About a quarter of our financial services calls ended with the contact asking us to send a deck or email so they could review it internally. Almost none of those turned into a meeting. “Send me something” sounds like interest, but it is usually a polite exit.
The problem is ownership. An email with no time attached sits in an inbox full of vendor pitches, and nobody owns the next step. By the time we follow up, the internal review has either happened without us or never started.
So we stopped accepting the email as the next step. When someone asks for something to read, we ask what their team needs to decide, then propose a 15-minute call on a specific date and time while they are still on the line. We send the calendar invite before we hang up, not after.
One example: a staff engineer we reached said his team used OpenAI and Anthropic but had no clear view of token spend. Our first emails hit delivery problems, so he suggested we send something instead. The rep didn’t wait for a working address. They booked a 20-minute intro for Thursday at 5:00 PM UK time, committed to sending the invite straight after the call, and agreed to text or call him if the email failed again. The call ran about 13 minutes.
Our working script for the moment the request comes up:
Ask which question the review needs to answer. If they can’t name one, the email will not get read.
Offer two concrete slots within the week, not “let’s find a time.”
Confirm the address and timezone out loud, then read it back.
Say the invite is going out now and what the call will cover.
Not every “send it over” is a buying signal. One investment group manager oversees about 100 entities and pays around $200 per entity to a corporate services provider. He told us their process works, speed is not a priority, and switching providers would mean “brain damage.” He also questioned the stability of a startup. That was a clear no, and it came in the first 13 minutes. We would rather hear it on a call than wait on an email that never gets answered.
A “we’re fine” can still turn into a meeting. A CTO at a 70-person company told us his internal AI spend was already well controlled. He was still interested in our gateway as something he could resell or refer to large clients. We booked a Wednesday 5:00 PM meeting, because his angle changed once he saw the commercial upside.
Track the email request as its own outcome. For every “send it to me” in your notes, record whether a dated meeting followed. If that number stays near zero, stop sending the email and start asking for the calendar slot.