Founder @ FDTC → I help startups go from $100K-$15M by improving sales processes, playbooks, & people → Building the #1 SaaS sales coaching program for AEs → Featured in Techstars & Sales Hacker → #helpmedontsellme

It was Monday morning, 11 AM when I went to my boss and said, “I’m sorry, this job, sales...it’s not for me” and I left.

That was 13+ years ago.

At 22 years old I landed my first real job fresh out of college ready to be a “career person.”

I crushed the interview.

But when I came into work for my first day at 10am, I quickly realized that I was scared sh**less of sales, and quit within the first hour.

For the next 3 years, I had PTSD and avoided sales like the plague.

I played it safe and stayed in my comfort zone.

No sales-related stuff whatsoever.

I lost my confidence and ambition. 

I missed career opportunities and wasted away my early 20s.

Fast forward to present day:

I'm a former 2X VP of Sales who took 1 startup from $0 ARR to ≈ $10M ARR in 4 years, and another from $1.5M to ≈ $4.6M ARR in 18 months.

I now teaching SMB AEs and teams how to be top sellers, make higher 6-figures, and get promoted through repeatable systems and playbooks.


Want to learn more? Book a clarity call: https://calendly.com/fdtc/30min 


P.S.⚠️ Grab my top (FREE) 24 discovery questions 6,000+ salespeople are using: https://bit.ly/4d3B2sl


Otherwise, you can find me here:
► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@demotoclose
► iTunes: https://apple.co/3Fome9g | Spotify: https://spoti.fi/408V0LS
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/@mistamor

Mor Assouline

I used to say I have no time to work out.

A 30–45 min workout isn’t just 30–45 min.

Between commuting + showering it’s at least 1–2 hours.

But what if it didn’t have to be?

3 of the best purchases I made over the last 6 months:
	1.	A pull up/dip bar for my office
	2.	A stand up desk
	3.	An in office treadmill

All are in office.

Requires 0 commute.

Integrated in my work.

I made it too easy for myself to say yes.

Founder @ Demo to Close | “Success feels like luck. I don’t have a repeatable process.” → I coach SMB & MM AEs on the system for predictable performance | 2X VP of Sales

No alternative text description for this image

SMB sales is overwhelming.

Unlike ENT, it feels like you don’t have time to breathe.

I’ve been there.

- Running 5-6 sales calls every day.
- No time to prep for next meeting.
- Forgetting to follow your call structure.

It’s a lot.

So here’s how I'd reset my focus before the next call:

I’d have a pre call ritual.

Before every call, I’d take a walk around the office, and mentally rehearse what’s about to happen.

It worked for me.

What’s yours?

I audited 47 discovery calls. Inbound close rate = 45%. Outbound close rate =17%. Same MM AE, same approach, but completely different results.

They forgot the most important part of discovery:

You should not treat inbound and outbound leads the same way.

Inbound prospects:
- Raised their hand
- Have a problem they're trying to solve
- Expect to be challenged and questioned

You can be direct: "What's broken that made you reach out?"

Outbound prospects:
- Didn't ask to talk to you
- You're coming to them
- Need context before they'll engage
- You have to earn the right to ask questions

The principle: Your approach should match their entry point.

Inbound = Permission granted They gave you permission by raising their hand. Use it.

Outbound = Permission required You need to earn the right to dig deeper.

Example:
Wrong way with outbound: 
→ "What challenges are you facing with your current system?" (They're thinking: "Who is this person and why should I tell them anything?")

Right way with outbound: 
→ "When I speak with [personas], they tell me they're dealing with [problem A], [problem B] or [Problem C]. So when I did some research, I noticed [relevant trigger] and was wondering if any of that is also something you're experiencing too?"

The lesson: Stop using the same playbook for different situations.

Read the room and map your approach to where the buyer lives.


P.S. Here are 24 of the top discovery questions 7,000+ AEs have been using: https://lnkd.in/eR69raD4

A mid-market AE I just started coaching told me his problem is "inconsistent prospecting." I asked him to screen share and show me his process. 

