Emails are getting worse

Friendly advice, take it or leave it. You’re getting lazy. You have more tools, more data, and more leverage than any sales team I’ve ever managed — and somehow the quality of outreach has gone down, not up. I watched a conversation yesterday where the entire approach was built around upfront qualification. Checkbox mentality. “How many trucks do you have? Do you have at least 3mil in revenue? What’s your timeline?” — before there was ever a real human moment. Here’s what that misses: when you treat a business owner like a funnel stage, you lose. Not just the deal — you lose the relationship, the referral, the handoff to their industry contact who might be a perfect fit. Owners talk to owners. Networks are tight. One genuine conversation can open three doors you didn’t know existed. The transaction will come. But connection has to come first. Slow down. Be curious. Ask one more question before you pivot to your pitch. The extra ninety seconds it takes to actually engage a person is the difference between a reply that goes somewhere and an email that gets archived. Do better.