Oct 31, 2026 | Read online
Happy Halloween!
We had our annual Halloween party last weekend, and it's one of my favorite nights of the year. I keep my entire basement painted for the party all year, everyone goes all out on their costumes and we all pretend like we’re 25 again.
This year I went as Michael Jackson in Thriller and we all tried to do the Thriller dance in my backyard which was hysterical. I thought I had the best costume until a buddy of mine showed up as a zombie version of me and stayed in character all night.
If you remember the video, everything looks normal right up until it doesn't, and the people you thought were fine turn out to be zombies.
I had a deal this week that scared me the same way, and I thought it was worth talking about. (how do you like that transition? ;)
On paper, it looked fantastic.
The first meeting went great. The second one had six people from their team on it, and they walked me through their org structure, their skill gaps, their deal sizes, the tools they use, and exactly what they wanted their January sales kickoff to accomplish. Then I got a third meeting with their CRO and two of his leaders.
Everyone was friendly and engaged, and I walked away from every call feeling really good about where it was going.
Then they sent me a vendor questionnaire.
If you've been selling for more than a minute, you know a vendor questionnaire is an RFP with a nicer name. And an RFP is usually where I lose, because 1) it's usually written by the competition and 2) they end up comparing you on paper and you never get back in front of the people who make the decision.
That's when I realized I might have a bad case of “Happy Ears.”
THE QUIET KIND OF HAPPY EARS
Most people think of happy ears as the rep who hears "maybe" and forecasts it as "yes." The rep who gets beat up on price, throws in extra licenses, and gives away everything to keep the deal alive. Most of us have lived that one.
There's a quieter version that I see filling a lot of pipelines right now, and it's harder to spot because it feels so good. The buyer tells you everything, takes every meeting, answers every question, and introduces you to their team, but doesn’t ask too many questions or for you to give them anything in return.
Buyers who are serious about buying ask for stuff. They want to know what it costs, when you can start, who else you've done this for, and what happens if it doesn't work. They push back and they negotiate, and that friction is a buying signal, just like objections are.
When a buyer gives you everything and asks for nothing, there's a decent chance you're column fodder. You're the second or third quote they need so they can say they ran a fair process, while the real decision is already leaning somewhere else.
Those are the zombie deals. They walk around your pipeline looking alive, and they're already dead.
WHAT MY SCORECARD TOLD ME
I track every deal on my Give-Get Scorecard. Every sales conversation is a trade. When I give something of value (insights, a proposal, pricing, a hold on my calendar), I should get something of equal or greater value back (access to the decision makers, the budget, the timeline, a real commitment). Each give and get has a point value, and the high-value ones come later in the deal.
This isn't about quid pro quo. It's based on the Rule of Reciprocity, which comes from human psychology. When someone asks you for something or you give something to them, they feel an obligation to give you something in return.
When I added up the points on this one, they had given me 79 points and I'd only given them 38.
At first glance, that looks great. They were giving me way more than I was giving them.
Then I looked at where the points came from. Almost all of it was early-stage stuff about their team, their challenges, and their tools, with zero commitment attached. Nobody had asked me for pricing or a proposal, and then the RFP showed up asking for all of it at once.
If I'm not giving, it usually means they're not asking. And if they're not asking, I need to find out why before I spend time filling out a questionnaire for free.
HOW I WALKED INTO THE NEXT CALL
I wanted a real plan this time instead of another friendly conversation.
I've also been trying to fix my own tool problem. Between my CRM, email, calendar, call recordings, and a handful of AI tools, I was spending too much time hopping between tabs instead of selling. I've been using Claude to help me connect all of it into one flow, and Otter (sponsor that I use) sits right in the middle of it.
Before the call, I used Otter's new Work Mode. I pointed it at my last conversation with this buyer, gave it my scorecard numbers, and asked for the three GETS I needed from the next call, the question to ask for each one, and what I could trade for it. It came back with exactly that, and it linked every point to the moment in the transcript where they'd said it.
During the call, I tried their new Live Assist. I expected to hate it. Tips popping up on my screen while I'm trying to listen to a buyer sounded like the most distracting thing in the world.
It wasn't. The tips came up quietly on the side of my screen where only I could see them, and a few of them showed up right when I needed them.
The one I keep thinking about came up after she told me they wanted my proposal on paper. It flagged that the proposal process was moving forward but nobody had committed to when they'd review it. That's a give with nothing coming back, which is the exact thing I tell reps not to do, so I made sure I asked what the process looked like from there and then locked in a meeting to present the proposal to the leadership team.
After the call, I had Otter score the conversation against my scorecard and give me some feedback and coaching. It highlighted how I gave more than I got, which was part of the plan to get me back on track and make sure I wasn't column fodder. Then it even helped me write the follow-up email.
If you want to see Work Mode and Live Assist for yourself, check them out here.
WHERE IT LANDED
The call told me what I needed to know. I asked where things really stood, and she told me they'd narrowed it down from quite a few vendors to two, and I'm one of them.
I don't know yet if I'm going to win this one. What I do know is I'm not column fodder anymore, and I have a plan to get in front of the people who decide instead of letting a document do my selling for me.
TRY THIS ON YOUR PIPELINE
Pull up the three deals you're most excited about right now and ask yourself some questions about each of them.
Is the buyer asking for the same things that your other "closed-won" deals did? Are there critical things they haven't asked about that are important for them to know?
If the answer is no, or their questions were limited, that deal might not be as healthy as it feels. Get back in front of them and ask where things really stand, how many others they're looking at, and what would need to be true for you to be the one they pick.
Those questions feel risky. You're going to find out the answers eventually anyway, and it's a lot cheaper to find out now than at the end of the year when you're counting on it to come in and they ghost you.
The Give-Get is one of the core pieces of Driving to Close, the deal execution program I run with sales teams. If your team's pipeline is full of friendly buyers who never ask for anything, that's where I'd start.
Happy ears feel great right up until the deal goes dark. Go check your pipeline for zombies.
#MakeItHappen
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