I found the real problem within 5 minutes.

Me: What does inconsistent mean?

Him: prospects once or twice a month instead of weekly.

Me: Why?

Him: It takes 3-4 hours and it's exhausting.

Me: Okay. But why does it take 3-4 hours? What are you actually doing 
during those 3-4 hours?

Him: He logs into database directory, searches a specific vertical and adds 
some criteria, opens 50+ websites. Decides if each one is a fit.

Me: How does you decide which is worth going after?

Him: Gut feel. I just know when I see it.

Me: What IS gut feel?

Him: don't know. It's like... I can't explain it. I just know based on certain 
things I’m noticing.

Me: sounds like its a mix of certain criteria and intuition?

Him: Yes

Me: "So your brain has seen hundreds of companies. Some closed. Some 
didn't. Your brain learned patterns. What "good" looks like. But you never made those patterns conscious. So you can't fully articulate them."

Him: Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. It only works when I do it.

That's the actual bottleneck.

His knowledge is trapped in his subconscious and he’s working off of intuition.

So here's what we're doing:

Step 1: Figure out what his brain is actually looking for.

Pull every deal he closed won → Feed it into Claude → See what's consistent.

The goal: find the patterns of what good looks like.


Step 2: Write it down.

Once we know what "good" looks like, we make it a checklist.

Now it's not in his head (step 1 and 2 will be tedious at first).


Step 3: Let Claude do the work.

Export companies from the data base results that match the initial criteria and upload to Claudecowork.

Claude checks each website against the checklist and returns the good ones.

20 minutes instead of 3-4 hours.

He’ll be able to build more pipeline, faster.

His "intuition" won't be stuck in his head anymore.

It's in a system.

Which means he can repeat it and scale it



P.S. I’ve been spending 3-4 hours a day vibe coding. All this AI can be overwhelming if you don't know where to point it to. The easiest place to start, at least for me, is looking at what tasks are draining my time that I'm doing manually that I can automate.

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)




P.S. I’ve been coaching AEs in my community on how to leverage AI in sales. Feb and March coaching slots are sold out, but if you’re interested in joining HMU, we have a waitlist.

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.

I review 30+ calls a week for the reps I coach. This is the single most expensive habit I see (it's not discovery).

I was reviewing a call last week where the rep did everything right.

Really solid discovery and demo. 

Then he showed pricing.

Prospect said: "Hmm, that's a bit more than we expected."

And the rep, without missing a beat, said: "Yeah, so we actually have some Q4 pricing incentives right now. If you move forward by end of month, I can probably get you a better rate."

Nobody asked for a discount.

The prospect hadn't said they couldn't afford it.

Hadn't even finished their thought.

The rep just gave it away.

Here's what happens when you do that:

1. You tell the buyer the price was never real. 
2. And you train them to expect a deal every single time you show a number. 

So now every future conversation with that buyer starts with them waiting for you to cave.

I call this flinching.

Most reps don't even realize they're doing it. 

They hear "that's more than expected" and their brain skips to "I'm about to lose this deal."

So they reach for the only tool they think will save it.

The problem: "that's more than we expected" means completely different things depending on who's saying it and why. 

Each version needs a different response.

If you flinch before figuring out which one you're dealing with, you give away money for nothing.

Stop treating every pricing pushback the same. 

Start diagnosing before you respond.

I'm breaking down the full framework in Monday's newsletter. The diagnosis, the talk tracks, all of it (including a cheatsheet you can use).

Read it here tomorrow along with 6.6K+ sellers: demotoclose.com/newsletter


P.S.  It's my birthday today. Instead of cake, I'm giving you a newsletter that'll save you thousands in commission.

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.

This is where I built my confidence in sales.

Wearing a suit and door knocking during in Miami (in summer...it's hot).

The cheapest homes in this neighborhood are $10M-$15M.

2 years prior I had quit my first sales job because I was scared.

That notebook you see me holding was a list of all the homeowners that told us to F off.

I had to make sure we never knocked on their homes again.

