Let’s mix it up, pick one to learn about this week…
​ElevenLabs Releases New AI-Powered Music Creation App​
​SpaceX confidentailly files for IPO, seeks $2T Valuation​
​Microsoft is Now Building a Foundational LLM

NEWS TO KNOW

How I’m Attacking My Best Account This Year

Most reps treat their whole territory the same.

Same sequences, same messaging, same activity targets across the board.

That’s fine if you have unlimited time. You don’t.

Here’s the thing: the reps who consistently hit big numbers don’t work harder across the board. They go insane on a small handful of accounts while putting everything else on autopilot.

Here’s the exact playbook I’m running on “ACME” right now.

Step 1: Tier like your life depends on it

Before anything, you need three buckets:

• Tier 1: “This could make my year.” Full sniper treatment.
• Tier 2: You want them, but they’re not your first call in the morning.
• Tier 3: Inbound or signal-led only. If they come to you, great. You’re not chasing them.

The whole point is to give yourself permission to ignore Tier 3. Most reps can’t do this. The ones who can are usually the ones clearing club.

ACME is a Tier 1 for me. 3,500 employees, perfect ICP, and a deal here could be one of the biggest of my year.

So it gets the full treatment.

Step 2: The deep dive (block 90 minutes, close Slack)

Before I send a single message, I do a full research session on ACME. Calendar block, no interruptions.

I have a Notion template that guides me through every section so I’m not trying to remember what to look for.

What I’m building out:

• Org chart (light version, who owns what)
• Tech stack (what are they already running?)
• Business context: What do they sell, who do they sell to, what’s their growth story? I watch a 2-minute YouTube video and ask ChatGPT to explain the company to me like I’m in 5th grade.
• Funding / ownership: PE or VC-backed? Public? Changes the conversation.
• What’s in the news: Awards, layoffs, new products, flat growth – any signal matters.
• Prior conversations: If there are any previous calls in Gong, I run an AI Briefer and ask questions.
• Subject line ammo: Internal language, code names, SKO themes, company mantras. These are gold. If you can use their internal language in a cold email subject line, it stops them cold.

This deep dive is my foundation. Everything I do for the next 6 weeks builds on it.

Step 3: Mass connect on LinkedIn

Go into Sales Navigator, filter ACME employees, and connect with 15-20 people. Not just the buyers.

Why? A few reasons:

• When you or your company posts content, they see it organically.
• You’re building a pool of potential warm intros.
• Some of them will become your “below the line” contacts.

This sounds boring. It is. Do it anyway.

Step 4: Work the TeamLink connections

This is where it gets interesting. TeamLink in Sales Navigator shows you who at your company is connected to people at ACME.

My process:

1. Go through every TeamLink connection at ACME.
2. Slack my colleague: “Hey, do you actually know [Name] at ACME? Trying to land this account.”
3. If yes: Ask if they’d be willing to intro me. Offer to draft the message. Make it easy.
4. If they barely know them: “No worries, appreciate you checking.”

For ACME specifically, I sent 32 Slack messages doing this. That’s about an hour of work.

Result: Three conversations booked in the first week, including an SDR, a head of customer marketing, and one more contact. All from warm intros.

The 2:1 LinkedIn intro (your colleague tags you in a DM) gets roughly 80% reply rates. Nothing else comes close.

Step 5: Have “below the line” conversations

These aren’t formal discovery calls. They’re intel calls.

Target: SDRs, AEs, customer marketing, you name it. Not the buyers yet. People who know how the business actually runs.

My opening message is basically a text:

“hey what’s up Micah!

just got assigned ACME for 2026 as one of my strategic accounts and could not be more pumped up.

I always do my best to build up more of a point of view on where we can help the most in 2026 and would love the chance to run past some ‘dumb’ questions past you.

open at all to finding 15 min? Coffee on me (and infinite sales karma) for the time!!”

Short, honest, low-pressure. If they connect first and accept on LinkedIn, I wait until they’re a first-degree connection before reaching out. Don’t burn time using InMails.

