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THE INTERVIEW
THURSDAY
STATE
OF SALES
The State of Sales right now….
IN THE HOT SEAT
Craig Rosenberg
Chief Platform Officer
All of go-to-market is going through this weird reset. A return to fundamentals, attempted in an AI world. We keep saying rip up the playbook, and then the most important thing a salesperson can do is discovery.
THE SETUP
Craig Rosenberg is Chief Platform Officer at Scale Venture Partners and one of the most quoted voices in B2B go-to-market, having advised hundreds of sales organisations over two decades. We sat down with him to ask why, in the most automated era sales has ever seen, the winning motions look suspiciously old.
THE 60-SECOND VERSION
Buyers arrive AI-educated and often wrong. Ask "where did that come from?" and reframe.
Discovery is still the answer to most late-stage deal problems. It was in 1996 too.
Research minimums: 30 minutes per call, an hour for enterprise, and walk in with a thesis.
The last mile is human. The top AI companies are quietly hiring veteran enterprise sellers.
3 THINGS YOU'LL STEAL FROM THIS
The discovery move that dismantles an AI-educated buyer's wrong conclusions
A pre-call research standard with actual numbers attached
Where the hiring money is really going, and it isn't where LinkedIn says
01 · Your buyer arrives educated, and half of it is wrong
Craig's first observation is about the buyer, the person these debates always forget. AI research means prospects show up late in the cycle, armed with conclusions.
They come in thinking they're more educated. You have to be a good salesperson and say: where did that come from? What are your conclusions? Even if you're number one on their list, you have to do proper discovery, and part of it is challenging what AI gave them to start with.
Layer on buyer fear of messing up and daily economic whiplash, and you get his diagnosis: buyers think they know how to buy, and they don't anymore.
DO THIS THIS WEEK
Add one question to every first call: "Where did that conclusion come from?" Then reframe toward the actual business problem before you show anything.
02 · Discovery didn't die. Craig learned this in 1996
For twenty years, companies brought Craig in complaining about late-stage problems: meetings that go nowhere, getting out-negotiated, terrible trial conversion. The culprit was almost never the stage where the symptom showed up.
We'd go in and the problem was the first call and the discovery. You're not building enough value. That core idea of discovery is always one of the answers. I look like a genius talking about it now, but I learned it in 1996.
The modern trap is speed to demo. Buyers want the demo immediately, and Craig's advice is to deliver it, just never first.
You have to stop, pull them back, get them focused on what they're trying to solve. Otherwise it's just widgets and features.
STEAL THIS
Next time a prospect asks to skip straight to the demo, agree, then buy ten minutes: "Absolutely. So the demo actually answers something, what's the problem this needs to solve?"
03 · The 30/60 research rule, plus a thesis
Craig's minimum for pre-call research: thirty minutes for any call, an hour minimum for a real enterprise account, and the good ones spend far more. The hour has a structure:
Understand the business deeply. Frame questions that make you smart about their business, never just yours.
Know what you're looking for. Reading the financials means nothing without a target.
Walk in with a thesis. "Based on everything we can see, here's what we believe is the right thing to talk about."
Identify your signals. One robotics company he works with knows that warehouses hiring 24-hour distribution staff are feeling the exact pain they solve. The signal is the message.
If you can't understand what that company does and where they are right now in this day and age, then just quit. Because it's incredible what's available.
TRY THIS ON YOUR NEXT CALL
Write your thesis in one sentence before the call. If you can't, you haven't done discovery on yourself yet.
04 · Everyone's watching automation. The money is hiring humans
Craig's twelve-month forecast cuts against the feed. Yes, low-end commoditised selling will automate hard. But he watches where funded AI companies actually spend.
The top AI companies are hiring veteran CROs who are bringing in veteran salespeople and paying them a lot of money, because the last mile of winning deals in this era is the human. People buy from people, especially when they're spending significant money.
With product differentiation shrinking, he sees only one durable edge: "The only differentiation will be the relationships that you build." On the ops side, he's equally practical: 46% of RevOps teams build, 38% buy, and the point is to work backwards from need. He cited a SaaStr stat that stuck with us: proposal time cut from 46 minutes to four.
THE MOVE
Pick the ugliest workflow in your sales cycle. Proposals are a good bet. Cut its time by 90% before you buy another top-of-funnel tool.
THE ONE THING
The last mile of winning deals in this era is the human.
Every week we sit down with the operators actually moving revenue.