ObjectiveConfirm you are writing to real people who are still in role, about an event that is still current, before you spend a touch.
What to verify
- Both stakeholders exist and are in role. The workbook rows typically carry two or more names — a financial owner and a technical or operational one. ZoomInfo lags on departures; Sales Navigator is the check that catches it.
- Direct dial and email are live. Check the last-verified date on the ZoomInfo record, not just that a value is present.
- The trigger is still the right trigger. Intel more than about six weeks old needs re-checking. A funding round is durable; "completed enrollment in a pivotal trial" may already have been superseded by results.
- The source is primary. The company's own release, an SEC filing, or the FDA clearance database beats an aggregator. You may have to state where you found it on the first call.
- Employee band and revenue are recorded. You need these in phase 4 to model a credit range, and there is no time to go looking for them then.
Industry vocabulary check
The list spans medical robotics, surgical navigation, endoluminal surgery, digital surgery, orthopaedic robotics and endovascular devices. Read the Industry field and use that language. Writing "medical device" to a surgical-navigation software team, or "clinical validation" where the work is really algorithm development, is the tell that the message is generic.
No verifiable trigger, no sequence. If the intel doesn't survive this check, send the row back to research rather than opening on something stale. A wrong or dated trigger is worse than no outreach.
ObjectiveClose phase 1 so the account cannot silently stall between phases. Three minutes here is what keeps the sequence alive.
Checklist
- Assign a named owner from the SDR roster. Unowned accounts stall at phase 2.
- Log every contact from the Decision-Maker column against the record, flagged financial or technical. You will need them at phase 3 without re-reading the row.
- Set the phase-2 task date. Day 4 at the latest — the opener goes cold past that.
- Record the trigger and its date in a queryable field so research can re-approach on the same event in 90 days.
- Note whether LinkedIn is in play for this account. If Sales Navigator access isn't available, mark the LI steps skipped so the sequence doesn't read as half-finished at review.
Stage: Prospecting · Sub-stage: Intro Email Sent. Move to Ongoing Follow-up once phase 2 opens, and only to Demo Set when a time is actually in the diary.
ObjectiveSilence from the primary contact is usually a verdict on their inbox, not on the offer. Multithreading is how you find out which.
Work from the row, not from instinct
The Account Penetration Plan column already states who to approach first and second, and why. Follow it. It exists because the right entry point varies: at a company where the CFO owns the credit decision, lead financial; where a co-founder CEO is the technical owner, lead there and let finance come second.
Who to add
- Technical owner — CTO, Chief Scientific Officer, VP Engineering. Often the most engaged reader, because the four-part test describes their week.
- Operational owner — COO or the head of the function named in the intel.
- The reverse route — if your primary was technical, finance is now the second contact, and vice versa.
Rules
- Two additional contacts maximum. Three or more at once reads as a spray and gets flagged internally.
- Never mention that a colleague hasn't replied. It travels, and it costs you both contacts.
- Change the angle for the reader, not just the name. Finance hears cash timing and lookback years; engineering hears which activities count and that failed attempts qualify.
- Validate the new contacts the same way as phase 1 before sending.
ObjectiveEarn a reply from the financial stakeholder on the strength of the trigger alone. Not to explain the R&D credit, and not to book a meeting in one step.
Composed per account — start from the workbook
The Cold Email column already holds an email drafted for this specific company. Your job is to review and sharpen it against the checks below, not to replace it with a house template. In Model 2 this email goes out the same day as the call and recaps it instead of leading.
Build it from
- Intel / Trigger
- Opens the email. State the specific event and what it funds or enables. This is the proof of research and it must be first.
- Industry
- Sets the vocabulary for the activity list. Use their words for their work.
- Why We Selected Them
- Becomes the hypothesis sentence — why you think a portion of this work may be creditable.
- Decision-Maker
- Determines the framing. A CFO hears cash timing; a founder-CEO hears that the engineering itself qualifies.
The quality bar
- The opening line could not have been written about any other company. If it could, the email fails, however polished the rest is.
