The ghost detector for every deal

Grok lands inside Excel, ZoomInfo speeds up prospecting, a 3-signal test to spot dead deals before your next pipeline review, and an AI SDR platform built for teams scaling outbound without adding headcount. 3 min read.

xAI launched a free Grok add-in for Microsoft 365 yesterday, letting you talk to your spreadsheets instead of writing formulas. That's a big deal for anyone tracking quota attainment, comp plans, or territory splits in Excel, since you can now just ask it to flag reps under pace or model a new comp structure in plain English.

ZoomInfo Rebuilds Its Chrome Extension for Speed

ZoomInfo shipped a native rebuild of its Chrome Extension this week, cutting page load times 2 to 3x and improving how it parses data on match rate. If prospecting inside LinkedIn or a company site has felt sluggish lately, this update is worth reinstalling for. Seismic already leaned on the upgrade to make its top sellers' outbound results repeatable across the whole team.

Reo.Dev Raises $11.3M for AI Signals in Technical Sales

Reo.Dev closed an $11.3M Series A led by Elevation Capital to grow its AI-native GTM platform for teams selling to engineering and technical buyers. It's a niche worth watching if your ICP lives in developer tools or infrastructure, since generic AI SDR platforms usually miss the technical buying signals this space runs on.

Attio is the agentic CRM that runs the work behind every win. It meets you where you work, compounds every customer signal into context, then acts on it so you can move fast, stay sharp, and scale without breaking.

Then Ask Attio to:

30,000+ teams use Attio to drive more revenue at scale.

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Every rep has deals sitting in “late stage” that are actually dead. Nobody wants to be the one who says it out loud, so they just sit there inflating your forecast until your manager finds them first. Here's a 10-minute framework to catch them yourself, using whatever AI tool sits on top of your CRM.

Export your open pipeline and run it through three signals. Call it the 3-Signal Ghost Test:

1. The silence signal: any deal with no logged activity in 14+ days isn't “in progress,” it's gone quiet. Ask your AI to flag every deal past that threshold.

2. The commitment signal: if there's no next meeting on the calendar and no date attached to a next step, that's not a live deal, that's a hope. Flag anything without a booked follow-up.

3. The champion signal: check who's actually replying. If it's still just one person and nobody else at the account has engaged in 30 days, your champion may have gone cold or moved on.

Any deal that trips two of the three signals goes on your “ghost list.” Don't delete them yet, just downgrade the stage and send one direct, no-fluff check-in email. The ones that respond are still alive. The ones that don't just cleaned up your forecast for you.

What it replaces: the blur after back-to-back calls — forgetting what you agreed to, dropping follow-ups, scrambling to write notes before the next meeting starts. Granola is my personal favorite AI notepad that transcribes in the background while you stay present in the conversation. No bots join your call. No disruptions.

Who it's for: sales teams who want every deal detail, next step and commitment captured without losing focus on the person across the table.

Why now: Granola turns conversations into clear summaries and action items, integrates with your CRM and lets you chat across all your meeting notes to prep and follow through.

Free to start here. You can use code SALESBYTES for a month off any paid plan.

Know a rep who's still sending 500 cold emails a week and getting crickets? Forward them this issue. The Warm Intro Machine might be the highest-ROI thing they read all quarter.

To start getting immediate value from AI I've built the library (and will continue to build more) for top AI sales tools, prompts, tricks, and tips.