Vikas

enterprise AI has a dirty secret. 90% of 'AI-powered' products die in pilot. not because the tech failed. because nobody mapped the AI to a workflow the buyer already owns. you don't sell AI. you sell a shorter month-end close. a faster audit. a pipeline that doesn't lie.

@nikitabier Seriously though !! 😂

This is equivalent to trying to sell a cop drugs while he’s in uniform in his police car.

the CFO doesn't care about your ROI deck. they care about one thing: will this vendor still exist in 18 months? every pricing conversation, every contract negotiation, that's the question underneath. your product is secondary to your survival.

look at what Manus shipped last month. look at how fast Claude is releasing. these aren't roadmap items. they're weekly releases. the question isn't whether your team can match the ambition. it's whether your foundation can ship at that speed. if it can't, the gap widens every week.

@avipat_ this is crazy ! big money pockets coming for whatever works

General Catalyst just co-led a $31.5 million seed round into a blatant rip-off of my company, Kled. (skip to 40 seconds if you want to skip context) I would typically not speak on things like this, but this level of blatant copycatting is egregious and completely unacceptable, and needs to be made an example of. This is one of hundreds of YC startups who have conducted this disgusting behavior. Unimaginative slop that continues to get rewarded due to nepotism.

the math that kills enterprise AI startups: 12-18 months of runway. 6-9 month deal cycle. by the time you've proven the deal is real, you're already running out of money. if that's your math, you're not in a tough market. you're in the wrong one.

@Chris_Orlob Product knowledge is important. It allows you to ask the right questions & ask leading questions to underarms the problem

By my own best estimate, 97% of SaaS account executives run bad demos. Most bore the buyer with a feature walkthrough that answers a question nobody asked. And the ones who actually irritate the buyer (which happens more than anyone admits) are sending that person straight to a competitor. The top 3% are doing one thing differently: they frame the problem before they reveal any solution, ask questions throughout that get buyers to articulate the pain themselves, and end every capability with a customer story. Product knowledge has almost nothing to do with it.

@chrispisarski this is good .. everyone faces this question one time or the other, over a course of a client conversation .. defense is not the way to go .. neither is attack .. polarity selling to me seems to be the right spot ..

when a prospect asks "how are you different from [biggest competitor]" in a sales call, what do you answer? one of the best sales leaders we met during YC told us to say this: "it depends on what you are optimizing for. if your goal is [competitor's strength], you should honestly go with them. but if your goal is [your unique strength], then we are the better fit. which of those two is a higher priority for your team right now?" this is called polarity selling, you are forcing the prospect to choose. if they choose yours, they disqualify your competitor

@jjen_abel glad you did not mention the table

enterprise sales is ... - offline - off-script - off-the-record iykyk

@Chris_Orlob well said. a lot of demos are 'technical demonstrations' in excitemnet to showcase the tech differentiator .. in my view, the diff. typically is not 'what tech', but 'what you've done with it' .. and how it solves 'my - buyers' problem ..

Most reps think of a demo as one long event. It's not. It's a series of mini-demonstrations, each one covering a single capability, and each of those should follow the same 8-step structure. I built this framework while helping close Gong's first $100 million in software. The acronym is FAVORITE.

same data. same infrastructure. same team. completely different game. the scoring logic changed. the risk tolerance changed. the mindset changed. you can't tell your old squad to play the new format and expect the same results.

@Chris_Orlob true, most buyers have never even evaluated where the problem really is, or the root cause of it. the vendor/seller that helps them do that, builds trust that scales boundaries.

The single question that unlocks business case conversations faster than anything else I've used: "What metric is suffering most as a result of this challenge?" Most buyers have felt the pain vaguely but never put a number on it.

@jjen_abel all valid points here. some calls have all these samples on display

in enterprise market, here’s where you will waste a ton of time … - asking for a case study - brings 3+ folks to any call - communicates beyond 1 level - “I’ve said this for years …” - keeps their camera off - next step is 2+ weeks out - won’t give you their cell - not comfortable sharing inside gossip

most enterprise AI startups don't lose deals. they run out of patience before the buyer runs out of process.

an AI agent that cannot access a system is not an agent. it's a chatbot with ambition. the race to native computer-use isn't a product feature. it's the survival line.

This is critical and more so to be said out loud. There will always be accounts that would suck the resources but never give you the revenue that matters. There is a time when you need them. But if you have clients that pay, and not demand 10x of what they are paying for, that’s your ideal set. Get rid of the others.