- Hedge the claim. "May qualify," never "you qualify." You have not seen their books.
- Pre-empt the silent objection. Companies that have never claimed assume they are ineligible; say the opposite explicitly.
- One ask, time-boxed. Fifteen to twenty minutes. Not a demo, not a proposal.
- No attachment. The whitepaper is the phase-2 asset. Leading with it costs reply rate and deliverability.
- Short enough to read on a phone without scrolling twice.
Do not send the workbook draft unread. Drafts written days earlier can carry the wrong contact name or a superseded trigger. Read it against the row before it goes.
ObjectiveLand the trigger in the first ten seconds, give one reason for the call, ask one open question, then stop talking. You are buying thirty more seconds, nothing else.
Composed per account
The Cold-Call Opener column holds a roughly thirty-second opener written for this company. Read it aloud once before dialling — copy that reads well on screen often doesn't survive being spoken.
The four beats, in order
- Name and firm. Plainly. No "how are you today."
- The trigger, specific. Named event, named product or programme. This is what separates you from every other cold call they took this week.
- Why that means you are calling. One sentence connecting their activity to the credit. Not a description of your firm.
- One open question. Then silence. The silence is doing work.
Rules
- Never open with a closed permission question you can be refused on before the trigger lands.
- Have the account's discovery questions in front of you. If the call opens up, those are what you ask next — do not improvise generic ones.
- Leave one voicemail per sequence, under twenty seconds, and only on the first unanswered dial.
- Gatekeeper is a routing opportunity, not a failed call. Ask who owns tax strategy or works with the CPA.
Log the disposition on the call, not at end of day: answered, voicemail, gatekeeper, or wrong number. Only one of those means keep dialling; one means the record goes back to research.
ObjectiveEstablish the connection so that later messages arrive in their inbox rather than as an InMail from a stranger. The invite is not the pitch.
Composed per account
The LinkedIn Message column holds a note written for this company. Trim it to the 300-character invitation limit — the drafted version is often longer than an invite allows.
Rules for the invite
- Always include a note. Blank invites from an unknown sender get ignored or reported.
- Reference the same trigger as the email. The two touches must read as one person, not two systems.
- No pitch, no ask, no link. The invite earns the right to message later.
- Acceptance without a reply is still signal. Note it — it tells you the name is right and the account is warm enough to keep working.
- One invite per account per phase. Two people from the same company connecting in the same week looks automated.
No Sales Navigator access? Switch LinkedIn to Skip at the top of the cadence. The sequence is built to stand up on email and phone alone — you lose a signal channel, not the path to a meeting.
ObjectiveThirty seconds of attention and one qualifying answer. Reference the email explicitly so the call is a follow-up rather than a cold approach. This is not the pitch call.
How to open
- Name, firm, and the fact you wrote to them earlier this week, naming the day. That reference is the whole advantage Model 1 has over a cold dial — use it.
- Then the trigger, then one open question about whether they have looked at their R&D credit position.
- Keep the activity list to the two or three items that actually apply to this company. Reading a generic list of five undoes the personalisation the email bought.
Have in front of you
- Discovery Questions
- Three to five, written against this company's engineering work. If the call opens up, these are your next move.
- Intel / Trigger
- You must be able to state it from memory, not read it.
- Source
- In case they ask where you got their details. Answer immediately and plainly.
Handling the four common turns
- "We already claim it" — one narrowing question about validation and regulatory technical work versus core engineering wages.
- "We're pre-revenue" — payroll offset, cash this year rather than a carryforward.
- "Send me something" — agree, then get a slot. Without a time this is a soft no.
- "Not interested" — one probe: timing, or structural non-fit? The answer sets the sub-stage.
One voicemail per sequence. If you left one on an earlier dial, leave nothing here. Two messages in four days reads as pressure and raises the opt-out rate.
ObjectiveA different angle from the day-1 opener, at a different hour of day. Move from "have you looked at this" to something specific and mechanical that demonstrates subject knowledge.
