Customers Ignoring You? Maybe You’re Not Worth Talking To

Last week, I was speaking with a VP of Sales who said her team struggles to get customers to call them back.

“It feels like there’s an unspoken objection here,” she said. “When spend all this time and effort trying to generate leads but after the initial interaction, the prospects don’t want to talk to us again. How can we get them to engage?”

To which I replied [half-jokingly] “I don’t know…are your sales reps worth talking to?”

 

You’re Thinking About Attention All Wrong

As a quota-carrying salesperson, you’re probably clear about how reaching out to your customers and prospects benefits you. In an effort to build your revenue pipeline, qualify opportunities, and advance deals, you spend a lot of time asking yourself: How do I get my customer’s attention?

Multi-threading. Executive outreach. Cold calls. LinkedIn InMails. There’s no shortage of tactics. And to be clear, many of them can work.

But the real question is one of the customer’s motivation, not yours.

So put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a second. They’re busy. They’re overrun with requests for their time. They’re already working on problems that matter deeply to them and their teams.

This is where empathy becomes your superpower.

Instead of asking “How do I get them to respond?”, ask:

Why would they want to speak to me? What’s in it for them?

If your answer boils down to “because I need to hit quota”, “so I can learn about their priorities”, or “so they can understand how my life-changing product can rock their world!” then you’re just another request in a sea of noise.

Why would this executive, stakeholder, or influencer feel it’s worth their time to talk to you? What’s the value exchange you’re offering?

When you start looking at outreach through the lens of reciprocity and adding value first, everything changes.

 

Ways to Make Yourself Valuable

So what does “value” actually look like in practice? Here are a few powerful ways to make yourself the kind of person your customer actually wants to hear from:

 

1. Share unique, time-saving resources.

A few months ago, I was working with a rep who was struggling to get a meeting with a CFO at a large manufacturing company. She’d sent emails about her product, tried the usual multi-threading playbook, and…crickets.

So instead of pushing harder, she changed her approach. She pulled together a short summary of how other finance leaders in the industry were approaching rising energy costs—complete with anonymized data and benchmarks. Then she sent the CFO a two-sentence note:

“We’ve been seeing some interesting patterns in how manufacturing CFOs are navigating energy volatility. Thought you might find this quick snapshot useful—curious if it aligns with what you’re seeing.”

Within 24 hours, the CFO responded and agreed to meet.

Why? Because the rep wasn’t just asking for time. She was offering value that not only saved the CFO time, but that they couldn’t easily get anywhere else.

The key here is that the content you share should ideally be arms-length from your product and add legitimate value.

Bad: Avoid resources that scream “Look how great we are!” like customer case studies or testimonials.

Good: Use AI to curate relevant content from third-party sources like Harvard Business Review, Gartner, or McKinsey and send it to your customer with a note like, “Hey, I just caught this article about [ABC], and it reminded me of that conversation we had about [XYZ] where you mentioned [123]. Thought you might find it interesting.”

That’s it! No ask in return. Simply “thinking of you”.

BONUS: I have an AI prompt that will do EVERYTHING I cover in this tactic for you! It’s part of my free AI Prompts for Salespeople doc (see the tactic Engaging Prospects by Adding Value at the end).

Customers don’t just care about solving today’s problems. They want to know what’s coming around the corner so they can prepare for it. Position yourself as someone who can help them see where their industry, function, or market is headed.

 

2. Invite them to valuable experiences.

When I was a VP at Salesforce, the highest ROI events we ran weren’t flashy conferences or big-budget roadshows—they were intimate customer dinners. We’d bring together 8–10 executives from different companies around a table, share a great meal, and create a space for them to talk openly about their challenges and experiences. There were no sales pitches, slides, or heavy agendas. In fact, we told them explicitly that we didn’t want to talk about us.  Just thoughtful ideation and meaningful conversation.

The result? Customers left feeling connected to us and to each other. And because they saw us as the ones who created that valuable experience, our credibility and affinity skyrocketed. Many of those dinners led directly to deeper relationships, follow-up calls, and new opportunities that no amount of cold outreach could have unlocked.

Sometimes the best value you can provide isn’t information—it’s access.

[Get the details of how to execute that executive dinner playbook below]

 

3. Go deep into their problems, not your solutions.

Most sales outreach jumps straight to the solution: “We can help you do X faster, cheaper, better [with AI].” The problem? Customers often don’t fully understand—or even consciously recognize—the real root of their issues. In my training program, I refer to these as Unknown/Unspoken problems.

That’s where the opportunity lies. If you can describe your customers’ problems better than they can—naming the unspoken challenges, explaining why they exist, and providing the clarity they so desperately seek—you immediately earn credibility. Customers will naturally assume that someone who understands their pain so deeply must also be uniquely positioned to help solve it.

For example, instead of saying “We deliver powerful, AI-driven analytics,” you might go deeper: “One of the biggest frustrations finance leaders share is not the reporting itself, but the constant back-and-forth with department heads who submit inconsistent data. That cycle delays decisions, drives everyone crazy, and makes finance feel like the bottleneck.”

Notice how this message doesn’t pitch a product. It articulates a high-level pain that feels personal and specific. And because humans are wired to prioritize threats and discomfort over abstract benefits, leaning into those problems creates a stronger emotional pull than talking about features ever will.

The takeaway: if you want customers to lean in, stop telling them how great your solution is. Show them that you understand the real problems they’re wrestling with, maybe even better than they do.

 

Notice what all of these have in common: they’re not about you. They’re about them!

 

When you take this approach, something remarkable happens: outreach stops feeling like a grind.

Instead of struggling to break through the noise, you start creating genuine demand for conversation. Customers see you not as an interruption, but as a valuable input.

And that’s when the real magic happens. Doors open faster, conversations run deeper, and opportunities feel less forced.

So before you fire off that next email, or send that LinkedIn connection request, pause and ask yourself:

Why would they want to hear from me?

If you can answer that with something compelling, something rooted in their world, not yours, you’ll find it’s a lot easier to get attention.

And more importantly, you’ll keep it.