HOW TO STOP WORKING WITH BROKE CLIENTS: Go into your CRM Find anyone that’s paying you 3k a month or less Do they take 3 hours or more a week to fulfill for? If yes - refund their ass You’re going to be less stressed, have less headaches, and you’ll have more time Then focus on signing clients who ACTUALLY PAY YOU Don't get stuck with shitty clients just because they "pay" you. STOP WORKING WITH THE POORS

if i were running a pre-GenAI AI platform today: stop optimizing the existing codebase. take 3-4 of your best people. give them 90 days. build fresh on what exists now. agentic reasoning, self-learning loops, LLM-native from layer one. in 90 days that small team will outship everything your full engineering org can deliver on the old foundation.

if i were running a pre-GenAI AI platform today: stop optimizing the existing codebase. take 3-4 of your best people. give them 90 days. build fresh on what exists now. agentic reasoning, self-learning loops, LLM-native from layer one. in 90 days that small team will outship everything your full engineering org can deliver on the old foundation.

enterprise AI deals don't move through a funnel. they move through a proof chain. the CIO needs technical validation. the COO needs operational impact on a real metric. the CFO needs survival evidence, will this vendor exist in 18 months. each link needs different proof. you can't skip one. miss the COO's metric, the CFO never even sees the deal.

enterprise AI deals don't move through a funnel. they move through a proof chain. the CIO needs technical validation. the COO needs operational impact on a real metric. the CFO needs survival evidence, will this vendor exist in 18 months. each link needs different proof. you can't skip one. miss the COO's metric, the CFO never even sees the deal.

@coreyganim loved the step by step here ..

A guy offered me $1,000 to follow him around for a day and tell him where to implement AI in his business. I didn't take the deal (because this is not scalable at all) but it did make one thing clear: business owners are desperate for AI guidance. What they don't need is a developer or an "AI automation" agency. They need someone who can simply tell them where AI fits into their existing workflows. I turned this into a product called the AI Assessment. I sell them for $999. Here's the exact system you can copy: THE OFFER $999 for a custom AI report. 3-7 specific tool recommendations tailored to their workflows. Guarantee: 5 hours returned per week minimum, or 100% refund. Sounds aggressive but it's really not. Average ROI I've delivered is 6+ hours/week saved for ~$40/month in tools. STEP 1: THE 45-MIN INTERVIEW Google Meet call recorded with Fathom. Questions I ask: -Walk me through a typical day -What tasks do you hate but can't delegate? -Where are you the bottleneck? -What do you wish you could automate but haven't figured out? Goal: surface their pain in their own words. Not what they think they should automate, but what actually eats their time. STEP 2: FEED THE TRANSCRIPT TO CLAUDE I've built multiple Skills that chain together for this step but if you're just starting out a simple prompt will still work: "Analyze this transcript of a business owner describing their workflows. Identify the top 5-7 areas where off-the-shelf AI tools could save them significant time. For each, recommend specific tools and estimate weekly time savings." Claude catches patterns you'd miss. Connects pain points across the whole conversation. I review, add my own picks, cut anything that feels like a stretch. STEP 3: BUILD THE REPORT IN GAMMA Structure: -Executive summary (their top 3 opportunities) -Impact/Effort matrix (focus on quick wins) -3-7 tool recommendations with implementation details -4-day quick wins plan -What comes after quick wins (preview of upsells) -Financial impact -Next steps Looks like a $5K consulting deliverable but only takes me 5 minutes from template. STEP 4: THE 30-MIN REVIEW CALL This is where trust gets built and upsells happen. Screen-share and walk them through each recommendation. Gauge their appetite for help. About 40-60% want help implementing. That's where the real money lives. THE UPSELL LADDER Process Optimization: $3-5,000 No-code automation (Zapier/Make): $1-3,000 Custom GPTs: $3,000+ Custom AI Skills: $3-5,000 Full agent implementation: $5-10,000 + $1K/mo retainer Real example: business brokerage owner gets 400 emails every time he lists a new business. Every email asks the same 4 or 5 questions. For $3,000 I built him a custom GPT trained on each listing's marketing package that he can send to potential buyers. Eliminated 95% of his email workload per listing. WHY THIS WORKS Business owners don't need another AI course. They don't need to learn prompt engineering. They don't need a developer. They need someone to look at their specific situation and tell them exactly what to do. What we're selling here is clarity. HOW TO START 1) Know the tools. Spend a month using Claude, ChatGPT, Fathom, Gamma, Zapier. 2) Do 2-3 free assessments to build your process and get testimonials. 3) Start charging. $499. Then $749. Then $999. Raise every 3-4 clients until people say no. 4) Build your upsell menu (where the real money is made) Go out and make it happen.