The angle
Ask where the qualifying spend actually sits in their books. Validation, design verification and regulatory technical work booked as general operating cost never get tested against the four-part criteria, and the claim comes in materially light as a result. That question is credible, hard to deflect, and signals you are not reading a script.
Rules
- Dial at a different hour than the day-1 attempt. Same time twice reads as automation.
- Reference both prior touches — the call and the same-day email — in one clause, not two sentences.
- No voicemail on this dial if one was left on day 1.
- If it opens up, move straight to the account's discovery questions.
ObjectiveOnce connected, restate the hypothesis in three short lines and offer an easy way to say no. Reply rate on the easy-no version is materially higher, including the useful nos.
Composition rules
- Three short paragraphs at most. LinkedIn truncates and nobody expands.
- No attachment, no link on the first message. Both read as automation and hurt deliverability inside the platform.
- Different words from the email. If they read both, identical phrasing exposes the sequence. Same hypothesis, said another way.
- Close with the easy out. "If it isn't a priority, say so and I'll leave the thread alone."
- If the connection wasn't accepted, skip this touch entirely. Don't InMail — the phone is cheaper and warmer.
Skipping LinkedIn? The phase-2 collateral email carries this content. Nothing downstream depends on the LinkedIn message landing.
ObjectiveHand over the asset and remove the need for a call to get value. Reply rate rises when the next step costs them nothing.
Which asset
- Whitepaper
- Default. Send when the contact is finance-side or the conversation hasn't started. Answers "does this apply to us."
- Capabilities overview
- Send when they have already accepted the premise and are asking what working together looks like. Answers "what does this cost us in time."
- Both
- Only when they asked for both, or when the contact is senior enough that a second email would be an imposition.
Composition rules
- Point to specific pages. "The four-part test on p. 3 and the payroll offset on p. 7" gets read; "attached is our whitepaper" does not.
- Say why those pages, for this company. One clause tying the section to their actual work.
- Offer to answer in writing. "Reply here and I'll answer it — no call needed" removes the barrier the prospect is actually avoiding.
- Reply in thread. Keeps the trigger research visible above your signature.
- Close with a clean exit line so a no can arrive cheaply.
ObjectiveReach the technical or operational owner on an engineering angle rather than a tax angle, and ask only that they describe their own work.
Why this works when the finance thread stalls
You remove the thing that made the first email easy to defer. The technical reader isn't being asked to make a tax decision, evaluate a vendor, or spend budget — only to talk about work they are fluent in and under no pressure about. That is a far cheaper yes.
Composition rules
- New thread, new subject line. Do not forward or CC the stalled thread.
- Open on their function. Name what they own and why that makes them the right person, ahead of anything about credits.
- Lead with the four-part test, framed as engineering. Improvement to function or performance, technical uncertainty at the outset, a process of experimentation, grounded in engineering or computer science. Failed attempts count — that is the line that most often gets a reply.
- Name their actual programme from the intel. Generic here defeats the whole move.
- Explicitly disclaim the tax burden. "I'm not asking you to own a tax conversation."
Never reference the unanswered thread. No "I reached out to your colleague and haven't heard back." It reads as escalation by guilt and it travels internally.
ObjectiveGet the technical owner talking about their own engineering work. Either answer they give is useful.
How to open
Flag immediately that this is a technical question rather than a sales call, then give the four criteria in engineering language and say that from the outside their work appears to clear all four. Ask whether documentation and cost booking sit with them or with finance.
Then run the account's own questions
The Discovery Questions column holds three to five questions written against this company's actual programmes. Use them as written. They are more specific than anything you will improvise mid-call, and specificity is the entire reason this account was hand-sourced.
Either answer moves you forward
- "That's me" — you have your qualifier. Book fifteen minutes on technical scope.
- "That's finance" — ask for the name and permission to reference the conversation. A warm internal referral back to your primary is worth more than another cold email to them.
ObjectiveOpen a second connection at the account, on the function rather than on the stalled relationship.
