Mor Assouline

Join over 2,000 salespeople per month listening to tactical sales advice anchor.fm/saastalks

My friends and I used to send each other memes on IG, and now we send eachother screenshots of our convos w/ Claude

Sales reminder: A champion is not a title, it's a behavior

@Som_Mohapatra @Chris_Orlob I always loved hiring AEs that were technical enough to be SEs.

@Chris_Orlob Who should do the demos? AEs or SEs? Problem I’ve been running into as we scale

Gong grew from $200k ARR to $200M ARR and $7.2B valuation in a 5 year span. Buyers told us our demos were 2nd to none. 9 lessons I learned about SaaS demos I'll never forget:

If you have a problem of high no shows to your sales calls and you're still sending out reminder emails/texts, try telling your prospect that if they don't confirm within 24 hours of booking the call, you will cancel the call and they can rebook for another time. Your time is just as valuable as your prospects.

If someone in sales that's applying for a job is not treating the company like a prospect, they're probably not a fit. Might sound harsh but it's the truth. There's no difference between prospecting into an account when you're building pipeline and prospecting into a company when you're trying to land a role.

know the game … corporates build for the boss startups build for the customer

yup. credit: @benjie1748

I don't know how to say this without sounding like a douche, but if you're a seller and you show up to your 1:1s expecting your manager to lead the meeting, you'll never be top 1%. 1:1s are for you. The mentality of elite sellers are as follows: - You ARE the business - Your numbers are YOURS, not your managers, so own them and know them cold. - 1:1s are a cheatcode to get better. It's your responsibility and to come prepared. - You don't react to your calendar or wait for marketing to lead gen for you. You hunt for your business and own your destiny. - Education never stops. Moving the needle 1-2% compounds over time. - Do the job before you get the job. - You respect your time and boundaries. If you don't respect your own time how can you ever respect others' time? The best AEs I coach (and I coach a lot) are the CEOs of their own life/job.

@BrianLaManna_ Every seller needs to have a line in the sand they don’t cross, as tempting as things may be

Earlier last year, I was asked to run a 6 AM call with a team. And I got completely burned. Me: “Is that the only time that can work?” Them: “Due to time zones, yes.” Me: “Ok, got it.. (hesitating) ...yeah, I guess I can make that work.” Them: “Great. Send over an invite. And include these 3 people. Also, I’ll be unable to make it since that’ll be too early for me.” Me: “Wait you can’t make it? Can we find a time that works for everyone?” Them: “It’s fine. I’ve seen it before. This is for them, not me.” Me: “Ok, I hear you. It just would be great to have your perspective but I guess I can make that work.” 2 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞: 5:20 AM - Wake up, shower, prep 6:00 AM - I join call, no one else joins 6:07 AM - "Hi team - any issues with the Zoom? I’m on now!" 6:15 AM - Leave Zoom. Blood boiling. Extremely upset 😡 11:42 AM - Apology note received. Big. Fat. No Show. I wake up at 5:15 AM daily. That's not the issue. But that's my sacred time to workout and get ready. The problem is that I compromised my routine and life, around a work meeting. 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬: 1. Our job is to sell, not to compromise how we live 2. Sense it, say it. They'd no showed 2 meetings already during the cycle. My biggest concern was scheduling it and getting no showed, but I stayed quiet. 3. Push back. Can we find a time with 2-3 of the 4 most critical people and record it? Or do 2 separate sessions? If it's important to them, they'll make it work.

I’ve been evaluating a lot of AI tooling - many companies that claim to be able to replace sellers. It’s been fun meeting a lot of people along the way (AEs, Sales Leaders, CEOs). Always exciting to see what’s next in GTM by talking to humans about how you don’t need humans to sell anymore while those humans sell you their technology to replace humans.

See this woman to the left? If you're in SaaS sales, you might not recognize her. Her name is Erica Feidner She's known as the Piano Matchmaker And every serious salesperson should study her. Inc. called her one of the top 10 salespeople of all time. She was Steinway & Sons's top salesperson for a decade & sold over $40M in pianos. Here are 5 things she does that puts her in another league: 1. REDEFINE YOUR ROLE: Erica refers to herself as a "piano matchmaker" rather than a salesperson. Her: "My passion in life is to pair people to pianos in a way that reflects their lifestyle and their personality." That means YOUR solution may not be the right fit for your prospect (and that's okay) It took me years to realize not every interested prospect is a fit. Instead of being a salesperson, be a [solution] matchmaker. 2. PRIORITIZE CLIENT EXPERIENCE OVER THE SALE: The best salespeople know that buyers don't want to be sold, they want to be helped. They know that if a prospect feels good with you early on, you're closer to making a deal. Erica: "What I try to bring to the floor is a wonderful experience for clients and finding exactly the right piano that is in line with their needs and financial comfort zone." If your prospect's highest priority is price, consider showing them a range of your rates first. Every sales call should be customized. 3. DON'T RUSH TO MAKE THE SALE: If the perfect piano isn't available, Erica tells clients to wait until she finds the right one, even at the risk of them purchasing elsewhere. Her: "If I feel that the piano isn't perfect, I'll tell them to go home and I'll call them when I find the right one." But, this is exactly how she builds trust and credibility. I closed a Series D company last year to do onsite sales training for their AEs. I told the head of sales I'd rather we slow down just to make sure I'm the right fit. We spent an extra 2 days doing more due diligence. I earned his trust and closed the deal. 4. READ THE ROOM: Use conversational cues and body language to understand what the client's sentiment is. Erica: "I listen to the tone of their voice, the speed of their voice, eye contact or not." This is why turning on webcam first on Zooms is table stakes. Example: If your prospect raises their eyebrows in surprise during your sales demo, that's an indicator that they're impressed. "Sam, seems like this is striking a chord with you?" 5. ADAPT BY PERSONA: Customize your communication style to fit the client's background and preferences. Erica: "For instance, engineers might need detailed technical information, while musicians might prioritize sound quality. Once I figured that out, I can speak in a language that they understand best." For example: In my experience, meet with your prospect before a demo to understand who's showing up and what they care about. I used to make the mistake of winging it and showing up half prepared. Half prepared = not prepared.

