Jay Greenwald

Fake RFPs are the dirtiest secret in enterprise SaaS. You think you’re competing. In reality, the decision was made weeks ago. Every rep/leader knows the story: Custom demo environment, 18-page technical doc, 127 security questions answered, 4 pricing scenarios, References lined up. Hundreds of hours invested. And then: “We’ve decided to move forward with another vendor.” Not because the company isn’t buying. Because the RFP was theater. Why do reps still chase them? It’s not ignorance. It’s hope. The big logo. The big number. The career-making deal. It’s intoxicating. And that’s what makes fake RFPs so dangerous. What the Research Shows: This isn’t paranoia, it’s documented. - The IACRC lists rigged specifications and sham bidding as some of the most common procurement fraud schemes worldwide. - The OECD warns that restrictive tender specs can effectively pre-select winners and block fair competition. - A GAO review found that many “competitions” attract only a single offer, often because requirements were written to favor incumbents. Enterprise SaaS isn’t audited the same way. But the mechanics are identical. And that’s exactly why leaders and reps need to be more deliberate. Before you chase an RFP, ask these 5 questions: 1. Access: Can we meet the economic buyer? If no → column fodder. 2. Authorship: Do requirements read like a competitor’s data sheet? If yes → walk away. 3. Urgency: What breaks if this slips a quarter? No consequence = no deal. 4. Discovery: Will we get to validate pain and outcomes? If no → policy, no pain. 5. Opportunity Cost: What live deals will suffer if we chase this? Red Flags That Scream “Theater”: Suspiciously specific requirements only one vendor can satisfy. Procurement-only access, no business decision-makers. “Top priority”, but with a 10-week decision gap and no milestones. Vague or undefined success metrics (“ROI framework”). Fake RFPs waste hours and drain morale. They bloat your pipeline with ghosts. And they make you walk into a board meeting forecasting numbers that were never real. That’s why I always coach my reps on this: I don’t ask about the response. I ask: Who’s the buyer? What happens if this slips? Why do you believe we can win? If they can’t answer, we pull out. Because the truth is: If reps get burned enough times, they stop believing in every RFP, even the real ones. And that’s a culture killer. The job of leadership isn’t to celebrate activity. It’s to protect your team’s time, focus, and belief, so they fight where they can actually win. Sales leaders: what’s in your RFP go/no-go filter?

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Shipping today: Cartesia’s Ink-Whisper on Vapi. Latency is critical. Slow STT ruins conversations. With Ink-Whisper, just one line in your Vapi config gets you: - Faster, streaming-optimized transcripts - Better handling of background noise and accents Read more: https://vapi.sh/u4KRN67

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Let's dig into the big Oracle / OpenAI / #Stargate news! This Cloud Wars analysis comprises three main parts: (1) the size and scope of the unprecedented deal, (2) the partial unraveling of OpenAI's once-impregnable @Microsoft relationship, and (3) the deal's implications across the tech landscape. https://lnkd.in/e_dKeqNt

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Making 100 dials per week is not the same as generating $X of pipeline per week. Inputs ≠ outcomes. You have to optimize for effectiveness, not just activity. CONTEXT: Recently I shared our operating rhythm for pipegen and how it helps us consistently exceed weekly pipe goals. A lot of it was focused on making sure reps are hitting their input metrics (prospects sequenced, dials made). Inputs are *critical*. There’s no consistent pipe without consistent execution. But the *wrong* inputs (e.g., wrong message sent, wrong persona called, etc.), won’t move the needle. This is our playbook for aligning inputs with outcomes across outbound and inbound: ➡️ Outbound - We take an 80/20 approach to outbound. - 80% of our plays are always-on, proven performers. These are the "right person, right message, right time" plays we've validated through testing different data + signal combos with Common Room. - Many of these plays are automated to some degree on the email side. Example: Economic buyer from downmarket account visits our pricing page → gets added to EB pricing page segment → gets added to EB pricing page sequence → receives AI-personalized message that references recent activity + AI account research. - The other 20% of plays are experimental. Seasonal plays, industry-specific plays, persona-specific plays, etc. - Reps cycle between 2-3 different plays per week. We carve out time to run experiments, report on replies/connect rates, and measure pipe impact. Winners get rotated into the always-on camp. Losers get discarded. And the experimentation continues. ⬅️ Inbound - We’re not big on gated content at Common Room. We like to show, not tell. - That means we rely heavily on our own product to connect the dots between marketing efforts and inbound leads (e.g., website visit identification, social listening, etc.). - We’re also big believers in the “How did you hear about us?” field on sign-up forms. - We review performance multiple times per week and fine-tune strategy accordingly. - This creates an always-on feedback loop we use to inform everything from content creation to paid ad targeting. —— The key to both is speed and agility. The ability to tweak or turn on and off on a dime. Pipe never sleeps. Neither can your strategy.

