"A Little Bit of Both" — The Concession, Line by Line
Author
Ed Gangi
Date Published
The setup
This call was 4 minutes and 12 seconds. The prospect was a VP of Data Engineering at a mid-market fintech. They'd been on our list for three weeks. Two prior attempts — one voicemail, one "not interested, we have tools." This was the third try, different angle.
The opening (0:00–0:38)
The SDR opened with the labor frame instead of the product category. Instead of "I'm calling about our AI data platform," the opener was "I'm calling because we work with data engineering teams that are still writing a lot of pipeline code by hand." The prospect's first response was silence — then "okay, go on." That's already different from the "we have tools" reflex.
The diagnostic question (1:15)
After a brief description of the work the product handles, the SDR asked: "Are your engineers writing the code, or is something generating it for you?" The prospect paused for about two seconds, then said: "A little bit of both, honestly." That concession changed the entire trajectory of the call.