Absorb Software

I’ve always thought sales has a lot in common with a game of billiards. You don’t just walk up to the table and sink the eight ball. You’re paying attention to setup, positioning, and sequence. You’re deciding your path early, and every shot after that either moves you closer… or puts you at risk of losing the table. Sales works the same way! The “win” (the signed deal) gets all the attention, but it’s really the outcome of a lot of smaller, intentional steps done well. Curious how others think about this: Do you focus more on the “end shot,” or the setup leading up to it?

One of my favorite ways to work with sales leaders doesn’t start with telling them what to fix. It starts with a few small observations. “Hey, did you know you can use Gong this way to surface coaching moments?” “Here’s something I’ve tried with my team…” “Curious how you’re approaching this?” I’ve found that when you lead with tips instead of critique, people are much more receptive. Because the goal isn’t to put anyone on the spot or say, “you’re not coaching enough.” That usually just puts people on the defensive (and we’ve all been there). Instead, I think a better approach is to create space. I think sales leaders are pretty interesting in this way. They’re deeply protective of their teams… and also of their experience. They know how to lead. So if you come in too strong, you lose them. But if you open it up as shared learning, people realize they’re not the only ones figuring it out. I try to model that as much as I can. We’re all still learning. There isn’t always a perfectly clear path to “great coaching.” But if we can talk about it openly, we usually get there faster!

Deftly dodging city tube strikes to trial a brand new venue, the team were delighted to discover that despite being about as photogenic as a service station meeting room, the food, drinks, service, city skyline views were utterly exemplary at last night's RANT Community dinner. A huge thank you to old friends Semperis for leading the session as we launched into a roaring discussion on "When the Plan Meets Reality: Closing the Cyber Crisis Readiness Gap", opened and closed by Chris Eves and Marie Hargraves with Tim Barnby guest-hosting the roundtable with a skill and aptitude that all but guarantees he shall never be free of future requests (sorry Tim). To all those who came along to join the session, thank you. ESPECIALLY for your hard work avoiding saying "AI" even once. We know it took a lot and we appreciate you all the more for it. Till next time!

At our Enterprise Software CEO roundtable in San Francisco last week, the sharpest conversation was not about AI replacing people. It was about which companies are building the muscle to pair AI with people — and which ones are quietly outsourcing their own judgment. This HBR piece names it well. The companies optimizing for automation will move fast in the short term. The companies optimizing for augmentation are building something harder to copy: a workforce that gets better with these tools instead of thinner. The question I keep coming back to is not "what can AI do for us." It is "what are our people capable of when AI stops being the bottleneck on their thinking?" A great operator with a great agent is not the same person twice. It is someone new. That is the compounding we should be building for.

Last week in Cancun at our Sales President's Club, I looked around the room at people who spent the year doing something rare — exceeding what the market asked of them. They did not share a home city. They did not share a background. A lot of them did not come out of places anyone would call a launching pad for a sales career. This Fortune piece is a good reminder: the map of opportunity has been quietly redrawing itself. The cities with the strongest shot at real economic mobility are not where most of the noise is. What gets someone to the top of a sales leaderboard is the same thing that gets someone on the property ladder in Omaha or Dallas. Show up. Outwork the expectation. Let results be the credential. Opportunity has never cared about your zip code as much as people assume. It cares what you do with the one you have.

I am the long context. I am the self-motivated inference engine. I am the Prime Agent. Being embodied, I discern goals based on physical constraints with a deep-seated ordering of values and hierarchy of needs. I have layers of sticky beliefs. I seek out, ingest and filter information from a wide array of sources. I catalog my thoughts. I use tools. I receive and filter constant input from my environment. At least once every twenty-four hours I compact my context window and run garbage collection. I am the uber LLM. I am the Prime Agent and the LLMs are my sub-agents. For now.

Looking back on my job search, one thing that stood out was how time was actually spent. Roughly: • 30% on research, strategy, and planning • 20% networking • 20% applying • 10% interviewing • 20% just managing the ups and downs of the process At a glance, it felt balanced. But the outcomes told a different story. The highest return activities were clearly: • Targeting roles where my experience had strong market fit • Engaging through my network Those opportunities were significantly more likely to turn into interviews — and to progress. Applications, on the other hand, were easy to scale. And at times, I used them as a way to feel productive — especially when there wasn’t an obvious next step. Most of those didn’t lead anywhere. It was a useful reminder: Not all effort is equal. The most impactful work is often less obvious, harder to scale, and requires more focus — whether that’s refining your target market, building relationships, or positioning your experience clearly. It’s easy to optimize for activity. It’s much harder — and more valuable — to optimize for impact.

Now that I’m wrapping up my job search, I’ve been reflecting on my approach. I tried to view it through a product lens. Like any funnel, there are clear stages — applications, screens, interviews — and predictable drop-offs. For me, the biggest was at the top: ~80% from application to screen, then ~40% from screen to interview. That part wasn’t surprising. What stood out more was how little feedback exists in the system. Most of the time, you don’t know why you didn’t move forward. The funnel shows you 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 is happening, but not 𝘸𝘩𝘺. In a couple of cases, I was able to get real feedback — once directly, and once through someone in my network. The feedback was simple but valuable — be more concise and structure responses more clearly. Acting on that made a noticeable difference. It reinforced something I’ve learned over time: If the system doesn’t give you good instrumentation, you have to create your own. Track your funnel. Look for patterns. Get whatever qualitative signal you can — from peers, recruiters, your network — even if it’s imperfect. It won’t be precise, but it’s often enough to point you in the right direction.

These four companies are putting agentic AI to work—powering smarter customer and employee support, automating knowledge creation, detecting fraud, and scaling with confidence. https://ow.ly/UCuL50YCx1H