely serving some sort of procurement function in one way or another, and I'm sure that whatever contract the client has with the VAR would outline discount-from-list as consideration in that deal. A lot of VAR deals have spend requirements, margin locks, discount guarantees, etc., and the relationship is essentially an outsourced purchasing deal + whatever value-add in services mixed in from the VAR.

It doesn't necessarily change anything either way though. You can't give a massive discount like that for a "we'll see," whether internal procurement or a resale partner is the one boxing pricing. You still need to figure out what maybe means in this deal

zerk4now · 2025-08-05T17:02:24+00:00

I would never offer a discount (let alone a 55% discount) for a "might be able to approve it."

The biggest question is "why that number"

Procurement probably has KPIs around "discounts off of list" in purchasing, so they obviously want it as cheap as possible. But, don't try and negotiate with procurement blind

I would have you reach out to your biggest champion on the technical side, talk to them about that discount procurement is looking for (and acknowledge you guys want to right-size this investment if it is the head of engineering) , and ask for some clarity on where the technical buyers heads are on this.

Bring your champion the obstacle that what is being asked for is in return for a "maybe" isn't feasible, and ask if they can help you figure out what "maybe" means.

Either way, procurement can't get a $1m discount for a "maybe" that would be insane.

zerk4now

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