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- Stop talking about your product. No one cares
Stop talking about your product. No one cares
Your ignorance of the gap between your solution and their situation is what kills your credibility
Jordan Crawford
September 24, 2025
Everyone defaults to the same mistake in cold outreach.
They lead with what they do instead of demonstrating they understand what the prospect is dealing with.
"We help companies like yours with X capability."
"Our platform solves Y problem."
"We work with 500-employee tech companies generating $10-50M revenue."
This approach has a zero-expertise moat. Anyone can say they work with mid-market tech companies. Anyone can claim they solve a problem.
Here's what actually earns credibility: establishing yourself as an expert in their specific situation.
Let me give you a concrete example from one of my customers.
We're targeting people who might be exposed to a critical security vulnerability. We know they use the technology stack where this vulnerability exists. Most people would write: "Hey Jordan, I saw you might be subject to this vulnerability. Our software fixes this. Here's how we can help."
That's terrible messaging. You're immediately positioning yourself as a vendor trying to sell something.
Here's the tactical empathy approach instead:
"You're probably aware there was a vulnerability discovered on [specific date] in [specific technology]. I was talking with an IT director who faced this exact situation. He initially thought he should [common but wrong approach], but it turns out that creates [specific problem]. Instead, he [better approach] because [reason]. He ended up building a playbook to handle these recurring issues. Want me to connect you, or would you like to see the playbook?"
Notice what didn't happen. No product pitch. No company credentials. No "we help companies like yours."
Instead: demonstrated specific knowledge of their situation, shared what an expert peer actually did, offered value with no strings attached.
This works because you've signaled alignment with their interests, independent of whether they buy anything. Their guard drops. They think: "This person understands my problem and isn't immediately trying to sell me."
The key insight: situations drive buying behavior, not job titles.
A CISO at a 500-person company dealing with a zero-day vulnerability has completely different needs than a CISO at a 500-person company who already has secure systems. Same title, same company size, totally different situations.
Events create urgency. First-time events create the highest urgency because the person lacks experience handling them.
When you perfectly describe their situation and what an expert would do in their position, people get curious: "Do you have a better way to solve this?"
That curiosity is what creates sales conversations.
This is exactly why content marketing works. It's hard to pitch in a video or blog post. You have to share your point of view, demonstrate expertise, and let people decide if they want that expertise applied to their business.
But most companies create great thought leadership, then completely abandon that approach in one-on-one sales situations. There's a massive gap between their content strategy and their outreach strategy.
The opportunity: attach your best insights to the people who need them right now.
If your company has analyzed customer data and knows when companies should expand internationally, or what contract terms cause problems later, or which technical implementations create scaling issues - that's your outreach material.
Don't pitch your platform. Share the insight. Demonstrate you understand their situation as well as they do, and might have an insight that you have (mine from your existing customers).
If you give people space to be curious about your solution, I promise they will be interested.
Just stop trying to sell them.
Sales messaging should feel like the best piece of thought leadership they've read, delivered exactly when they need it.
Jordan