Rules
- Reference the function, never the colleague. "I work with engineering leaders on…" not "I've been speaking with your CFO."
- Check Sales Navigator for a shared connection or group first. Acceptance rates roughly double on a warm path.
- One invite per account per phase. Two people from the same company connecting in the same week looks automated.
- Keep the note inside the 300-character limit and tie it to the technical angle used in the email.
Skipping LinkedIn? The multithread email and dial carry this phase on their own. LinkedIn adds acceptance signal, not the message itself.
ObjectiveStop chasing and put the qualification case in writing, so that replying costs them nothing and reading it is worth their time even if they never respond.
Build it from
- Why We Selected Them
- This column is already the argument. It states in plain English why this company's activity looks creditable. Turn it into the substance of the email.
- Intel / Trigger
- Anchors the qualifying activity list in their real programmes rather than a generic list.
- Target Fit
- Decides whether you frame the benefit as payroll offset or income tax relief.
The four things it has to cover
- What qualifies at this company specifically — their programmes, in their vocabulary, including the fact that failed development attempts count.
- Why it matters at their stage — payroll offset and current-year cash if pre-profit; lookback years and carryforward if not.
- Why companies miss it — the credit is assessed on activity, not on a budget line labelled R&D.
- What engagement involves — scope, quantify, substantiate, support under examination. Their CPA relationship is unaffected.
Open by naming what you are doing. "Rather than chase you again, here's the substance." It buys goodwill and it is honest about the touch count.
ObjectiveAsk an executive for a brief qualification conversation — explicitly not a sales process — and make declining cheap.
What makes an escalation land
- Transparency
- Say you have already spoken to their team, and name who. Executives find out anyway; hiding it costs you the meeting.
- No blame
- State that nothing has gone wrong lower down. This protects your other two contacts, and you will need them.
- Named ask
- "A brief qualification conversation, not an extended sales process." Use those words — it is the entire point of this email.
- Easy no
- Offering to close the file the same day is what makes fifteen minutes feel cheap.
- Sized reason
- One sentence on why it is likely material at their headcount and stage, drawn from Target Fit.
Rules
- Shorter than every other email in the sequence. If it runs past a phone screen, cut it.
- End by asking for a redirect if it isn't theirs. That question converts more often than the meeting request.
- Use the Account Penetration Plan to pick who "executive" means here — it is not automatically the CEO.
One escalation per account. Going above someone twice destroys the relationship with your original contacts and rarely produces the meeting.
ObjectiveTwenty seconds of context, one closed question, then stop. You are asking them to make a yes-or-no decision, not to listen to a pitch.
Structure
- Name, firm, and an explicit promise of brevity — "twenty seconds and then I'll let you decide."
- What you do, that you have been talking to their team, and that from the outside there appears to be a material claim not being made.
- The closed question: is fifteen minutes worth diarising, or should the file be closed?
- Then stop. Do not fill the pause.
Handling the brush-off
- "Talk to finance" — agree, then ask for permission to say they asked you to pick it back up. That permission is worth more than the call.
- "Send me something" — one page only, and ask which question it should answer: eligibility, or value.
- "Not now" — one probe on whether it is timing or structure, then set the sub-stage accordingly.
No voicemail on the executive dial. An unanswered exec call followed by a message reads as pursuit. The escalation email carries it instead.
ObjectiveOne reminder at executive level, mirroring the escalation email's exact language so the two read as one person.
Rules
- Two lines. No more. The ask, and the offer to be redirected.
- Mirror the email's phrasing exactly — "qualify it in or out, not a sales process." Consistency across channels reads as a person; variation reads as sequences.
- Never send before the escalation email. LinkedIn is the reminder, not the first contact at this level.
- No document, no calendar link. Both feel presumptuous at executive level.
Skipping LinkedIn? Move the day-17 dial forward to day 15 to keep phase-4 pressure even. Everything else stays.
ObjectiveMake it concrete. Move the conversation from "does this apply" to "is this worth an hour of finance's time," using a modelled range built from data already on the row.