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PE partnership is an emergent GTM channel that’s proving to be massively successful. Unlike traditional sales motions, PE is a 1-to-many motion—but with that comes a major risk. Michael Belkin, Head of Global Private Equity Practice at Zuora, broke down the pros and cons. The major con? Companies get sold. Often. So, let's say your SaaS product is used by 6 PortCos backed by a partner PE firm. 2 of them sell, and the new owners favor their incumbent SaaS product over yours. Overnight, you’ve lost 2 clients. Since the new owners are not necessarily your customers, traditional client retention tactics won’t work. The benefit of working with a PE firm is that you’re getting warm intros all the time…but when a PortCo sells, you might be left out in the cold. Pursuing a PE-partner GTM strategy means you have to build an expectation of controlled churn into your process—especially if you’re building your comp plan around the total amount of PE-owned ARR. That’s why it’s critical to track where your clients are in the PE lifecycle. You want to keep a healthy balance across the PE investment cycle so you don’t end up with multiple clients rolling off all at once. But, just as PE taketh away…PE giveth. Say you have companies on your books that get bought by other PE firms. Then you have an opportunity to begin a partnership motion with a new firm, opening up other avenues of business. Functionally, that means identifying opportunities by closely monitoring PitchBook data, tracking which strategic accounts are owned by PE for each AE, and zeroing in on actionable relationships. PE partnerships are relatively new, but are already proving fruitful to some. It will be interesting to see which companies successfully integrate this into their GTM playbook—and which ones fall prey to the relentless churn. Listen to the full episode with Mike Belkin on “The Data Room.” Link in comments.

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In 4 years as a strategic B2B2C SaaS seller, I achieved 278% attainment against a target of $11.3M ARR. My special sauce? Every single deal had “MINTS” in place: (M) Mobilizer ➾ Who: Someone adept at driving consensus ➾ What: Leader motivated to enact right change ➾ When: Identify early to avoid lengthy sales cycle ➾ Where: Key BU in the org that needs a fresh reboot ➾ Why: Will make it much easier for the deal to progress Example: We identified that most contact center leaders had been following a 30yr old blueprint. The job was to help them adopt a new blueprint (7-figure move) vs help them buy software (6-figure move). (I) Insights ➾ Who: Comes from the perspective of their customers ➾ What: A big idea that seems impossible, but is achievable ➾ When: Stress tested and validated in the first POV meeting ➾ Where: Most authentic insights come from being their customer ➾ Why: Commercial insights → Compelling perspective → Big impact Example: With one major hotel brand, we saw that their in-app chat experience was going to the front desk of the property vs a centralized help desk. The job was to calculate the cost of this workflow (7-figure move) vs focusing on features it was lacking (6-figure move). (N) Narrative ➾ Who: Designed to equip the Mobilizer to circulate internally ➾ What: Built to read like an internal memo vs a vendor proposal ➾ When: Shared to bring your business case to life through story ➾ Where: A collaborative process that uses their words and assets ➾ Why: Will face less internal friction when it looks like their own doc Example: With a major healthcare company, they used internal whitepapers to make decisions. The job was to translate our materials into something that looked like their whitepaper (7-figure move) vs sending them a generic business case with our branding on it (6-figure move). (T) Team ➾ Who: Experts that fill in skill gaps and elevate presence ➾ What: An account team that supports all your deal pursuits ➾ When: Identify and bring them in early to compliment each deal ➾ Where: Recruit from all over the org—each account will be different ➾ Why: Reduces the burden on you as the seller and amplifies impact Example: For one major cable company, I recruited a lean but capable team that had industry expertise, could match their exec presence, and answer big questions. The job was to translate our small initial pilot with one BU into a 3-year $504M global transformation across their portfolio (7-figure move) vs asking for a bigger rollout within the current BU (6-figure move). (S) Strategy ➾ Who: You are best positioned to orchestrate the strategy ➾ What: Focused on a transformation, not a transaction ➾ When: Starts when you become their customer first ➾ Where: Be smart, but it will involve planes, trains, and automobiles ➾ Why: Turns this incredibly hard job into a fun game you get to play Over the next 10 weeks, I'll be teaching MINTS here: https://lnkd.in/eMnGPUCi 🐝

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Big news today from Ditto — we launched the Ditto Peer Partner Program, a global network for consultancies, integrators, and technology providers building the next generation of edge-native applications. Ditto’s platform powers apps that sync and operate without the internet — enabling mission-critical systems to stay online anywhere: from retail stores, transportation, to tactical networks. Our partners gain access to: • Technical & sales enablement • Co-marketing and go-to-market support • Joint edge-native solutions built for resilience Already, leaders like MongoDB and LaunchDarkly are on board. Together, we’re making “always-on” the default state of software. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ge2G-4fG #EdgeNative #EdgeComputing #OfflineFirst #Databases #Partnerships

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