I never closed a single deal that year in that neighborhood.

But I walked away with a sales MBA

The one thing that can compensate for lack of sales skill is confidence.

And after 1 year of door knocking and cold calling I was confident as hell.

That’s how I eventually found myself in tech sales and teaching others how to be confident and sell better.

First as an early stage AE.

Then as a 2X VP of sales.

Here are 14 (of the many) rules that will never be dead in sales that I've learned:

1. Always show up even if you're not in the mood

2. Don't move onto another skill until you've improved the current one

3. You'll sell more when asking questions vs talking/pitching

4. Always have a compelling reason for the prospect to listen/show up

5. A few bad experiences and screw ups doesn't mean YOU are a screw up

6. You'll always learn more when you fail vs succeed

7. Betting on yourself is the best seed you can plant

8. Surround yourself with people who you look up to

9. Affirmations are cheesy until you do it consistently

10. Community is underrated, never do it alone.

11. Expect the work to be harder/longer than what you anticipated 

12. There is always a trade-off, always.

13. How you say things is sometimes more important than what you say.

14. Building a brand makes sales so much easier

full://stack.founder/Building=The_Startupverse&role=CEO=true&company=RadHash

Lorde Astor West is a technology entrepreneur, systems architect, and founder building the infrastructure layer beneath the next generation of software companies. She is the Founder and CEO of RadHash, an AI-native operating system designed to eliminate the "messy middle" that quietly kills most startups between MVP and scale.

With more than two decades in software, Lorde has led or contributed to hundreds of production systems across industries including fintech, payments, healthcare, marketplaces, media, logistics, and regulated data environments. Her work focuses on a single, persistent problem: why most software fails after early traction—and how to design systems that survive real-world growth.

Lorde is known for seeing structural failure modes early. Long before “vibe coding,” no-code sprawl, and AI wrappers became mainstream, she identified the invisible cliff where startups lose eligibility for scale, capital, and exits due to fragile architecture. RadHash was built to address that moment directly—shipping the majority of a company’s production stack on day one, with rules legible to both humans and machines.

Her approach sits at the intersection of architecture, economics, and human judgment. Rather than chasing trends, she builds foundations: predictable systems, composable infrastructure, and software that can be safely extended by AI without collapsing under its own weight. Today, RadHash supports pilots across dozens of industries and countries, serving founders who are rebuilding real companies—not demos.

Beyond RadHash, Lorde is building a broader ecosystem focused on founder durability: vertical operating systems, embedded payments and financial products, AI trained on real operator behavior, and an on-demand fractional workforce designed for early-stage execution. Each business is autonomous, but designed to interoperate—mirroring how resilient systems work in the real world.

Lorde is also a vocal critic of fast-fashion software, performative metrics, and narratives that mistake speed for progress. She writes and speaks candidly about power dynamics in venture, the myth of “too early,” and why most startup failures are decided long before the market ever weighs in.

At her core, she is a builder. She believes software should last, founders should own their foundations, and technology should reduce risk—not disguise it.

Her long-term ambition: to reset how companies are built, financed, and scaled—by making durable infrastructure the default instead of the exception.

Lorde Astor West

Lorde Astor West🍀

Operator @ RadHash 🤘🏻 the Agentic OS

Wolf pack.  