Build it from
- Target Fit
- Employee band and revenue. Technical headcount drives the qualifying wage base; revenue tells you whether the payroll offset or income tax route applies.
- Industry
- Sets the compensation benchmark. Engineering pay in surgical robotics is not the same as in a device manufacturer.
- Why We Selected Them
- Justifies which functions you counted in the base.
Non-negotiable rules
- A range, never a single figure. One number reads as a quote and you have not seen their books.
- State the assumptions inside the email — headcount, compensation benchmark, which credits are applied. Not in a footnote.
- Say plainly it is an estimate from public data, not a quote, and that the real figure could land either way.
- Mention the lookback years as additional value, without quantifying them.
- No sourced headcount means no numbers. Move straight to the phase-5 close instead.
This is the email with the most downside risk in the sequence. An over-confident figure that later proves wrong costs credibility at exactly the point where you had earned it. Frame it as analysis, not as an offer.
ObjectiveOne question that closes both ways. You are not trying to rescue the account — you are trying to convert ambiguity into a usable answer.
How to run it
- Say plainly it is the last call on this, and that the file is closing this week.
- No pitch, no new information. Anything new here restarts a conversation you are formally ending.
- Ask whether there is any interest at all, or whether you should close it out.
- Anything that isn't a no is an opening — take the smallest next step they will agree to, even "come back next quarter," and diarise it against a real event.
If it goes to voicemail, leave nothing. The day-25 email closes it in writing, and a message here only adds pressure to a sequence you are ending.
ObjectiveLeave the connection intact for the next trigger. One line, no ask, explicitly no reply needed.
Why send it at all
The email thread is closing but the connection persists. This message costs nothing, removes any residual sense of pursuit, and means that when the next raise or clearance lands in two quarters you are already connected and can open with a message rather than a cold invite. Name the future trigger you will be watching for — it makes the reconnect feel planned rather than opportunistic.
Skipping LinkedIn? Drop this touch entirely. The day-25 email already carries the reconnect language.
ObjectiveClose the file in a way that leaves the specific opportunity on record, sets the reconnect as a default rather than a request, and invites a redirect.
The four jobs this email does
- Acknowledge
- Name timing as the reason rather than their interest. It gives them a face-saving read of the silence and makes a late reply possible.
- Restate
- Put the specific opportunity in writing one last time — the programmes identified and the modelled range. This is the paragraph that gets forwarded internally months later.
- Reconnect
- State that you will reconnect next quarter. Set it as the default; do not ask permission for it.
- Redirect
- "Unless there's someone else I should be coordinating with." The highest-yield sentence in the entire sequence — a meaningful share of closed accounts reply here with a name.
Also worth including
- The lookback window, so they know the current year's work doesn't expire if they do nothing now.
- The specific future events that would make this worth revisiting — a raise, a clearance, a step up in engineering headcount. Take these from the intel rather than listing generic ones.
Disposition: stage Lost, sub-stage Unreachable for no response, Not Interested where they told you, Ineligible where they genuinely don't qualify, DNC where they asked to be removed. Tag the trigger event for the 90-day re-approach.
No second sequence back to back. The 90-day gap is what protects domain reputation and keeps the next approach credible. If a reply names a new contact, open a fresh sequence at phase 1 against that person — don't forward the old thread.
ObjectiveDistinguish a real reply from the three things that look like one, before you spend the phase-2 asset on an empty desk.
Not a reply
- Out-of-office auto-reply. Suppress the sequence and resume on their stated return date. Note the delegate name if one is given — that is a free extra contact.
- Hard bounce. The email leg has failed silently. Send the record back for a data fix before another touch burns a day of the cadence.
- Wrong contact, right company. Ask for the referral in the same reply, then re-enter at phase 1 against the new name. Check the Decision-Maker column first — they may already be on the row.
A real reply
The account leaves the standing cadence immediately and moves to the reply branch. Acknowledge the same day: a reply that waits 48 hours for a response is a reply you have wasted.
