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Turn your best reps' "I'm going to close this one" signals into who BDRs call
Picked and checked by Olga Pearson, SalesUpLevel
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Reported: "our original call to decision-maker connect rate was like 3 to 4% ... if your BDRs now talk to 20 decision-makers a day and are booking those at like a 14 to 16% rate". High-scored leads "pick up at like a 2.3x rate". ACV about $10-12K.
Ask your best reps what tells them a deal will close, find those signals online, and enrich every account you can win today. AI does the pre-call research and hands the BDR just two or three things to say. Then test openers and call times, and back-test your call-scoring prompts on old calls.
By Kyle Norton (on Topline with Sam Jacobs, AJ Bruno and Asad Zaman), CRO, Owner.com · Topline podcast, "What World-Class AI in GTM Looks Like" ↗ · Apr 5, 2026
If you sell: run it before your 10am
- Ask your best reps the question below.
- Turn each answer into a signal you can see online (for example, open engineering roles on the careers page).
- Enrich every account in the market you can win today with those signals.
- Have AI do the pre-call research and give the BDR "just ... two or three" things to say.
- Test pattern interrupts, value offers and call-time windows.
- Scan every call to fill CRM fields (his: Momentum), and back-test prompts on past calls before trusting them.
Ask your top reps: "when you sit down for a demo, when do you know you're like, 'I'm going to close this one'". Then in AI: Here are the signals our top reps say mean a deal will close: [list]. For [company website], check each signal and quote where you found it. Then give me two or three things a BDR could say in the first 20 seconds of a call, based only on what you found.
If you lead a team: roll it out
- Redo the top-rep interview every quarter; signals change as the market does.
Watch out for
- Owner.com built in-house models with data people; most teams can do steps 1 to 4 with off-the-shelf AI but not the pickup score.
- The rates are spoken approximations ("like 3 to 4%").
Source: Kyle Norton, Topline podcast, "What World-Class AI in GTM Looks Like", Apr 5, 2026. Results are as reported by the source; we did not measure them.
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