Mor Assouline

7/ Most sales advice skips the internal work and goes straight to the cadence. Which is why the cadence never sticks.

6/ All of it traces back to one belief: I don't trust myself. The flaky behavior and the thin pipeline are downstream of that, not the cause of it.

5/ They check Slack or handle a "fire" instead of prospecting. They pivot strategies constantly because pivoting feels productive.

4/ So they plan to plan. They spend more time polishing the messaging.

3/ Here's what's actually happening under the hood. They're terrified of committing to a strategy and living with it if it fails.

2/ Most sellers doing this think they need more discipline. That they just need to stick to the plan. Nope.

1/ He's got a couple of deals in his pipeline. Every week he changes his strategy, his messaging, his cadence.

A rep I just started coaching blocks his calendar to prospect every week. He's stuck to it zero times. 🧵

A CRO of a Series B company DM'd me this: "Every single AE hit quota this month. 14 for 14. Not only has this never happened here, I've never seen it happen at any company I've worked at." That wasn't luck. I'd been coaching their AEs for a couple of months. 1:1 sessions, real call reviews, deal reviews, belief work, and building the playbooks, alongside their sales managers every week. What we cleaned up: how they run discovery for different segments and personas. How they run demos so they sell the problem instead of the product. How they hold the line on pricing. How they manage time and pipeline. And a personalized skill plan per AE, reviewed weekly. They set the company record for new ARR. You know what costs more than coaching? Replacing reps every six months because they never had a process. Missing three quarters while you figure it out. Watching your best people leave. 14 for 14 is cheaper.

On a PIP you have 60 days and no time for noise. Perfecting CRM hygiene at 9am is noise. Prospecting at 9am is signal.

6/ Or reputation and churn. Headcount and burnout. Executive pressure. Internal politics. Market pressure. Change fatigue. Expansion blockers. Stop digging when they connect the dots themselves. That's when urgency shows up.

5/ Keep digging until the prospect connects the problem to something that costs them. Money, lost revenue or missed quota. Time, manual work and delays. Risk, compliance gaps or vendor reliability.

4/ You don't always need four layers. You do need to go past the first one.

3/ Two whys gets you the problem. Three to four whys gets you the root cause and the impact.

2/ Here's the model I coach to. Most reps stop at the first layer. One why gets you a symptom.

1/ They'd hear "it's inefficient" or "our systems are outdated," write it down, and call that discovery. No urgency. No business case. No deal.

I've audited 22+ discovery calls in two months. Most SMB AEs heard a surface pain and moved on. 🧵