ObjectiveConvert a reply into a diarised time. Acknowledge, hand over the asset, and ask for the slot in the same message.
Composition rules
- Thank them in one clause. Do not spend a paragraph on it.
- Send the whitepaper and point to the two sections that matter for this company, saying why those two.
- Ask for the best time in the next week and offer to work around their calendar. One ask.
- Do not re-pitch. They replied; the pitch worked. Anything more risks talking them back out of it.
Sub-stage: move to Ongoing Follow-up now, and to Demo Set only when a time is actually in the diary.
ObjectiveDecide which framing the next call uses. Either way you are dialling — only the reason changes.
Why one day
The asset was requested, or near enough. Interest at that moment is the highest it will be in the entire sequence and it decays fast. Waiting three days to follow up turns a warm asset into a cold one.
The two framings
- Replied with a time — Scenario 1. You are calling to run discovery and book the scoping session.
- Silence — Scenario 4. You are calling about something they asked for, which is a reason to call rather than a chase. Say so explicitly.
ObjectiveEstablish three facts and book the scoping session before you hang up. Do not re-pitch — this conversation was already won.
Establish
- Which activities — what the engineering and validation teams actually spent time on this year, especially anything where the outcome wasn't certain at the start. Use the account's own discovery questions here; they are more specific than anything you will improvise.
- Tax position — paying income tax yet, or is the payroll offset the relevant route?
- Open years — what has been filed, and whether an R&D credit was claimed in any of them.
Close
Book the technical scoping session with the delivery team while you are still on the line, and send the invite before you hang up. A session agreed verbally and scheduled later is a session that slips.
Sub-stage: Demo Set on booking, Demo Completed after it runs.
ObjectiveFollow up on something they asked for. This is a reason to call, not a chase — and the difference has to be audible in the first sentence.
How to open
- State that they had asked for the material and you wanted to check it arrived and whether anything raised a question.
- Pause. Let them answer before continuing.
- Offer to walk them through the section most people ask about — the four-part test — as it applies to their specific work, in about ten minutes.
Never open this call with an apology for following up. You are doing what you said you would do.
ObjectiveConvert interest into a diarised slot the same day, before it decays.
- Send a short confirmation email offering two concrete slots rather than asking for their availability. Choosing between two is faster than proposing one.
- Then call to lock one in rather than waiting for the reply.
- State what the call covers and how long it takes, and that no preparation is needed on their side.
Sub-stage: Demo Set once the invite is accepted.
ObjectiveExplain the call in writing, offer to answer in writing instead, and return the account to the cadence without restarting it.
- Say you were following up on the material rather than chasing a decision. That distinction matters and they will read it.
- Offer to answer any question by email, no call needed.
- Alternatively invite a time, working around their calendar.
Return to the next scheduled touch, not to phase 1. Restarting the sequence doubles the touch count against a contact who has already gone quiet once.
ObjectiveGet the reason before you close, because the reason determines the disposition and whether the account is ever worth reopening.
One probe, then stop
Thank them for answering rather than leaving it hanging, then ask one question: is it a timing thing, or is the credit not relevant to how the company is structured? Do not attempt a second angle after a stated no.
Sub-stage by answer: timing → Ongoing Follow-up with a diarised date · structural non-fit → Ineligible · flat refusal → Not Interested · asked to be removed → DNC, which stops phone as well as email.
Log the reason, not just the outcome. "Not interested" with no reason is the least useful record in the CRM and guarantees the account gets re-sourced next quarter.
ObjectiveLet the opener sit long enough to be seen, then dial while the trigger is still current.
Why the gap
Phase 1 closes on day 3 and the first dial lands on day 4 — long enough that the email has been read or buried, short enough that the trigger is still recent. Dialling on day 2 reads as automated; dialling in week two loses the reference entirely.
What the gap buys you
The call opens on a true statement — you wrote to them earlier in the week — rather than an awkward same-day double touch. If the LinkedIn invite was accepted in between, you also open warmer than a pure cold dial.
