Read the First Thousand Emails

Salesforce, Apollo and Gong all announced AI agents for sales teams this fall, and the pitch is the same everywhere: it finds the leads and writes the emails. John Arndt and Kate get into how much a person should read before one of these tools sends anything in your company's name, why "a human approves every step" is already on a countdown at one vendor, and what one company says it found when it sent a lot more (replies didn't keep up). Kate wins the big argument, John owns up to a zero-dollar checkout he caught by buying from himself, and you leave with a fifty-email check to run this week. Sponsor: This episode is sponsored by Intakra (intakra.com). Intakra watches public sources (job posts, SEC filings, government contracts, layoff notices and company websites) for the companies a B2B sales team sells to, and when one of them starts a project the team could help with, it emails the team the proof, with dates and links, and what it usually means. It's low volume on purpose: a few heads-ups a week, not a feed. Trial: 14 days on 150 accounts, no card needed; plans start at USD 199 per month for 300 accounts.