@AshishW203 @noahkagan From what i've read, there are security risks with using it?

@mistamor @noahkagan With OpenClaw I feel like I have digital employees. One agent is helping me with reporting, one is helping with customer success etc. It's more fun to use too.

Shocked how quickly I moved over from ChatGPT to Claude for all my AI usage. Anyone else?

Every week I run a group coaching call for AEs at companies like LinkedIn, Hubspot, Klaviyo, Nooks, etc. Every week after the call, I'd spend 30+ minutes doing the same thing: → Pull up the Fathom recording → Read through the transcript → Summarize the key topics → Format everything into a lesson → Publish it to our learning portal → Copy the topics into Slack for the community It's not hard work. But it's tedious as hell and eats at my calendar. So I automated the entire thing with AI (via Claude Cowork). Now, every Friday at 1:00 PM, a Claude task kicks off automatically. It opens Fathom, extracts the full transcript, identifies the coaching topics, generates a formatted title and "How to..." summary for each topic, creates and publishes the lesson in Kajabi, moves it to the top of the course, and posts a recap to our Slack channel. The whole workflow runs itself. I just show up, coach, and it's done. Fathom uses encrypted video streaming that blocks automated downloads. Kajabi's drag-and-drop needed custom browser scripting to reorder lessons. The "simple" automation required real problem-solving at every point. Some lessons I'm learning: 1. "Automate everything" is the wrong goal. 2. Recurring tasks are the highest ROI automation targets. 3. AI agents are better at browser automation than you'd expect. 4. The bottleneck is rarely the AI. We're entering a whole new era where the competitive advantage isn't knowing how to use AI, but it's knowing how to wire AI into your actual workflows. If you're a seller or sales leader doing repetitive pre or post-session work every week you're sitting on hours of reclaimed time (houuuurs)

@AshishW203 @noahkagan What do you use open claw for specifically that you can’t do with Claude/cowork

@noahkagan same + openclaw

Most sales teams have too many tools and not enough skills. I've worked with companies that have 12+ tools in their sales tech stack. Conversation intelligence, sequencing, intent data, AI notetakers, CRM, engagement platforms, forecasting tools…the list goes on. Their reps are still terrible at asking follow-up questions or working the deal. No tool fixes that. Here's what I've noticed across every team I coach: The tech stack gets investment but the skill stack doesn't. A company will spend $50K/year on a sequencing tool to send more emails but won't spend 30 minutes a week reviewing whether those emails are any good. They'll buy intent data to tell reps who to call but never train them on what to say when someone picks up. They'll record every call with AI but nobody's actually listening to the recordings and coaching off them. The tools aren't the problem. The gap between having the tool and using it well is the problem. Before you buy the next platform, ask: Are we fully using what we already have? Do our reps know WHY they're using each tool, or just HOW? When was the last time we coached on the underlying skill, not the tool? I'm not anti-technology. But I believe in it as an amplifier, not a replacement. Technology amplifies what's already there. If the underlying skills are weak, you're just amplifying bad selling. Faster. Invest in skills first. Then give them tools to scale those skills. Not the other way around

How I started: asked myself, what’s a high frequency, low complexity task and tinker with Claude cowork or any others that can automate it. Id recommend surveying the org and ask to keep a log. Make a spreadsheet and pick 1 to do. Happy to show you over zoom this week how I do it

I'm consulting for a company that raised over $120M, and we've built AI agents based on my sales methodology to audit thousands of sales calls at scale and score them automatically. The results are automatically fed into: a) Slack - real time notifications b) Salesforce - to generate report on trends We’re using this to coach reps on high leverage strategies. It took us about 1.5 months to get to v1 (and still tweaking it) But the takeaway from implementing this is: 1. What is a high frequency task 2. That is low complexity 3. But is manual and guzzles time, 4. That you can chop up into smaller mini tasks? Build an AI agent around that and tinker. Then do it again, and tinker. You won’t learn about how to be an AI native by reading about it all day.

Pure software is rapidly becoming un-investable.

@IanJamesMwaiK This is a video game jeeze

What a skilled Pilot. USA is USA .

We have moved our headquarters to Miami, Florida.