Prospects Hate Order Takers Too

Harry Stebbings loves to take shots at AEs at hot PLG AI companies, referring to them as  “order takers.”  In April 2025, I remember asking two prospects (who later became Windsurf champions) why they chose Cursor before evaluating alternative solutions. I asked what Cursor’s sales process looked like.  Both chuckled: “what sales process?”  

This isn’t a knock on the Cursor team.  They hire smart and hardworking GTM talent.  But at that moment in the market, the product was so hot it sold itself.  I heard (secondhand, unverified) that one AE said “I love working here, but I’m genuinely worried that my sales skills will atrophy because this product is so easy to sell.”  

That comment - rumor or not - stuck with me.  At Cognition, there are no order takers.  Our GTM team is elite and has had to navigate a tumultuous 2025 through the Windsurf acquisition. This experience, alongside a disciplined scale process, has equipped us with the skills and resilience to win this market in 2026.

This week, I converted my first opp of 2026 (a subsidiary of a Fortune 100 - we’ll call them Blue Chip) from Stage 1 to Stage 2.

Halfway through the call, our potential champion says: “I will be candid - I love the fact that you’re structuring this pilot with measurable metrics.  So far, all other AI pilots are from companies where they just give us access to the tool.  The fact that we have less opinion today is because you are the first company that I’ve engaged with that wants to approach it with this level of rigor, and I find it extremely refreshing.”

This wasn’t Harry Stebbings - this was a prospect - calling competitors order takers.  What a shock coming from a senior engineer who is definitely not predisposed to praising sales reps.  

Preparation won the game and this reaction was the result of a combination of old-school and new-age strategies, which I believe are the recipe for success in 2026. Below, I break down the ingredients. 

I came back from medical leave to a Stage 1 “ready to pilot” opportunity.  From my PoV, it was unqualified - no metrics, no urgency, etc.  Instead of accelerating towards a pilot, I slowed down the deal to create structure.  

Most AEs view Strategic Account Plans (“SAPs”) like CRM theater.  In my prior role at Metronome, the SAP became the operating system to internally quarterbacking complex deals.   

Prior to Monday’s meeting, I followed the old-school playbook and built out 3 Whys, Command of the Message framing, MEDDPICC…etc.  Nothing fancy, just discipline.  

But here’s where AI comes in.  If you’re walking into meetings with engineering leaders without a strong point of view - and relying on discovery questions to build context live - you’re behind.

In this case, I used Manus to parse Blue Chip’s engineering blog, extract insights, and form a strong thesis.  I like Manus because unlike LLMs, Manus is an agent system built on top of LLMs that steers itself with its own sandbox, browser operator, and task orchestration and can perform tasks like LinkedIn scraping for context.  Here were my anonymized prompts:

From here, I amended the output:

This yielded a major initiative - let’s call it “Project Butterfly” - that had not been discussed in the prior conversation.  Instead of asking: “why is {use case #1} important?” I spoke their language and asked, “how does {use case #1} tie to Project Butterfly?”  Then, I referenced specific statistics around the initiative. 

The tone of the conversation shifted instantly and my Deployed Engineer pinged me:

Project Butterfly wasn’t a perfect overlap with our initial use case, but it was adjacent to a larger production initiative with C-Suite visibility.  The framing of Cognition now shifted from proving out a specific use case to becoming a testing ground for a much larger project executives care about.

My M in MEDDPICC went from empty to nearly complete.  

See Sample Strategic Account Plan (keep it simple). 

Enterprise deals are political and AI doesn’t change that.  Knowing to navigate the org is critical - I wrote about this 2 weeks ago.

This week, my team debated how to map accounts - Miro? Lucid? 100Handshakes? Spreadsheet? 

I’ve been testing Centralize and layered it with AI research.  Centralize serves as the source of truth for my org charts, but I layered in Manus to scrape Blue Chip’s engineering blog for authors of posts related to “Project Butterfly.” I identified 3 Director+ engineers and added them via the Centralize extension.  I then created a tag “PG: Multi-Thread”, which I now can filter by to create outbound messaging tied to their blog posts/use case.

Beyond multi-threading, an understanding of the org allowed us to navigate the discussion with confidence and convey that we are extensions of the prospect’s team.

I’m going to keep testing Centralize, and if I like it, I may do a product deep-dive on using the tool in enterprise deal cycles.

Many AEs wing big meetings, relying on their raw skill.  Some are very good at it.  But elite improvisers cap out.  If we rate a call out of 100 in terms of forward progress, those AEs are probably hitting 80 or 85.  Structured prep gets you to 95, especially if bringing in teammates (manager, deployed engineer…etc).

Before the meeting, we aligned internally on the exact objective, hypothesized metrics, risk areas, stakeholder dynamics, and where to introduce Project Butterfly.  

This wasn’t a generic discovery call - we orchestrated effectively and Blue Chip appreciated the preparation.  

Sample Pre Call Planner (keep it simple)

As Ferris Bueller says, “life moves pretty fast” and in 2026, AI moves faster.  It’s tempting to skip steps.  That works when you have so much market pull that the product sells itself.  But when competitive pressure increases, deals without foundation stall.  

We slowed the deal down deliberately rather than rushing to pilot - defining evaluation criteria, success metrics, and key milestones.  

My favorite move is to co-create a “W-Email” or “Trumpet” - a simple, executive update designed with your potential champion to send to the exec buyer/sponsor.  It’s a great way to bring everyone along on the journey and ensure continued alignment.  

Find a format that works for you.  I like to call out our hypothesis, use cases, and engagement challenges. The results speak for themselves.  In this case, our potential champion forwarded this thread to the exec buyer’s reports.

We are still far from winning this deal and with the rate of change in the AI market, something could (and likely will) come out of left field.  That said, we are setting the right foundation to stand out, not just because our product/market is hot, but because we are instilling confidence that we are the team to partner with to drive true transformation.