{"id":388020,"date":"2026-07-06T16:23:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/388020\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T16:23:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T16:23:18","slug":"theres-lots-of-hope-when-it-comes-to-closing-deals-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/388020\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s lots of hope when it comes to closing deals \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a puzzle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The founder identifies a win-win, a partnership that will obviously benefit both sides. He prepares a logical presentation, calling out all the synergies as well as the shared risks. He organizes the pitch and gets a warm introduction to the other CEO so he is not coming in cold, a blind email, a shot in the dark, never heard of this person before.<\/p>\n

The warm intro is critical. Let\u2019s pause here a moment. How much money have you wasted on outbound phone calls? An entire industry promises to get you leads. They will learn your pitch, and they will hit the phones with passion and vigor \u2014 because they get paid to dial.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If they get a lead, they get paid more. And if by some miracle the lead converts into a paying customer, they get paid more. Now remind me, what exact risk did the call center take? So this purported hot lead gets sent to your business development team, and they call said lead and they pitch \u2014 and often nothing happens. In fact, the statistic is only 1% to 3% convert.<\/p>\n

Ah yes, leads.<\/p>\n

At this point, I refer you once again to Glengarry Glen Ross: \u201cThe leads are weak,\u201d says Shelley \u201cThe Machine\u201d Levene.\u00a0 That provokes the famous \u201ccoffee is for closers\u201d speech.<\/p>\n

But what leads really do is they give hope. I have been the founder\/CEO more than seven times and besides trying to not run out of money, one of my main jobs is to give the team hope.<\/p>\n

What is hope? Gretchen Gavett, managing editor of the Harvard Business Review, defines hope as \u201clinking present action to a desired future, even when outcomes are uncertain and progress is uneven.\u201d\u00a0<\/a> Hope is not the same as optimism, which is the belief that things will get better, while hope is the sense \u201cthat I can make things better \u2014 and here\u2019s how,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

Gavett identifies four forms of hope:<\/p>\n

The mirage, or inflated hope.\u00a0 That deal will never close; you are dreaming.
\nThe North Star, which is mobilizing hope.\u00a0 It is aspirational, where we are headed.\u00a0 It is \u201cThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre.\u201d The gold is up there.
\nThe Incrementalist is stabilizing hope.\u00a0 You tell the team you don\u2019t have all the answers, but you ask them to keep trusting that you will find a way while they post their resumes on LinkedIn.
\nThe death spiral. Hopeless. This one resonates for founders in startups, facing the grim reaper.<\/p>\n

You remember Pauline. She was resting on the train tracks. Well, you know the Saturday serials. Ming never wins, because hope is always riding in the caboose.<\/p>\n

This is a true story. I had already sent a letter to all the investors that the ballgame was over. Then two days later, the big $1 billion company that told us a week ago to pound sand called back and wanted one more look at our AI software.<\/p>\n

Now here comes crazy hope. I tell the four geniuses on the tech team to stick around for one last shot at redemption. I will land the plane, get them jobs and sell the company. I just need to convince the other side that this is truly in their best interests and that I am not a used car salesman.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of merger and acquisition stories have this same outcome. The companies are big \u2014 they have multiple layers of executives and multiple layers of lawyers who will explain the 29 pitfalls in the deal \u2014 and that is from just reading the first page of the proposal.<\/p>\n

The CEO of the big company is in the Midwest, founded the company 20 years ago, has a very direct style, but admits he wouldn\u2019t know a vector database from a carburetor. He\u2019s a street guy. I can work with him.<\/p>\n

His tech team has one last call with us. They finally admit, \u201cWe\u2019ve never seen that before.\u201d And with that, we have a deal. Rabbits, hats, whatever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, we were willing to sell to the banjo player for $50,000, but this deal is a couple of million. Oh, and on the subject of hope \u2014 one more hope.<\/p>\n

I hope it closes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rule No. 832:\u00a0 \u201cSurprise me.\u201d \u2014 Bob Hope\u2019s final words<\/p>\n

Senturia is a serial entrepreneur who invests in startups. Please email ideas to neil@askturing.ai\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here is a puzzle.\u00a0\u00a0 The founder identifies a win-win, a partnership that will obviously benefit both sides. He…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,2087,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-388020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-business","tag-business-columns","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}