Four dispositions, not two
Answered, voicemail, gatekeeper, wrong number. Only one means keep dialling; one means the record goes back to research for a data fix.
ObjectiveRoute the account correctly. "No answer" bundles four outcomes that need completely different handling.
- Answered — Scenario 3. Run the account's opener and discovery questions.
- Voicemail or rang out — Scenario 2. One message, one same-day email, back into the cadence.
- Gatekeeper — not a failed call. Ask who owns tax strategy or works with the CPA, and record whatever name you get against the row.
- Wrong number — a data problem, not a prospect problem. Send the record back rather than burning three more dials on a dead line.
Log the disposition on the call, not at end of day. Retrospective logging is where dial data goes wrong, and the four-way split is what makes connect rate meaningful.
ObjectiveCover the unanswered dial in writing the same day, then return the account to the cadence without restarting it.
- Acknowledge the double touch briefly — a call and an email in one day needs one clause of explanation, not an apology.
- Give the short version of the hypothesis, anchored to their specific programmes.
- Offer both routes out: a time that suits them, or a clean no.
Then the account goes back into the standing cadence at the next scheduled touch. No restart, no extra voicemail.
ObjectiveRe-enter at the next scheduled touch, not at the beginning.
What does not reset the clock
An unanswered call. If the day-4 dial went to voicemail, the next touch is the phase-2 collateral email on day 6 or 7 — not a fresh phase 1.
What does reset it
Only a new trigger event: a fresh raise, a clearance, a leadership change, a step up in engineering headcount. Research surfaces those and updates the row; the SDR does not invent them.
After day 25, stop. Close with a 90-day nurture flag. Running a second sequence back to back is how domains get burned and how a workable account becomes permanently unworkable.
ObjectiveUse the account's own opener and discovery questions to find out which of three outcomes you are in, before you keep talking.
Run the account's material
The Cold-Call Opener and Discovery Questions columns were written against this company's actual programmes. Use them. The temptation mid-call is to fall back on generic qualifying questions, and that is exactly where a researched call collapses into a script.
Listen for the fork
- Interested — send the asset while still on the line and book the session.
- Not interested — one probe for the reason, then close properly.
- Needs time — wrap cleanly, send the value case and modelled range, and diarise a real date.
Do not keep presenting once you know which fork you are in. Continuing past the signal is how interested prospects become undecided ones.
ObjectiveSend the asset live and book the scoping session before the call ends.
Send it while they are on the line
- Say you are sending it now, then walk them to the specific page — the four-part test — while they have it open.
- Give the four criteria in their own engineering vocabulary, and say that their work appears to clear all four on the face of it.
- Name what you cannot see from the outside: how the work is documented and where the spend is booked. That gap is the reason for the next conversation.
Book while you are on the phone. Send the invite before you hang up. A session agreed verbally and scheduled afterwards is a session that slips.
ObjectiveGet the reason, thank them, and close cleanly. Do not attempt a second angle on a stated no.
- Acknowledge that they were straight with you — it is genuinely more useful than silence and saying so costs nothing.
- One question: timing, or structurally not relevant?
- Confirm you are closing it out and that they will not hear from you again on this, and note where your details are if the position changes.
Sub-stage: Not Interested for a decision · Ineligible where they genuinely do not qualify · DNC if they ask to be removed. DNC stops phone as well as email.
ObjectiveWrap the call without pressure, then leave something concrete behind that survives until the timing is right.
On the call
Accept it, and offer to put the specifics in writing — including a rough sense of what the credit could be worth at their headcount — so there is something to look at later. Explicitly attach no pressure to it.
Then send
- The value case, built from Why We Selected Them.
- The modelled range, built from Target Fit, with assumptions stated and framed as an estimate rather than a quote.
- A closing line that asks nothing of them now.
"Needs time" without a diarised date is a lead you will lose. Ask what changes by then — a filing, a raise, a clearance — and set the follow-up against that event, not a vague month.
Sub-stage: Ongoing Follow-up, with the trigger event and date recorded.