What I’m trying to learn:

• What’s the north star goal for the year? (Revenue target, IPO, new product launch?)
• What are their top 2-3 company level priorities for the year?
• What’s the theme of the last SKO?
• What are the internal code names for big initiatives?

I show up to these calls with my research doc already half-filled. I’m not starting from zero. I’m filling in gaps and validating what I already think I know.

At the start of the call, I’m straight with them: “I’m not going to put your name in a subject line or quote you anywhere. This is just me building the best possible POV so that when I do reach out to your leadership, I’m not wasting anyone’s time.”

That framing gets people to open up.

Step 6: Build your one-pager POV

After two or three of those conversations, I take all my notes and dump them into Claude with a one-pager template.

The prompt does the heavy lifting.

The output is a one-page business case that covers:

• What ACME is trying to accomplish (their language, not mine)
• Where I think the gap is
• How we’ve helped similar companies with that exact problem
• Quotes from conversations (anonymized or with permission)

I don’t spend an hour designing a slide. I use a simple doc generator, clean it up in 10 minutes, and move on.

This becomes the centerpiece of my outrageous play.

Step 7: The outrageous play (pick one person, go all in)(pick one person, go all in)

By now I know ACME well enough to pick a bullseye.

One person I want to land. Usually the CRO or SVP of RevOps in my world at Gong.

Then I think: what’s the most memorable, least expected thing I can do to get in front of this person?

My formula: warm intro + hyper-personalized gift + one-pager POV + handwritten note

For a recent Tier 1, I found that the CEO loved ATV racing.

I went on Etsy and spent $15 on a monogrammed keychain with their SKO theme engraved on it. Shipped it to their office with no return address, a handwritten note, and my one-pager inside the package. No CTA on the gift. No “let’s find 30 minutes.”

Just the package.

Three days later, my colleague who knew the CEO sent a LinkedIn intro. I came in hot referencing the package, my POV, and the conversations I’d had with three people on his team.

A few rules for gifting:

1. Don’t gift and immediately ask for a meeting. It feels transactional. Let the gift land first. Follow up with “did it arrive?” not “got 30 minutes?”
2. Don’t put your name on it. Let them wonder. Build intrigue. The mystery is part of the play.
3. Don’t scale it. If the same gift works for all 30 of your prospects, it’s not a real gift. Think about what you’d get a family member who you actually know.
4. Don’t reach out before it arrives. If you’ve already emailed them five times, the gift feels desperate. The gift should be the first touch.

One more version: a few months before reaching out to a target CRO, I donated to a charity run they were publicly championing. No ask. Just a note saying it resonated with me. They responded.

Months later they told me they were confused because they expected a pitch and never got one.

That goodwill was still there when I eventually reached out.

The follow-up flywheel (if the gift doesn’t land right away)

No play works 100% of the time. I

f the gift + intro doesn’t get a response:

• Cold call referencing the package
• Email referencing the three specific things you know about their business
• LinkedIn message
• Rotate channels every touch

Keep referencing your POV in every message.

“You’re rolling out a new methodology for the first time. You just launched a product you’ve never sold before. Here’s why that’s exactly when companies like yours bring us in.”

If you still can’t crack the CRO, move the bullseye.

Run the same play. By this point you know so much about the account that you’ll get whoever you want.

The math on why this works

This approach takes about 6-8 weeks to source your first real opportunity. That sounds slow.

But your win rate on these opportunities? Closer to 70%. Your cycle time? Way faster because you’re starting at the top with full context.

And by the time you’re in discovery, you already know their priorities, their language, and what keeps their leadership up at night.

You can’t run this play on your whole territory. Pick 3-4 accounts.

Go all in. The rest of your pipeline will thank you.

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Random thought – Long standing sales theory of mine.

Every rep is one large clawback away from leaving their company.

If you were forced to pay back the largest deal you closed last year, you’d be out of there.

Am I wrong?