Marianne Kaiser 🧶🐈 Creator and Chief
Elena Lunt 🦝 - Feral Marketing Prophet 🦝
Kayla McGuire - Just breathe 🧘🏻‍♀️
Jaye Yaple - The Sonic Empress of Soap🧼
Amy Schmidt - Ride or Die hide the bodies 
Kseniia Riabova 🐱  - Baby's got backend. 👩🏻‍💻
Natalie Charles, PMP - Trigger🔫 happy
Ela Shapira - Blowing 💣💥 up the patriarchy 
😎 Miglena G. - 💸Funding the female future
Michelle Howard - Mad scientista 🧪🥼 inventress extraordinaire 
Crystal Stabley🎡 - ✨🌟🎆🎇💖
Jessica Norris - "I'm here for her comments" 🍿
Gemma Rodgers - Where ya been girrrrrrl 🔍
Allison Rossi 🦄 - Strawberry with 2 rr's 
Natalie Hussey - Oh? Was I being ✌🏼cringe ✌🏼 Whoops 💅🏼.
Joey Ellis 💐 Ellis - Just doing it anyway 💁🏻‍♀️
Melissa Pearson Goodwin - 🏗 🌷
Kelly Voith - Secret Agent Girl 🕵🏻‍♀️
Vanessa Culver - Pay up! 💳 
Laura Anderson Riley 🧚🏻‍♀️ Fairy tech goddess
Jade Wilson - She's Elite
Brooke Sweedar - "Her Baddness" if your nasty
Karen Forde - 🚀 Lift Off! 
Fatou Samb - Builders go'n build
Briana Washington, MA - Farm fam 🐔🐮
Zoya Lehrer - 🏈🏏🏐🏑🏓🏌🏻‍♀️🥍🤾🏻‍♂️🥎🤾🏻‍♀️⛹🏻‍♂️⛹🏻‍♀️🏌🏻‍♂️📆

Anyone I missed - Add yourself to the comments. I'll sling shot you up in the post.

New trend.... #SelfieFriday. Let's keep it business casual. "Optimizing" for #FlashbackFriday

Founder/CEO, RadHash | f*ck “Fast-fashion SaaS” | build durable apps with Hash OSX the self-hosted operating layer for agentic businesses | Raising $5M

I’m sick of tech leaders laying of thousands they acquired during the hoard hiring run and calling it AI layoffs while running operations and legacy tech stacks that fall apart the second AI touches them.

Business Transformation Consultant- A focus on pragmatic use of AI and how it impacts culture, workflows and business structure | Author | Keynote Speaker | Trainer | 4 x LinkedIn #1 Voice in Marketing

I'm honestly fed up with tech leaders stepping onto stages and cheerfully declaring that AI is about to obliterate jobs, especially entry-level ones, while spreading massive fear, paranoia, distrust, and hopelessness across hundreds of millions of people.

The impact is real and unprecedented in its emotional toll.

What frustrates me most? 
Many of these leaders don't seem to fully believe their own rhetoric. 

Take Anthropic: their CEO has warned that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs in the coming years, yet they're actively hiring across engineering, research, recruiting, and more roles.

If they truly thought SaaS was dead or entry-level talent irrelevant, why keep building on it and posting openings?

If Advertising is all to be done by AI, why doesn't OpenAI use it to make their own ads?  If Marketing is so easy to do with AI, why does ChatGPT have the worst naming convention anyone has ever devised.

Yes, AI is profoundly transformative. 

It will reshape the workforce in complex, uneven ways.

Yes, we should be open eyed, cautious, agile, aware.

But what's truly sickening is how the Overton window has shifted: it's now somehow TOTALLY FINE to terrify hundreds of millions, just to hype valuations, raise funds, or sound "visionary."

Where are the PR teams, advisors, or peers saying, 
"Hey Guys, doesn't this make us seem like total sociopaths?"

"Errr, hello, this sounds  misanthropic, why are we throwing humans under the bus here?" 

We have a generation of leaders with unprecedented power to motivate and unite people around building a better future. Instead, they seem determined to trash talk humanity's potential, to line their pockets

This isn't okay. It needs calling out.

AI can amplify human ingenuity, create new opportunities, and solve massive problems, 

How about we lead with responsibility and optimism, guidance, wisdom, context, empowerment, not doomscrolling headlines.

I'd rather be aware and not blinded, but optimistic not terrified hopeless. 
Lets bet on Humanity 

What do you think?

A mistake a lot of first time entrepreneurs make. 

They get a little success
buy a bunch of expensive crap

Big house
Vacations
Expensive car
Expensive Clothes

and then have to work twice as hard to keep it. 

Then bad times hit
Keeping up becomes impossible
And they lose it all

Here's my advice. 

