SKIP THE FOREPLAY, LOSE THE DEAL

THE PATTERN

Everyone wants the pipeline full. Like Yesterday, before the coffee gets cold and the work gets done, and more than anything, before the anxiety of an empty CRM becomes the only thing you think about at 3am.

And so we do what everyone else is doing. We post more, talk more, and outreach harder, shortening the message, sharpening the hook, and cutting straight to the offer, because someone said "attention spans are shrinking and you need to get to the point faster". And some are even going to networking events (uh, sorry).

At the end of the day, the pipeline stays empty or fills with the wrong people. And if it doesn’t, it starts producing conversations that go nowhere and die in the follow-up.

Somewhere in the middle of all of it, a thought arrives that resembles a spreading illness:

I'm doing the exact thing I hate when other people do it to me.

ACT ONE: THE MYTH

Here is the attention span story we've been sold.

Humans now have an eight-second attention span, shorter than a goldfish's. You have to get to the point or lose them forever. Skipping everything that doesn't immediately scream value and sign the bill.

The problem is that the same people who supposedly can't focus for eight seconds will watch three consecutive hours of a show they love. They will read a 500-page biography about someone they don’t know, and more importantly, they will sit through a two-hour dinner conversation with someone who genuinely interests them without once checking their phone. (yes some people still do that)

Tolerance for things that don't earn attention is shrinking indeed, but not the attention itself.

That is a completely different problem with a completely different solution.

People want a reason to stay. Have you given them one?

And what happens is, instead of solving that problem, the message is shorter, which removes the only thing that could have earned their attention in the first place.

Foreplay has been skipped. They got a bill, and yet everyone is surprised they left.

ACT TWO: THE DON

Ever watch The Godfather? Yes, there are a bunch of gangsters, but more than anything, that's a movie about patience.

Nobody rushes the Don. Not Sollozzo, or the other families, not anyone who wants something from him. Every conversation happens on his timeline.

For me, the big takeaway is that the relationship is built before it is used.

And when the moment comes when the deal needs to close, when the pipeline needs to convert, it does. Without a follow-up that goes unanswered.

Vito Corleone never cold-pitched anyone in his life.

What he understood, and what the pipeline-now-pipeline-fast mindset completely misses, is that the sale happens long before the conversation where money is discussed. It happens in every interaction that preceded it.

What are those interactions? Anything that made someone feel understood. a message that made them forward it to a colleague and say this is what we need. It can be the thing they have been thinking about but couldn’t articulate.

By the time the Don made an offer, refusing it was almost unthinkable.

That's narrative at full speed, doing its job.

ACT THREE: FILL IT

So here is the move that works in an era where attention is shorter but not gone.

Start thinking about starting a conversation worth having. You won’t close otherwise

It’s not that simplistic because everything you've been taught about pipeline tells you to lead with the offer, qualify fast, and move on if they don't bite, which is exactly why your outreach sounds like everyone else's outreach and lands with the same thud.

What we are trying to do is tackle the issue from a different angle: before you write anything, ask yourself one question. What do you actually want to say? Strip everything back until you have one sentence that makes you slightly uncomfortable because it's too honest.

That's your intention.

Then find the tension inside it. Without tension, nothing is moving forward. If you know your stuff well enough, you will gather the quiet confidence of someone who has seen something that other people don’t know. If you don’t, that might be because you invented yourself in a position you can’t hold, and that's another conversation.

Then let it build. Where you want to get is a place where the person in front of you feels the weight of not solving their issue because you named it so precisely.

The moment I prefer is towards the end when everything reverses. The moment something shifts, because if there are no turns, it’s boring, and boring kills. But the turns keep you on the edge of your seat and create the one thing that will still be in mind tomorrow morning in the shower.

That's the conversation worth starting. And the people who feel it will come find you.

I have a question for you before your next conversation: what's the one true thing you're actually trying to say? And are you doing a good enough job at it?

Reply with it.

— Théo

A note before I sign off.

The Repository keeps growing: distilled wisdom from the people who figured things out before us. Members get it inside The Narrative Equity Council. Link here.

The Narrative Equity Council is where we look at your business from the outside in, borrowing the lens of film, psychology, architecture, whatever industry sees what yours can't and circle back with something you couldn't have found alone. The Repository is part of it.

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