Bank your success

Instead of buying fancy stuff. 
Put it back into your business.
Into more revenue producing assets

That way it's an investment
You increase your revenue
You keep your personal costs low

You're happy

This is too real - AGI is that you??? EVERY . SINGLE . DEVELOPER wants to full on rewrite the last guys code because “It sucks”. Now AI is doing it too. [that’s the joke]

Investor | CEO AskSLM: Decentralized Full-Stack Sovereign AI as Infrastructure Platform for Secure, Air-Gapped, Local, Private & Compliant AI Execution

Everyone’s screaming that AI coding is the future. “SaaS is dead, AI will build everything, Engineers are obsolete” Blah Blah Blah 

Then an internal AI assistant decides existing production code is inadequate and deletes it so parts of Amazon Web Services (AWS) go down for 13 hours.

Writing code is easy but Operating production systems is hard and Governing execution is even harder. 

AI autocomplete ≠ Operational intelligence
Code generation ≠ System reliability
Speed ≠ Accountability

Markets are selling SaaS & Cybersecurity Stock like AI replaces engineering overnight. As if vibe code generation equals a substitute for operational systems, automation equals governance, and production risk disappears because a model can autocomplete. The reality is writing code is not the same as owning execution.

Hype builds headlines but Infrastructure prevents outages - AskSLM

#AI #AWS #AIInfrastructure #AskSLM #RealityCheck

Fresh eggies make the best toast. #Dbockles #FreshEggs

Fundraising is a great experience. It will make or break you.

It will uncover your weaknesses, 
It will tear you down, 

But if you're up for it, 
It will teach you how to build yourself back up 

and win. 

I would suggest this to anyone who wants to level up
And see what they are made of

Even if you're not planning on taking on investors.

Maybe give this sweet baby girl a second thought... #LoveABull #AdoptAPittie

Founder, DemandJen | Sales Trainer & SKO Keynote Speaker | Dog Rescue Advocate

Meet Mara 🩷

She’s a 7 year old, 59lb girl with the most gentle demeanor (especially with kids). 

Dogs like Mara always have a harder time getting adopted. She’s older + she’s a pittie mix. It doesn’t make her any less deserving of love. 

Every dog should be judged by their own demeanor. Not breed sterotypes.

We have a husky who never makes a peep and is scared of his own shadow.

We have a pittie who would throw herself in front of a bus to protect our kids. 

Mara is calm, easygoing, walks nicely on a leash, and does amazing in daycare. She’s a complete love.

Mara deserves a loving family. Will you help share her? 🩷

Available at Many Paws Global Rescue in Palatine, IL.

Photo credit: Nicholas I. Knuth 📸 

PS - I know many of you have pitties, too. I love seeing your photos in the comments - please share them!

A VC said. "It looks difficult". 

Because it is. 

No matter if
Automated and prompt generated 

There are no magic bullets

Software development is difficult. 
Automating software development is harder

Building generalized infrastructure
Inventing universal common components

Modularizing
Encapsulating
Creating rules

System thinking 
In multi-dimensional universes

Then delivering this in a coherent way
That can be utilized by any friend or foe
Without much of a learning curve

Software automation does not start with code automation
It starts with strong generalized foundations
Than anyone can build on
To deliver products

I had every intention of working today but instead I worked in the garden, K-Drama'd and chilled, took a nap, woke up to WWIII, helped dig a trench. Today was swell. Tomorrow muck the chicken house and maybe more hole digging. What are you up to this fine weekend? What's good.

What if what you were working on was truly unique. I've heard it a million times. No idea is novel. But what if yours was... And it wasn't just novel, it was relevant, on time, and in demand. What if your proof was irrefutable.

2026 - The year of 🤬 around and find out. [ grabs 🍿 ]

taplio

The Battle

Mor Assouline

Lorde Astor West

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMor Assouline's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreLorde Astor West's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Mor Assouline

Lorde Astor West

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mor Assouline's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreLorde Astor West's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMor Assouline's LinkedIn Performance