A CEO called me unprofessional. He was right.

I'm Jeremy Hurst, VP of Autonomous GTM at Swan. I left a $450K VP Sales role to take a job with a made-up title. I did it because I got a glimpse of the 100x seller - it stopped being a thought experiment and became the actual playbook. This is a field journal for GTM and growth leaders who can feel the model changing under their feet and prefer changing with it to being left behind.

"Very unprofessional Jeremy." A CEO emailed me that after I cancelled our meeting. He ended with "Everyone's time is valuable." He was right. It's also why I still cancel meetings.

Most folks in GTM think you want more pipeline coverage, not less.

But Manny Medina (Outreach co-founder) recently put that myth to bed. He told me the best AI-native companies he speaks with average 1.7x pipeline coverage.

Historically, we've always been told 3-5x.

But when laser focused on a tight ICP & bullseye accounts with high win rates, you don't need so much coverage.

At Swan AI, we're hitting a crazy growth inflection. I don't need more meetings & opportunities. I need fewer, higher-quality ones.

So regarding my cancellation, the ends were right, but the means were wrong.

LinkedIn said the company was too small, so I cancelled. But the company he booked under was the newest startup in a ~2K person tech group. And he ran marketing & RevOps for the full group.

As he put it: "If you dug a little deeper..." It was a shitty feeling. He wasn't open to rescheduling, & I don't blame him.

Today I almost did it again. A meeting landed on my calendar. LinkedIn said 27 employees. Below my line.

But this time I dug in. The company was formed two years ago by merging 3 companies.

Most of the team still lists the old brands on LinkedIn. Their own press release says almost 200 employees, & a PE firm made a growth investment in May.

27 on LinkedIn. ~200 in reality. I kept the meeting.

Both times, I made the same mistake. I sized the account off 1 number: the headcount on LinkedIn. The instinct to cancel was right. But a glance at LinkedIn isn't enough.

So I built 2 skills in Swan to make sure there isn't a 3rd time.

Skill 1: the account size check - when a booked meeting looks small, I tell Swan "check the account size on this." It:

• Finds the booking & every attendee
• Pulls each attendee's full LinkedIn history: every current role, the last 2 years, group-level titles, the 'About' section, etc.
• Searches the web for parents, acquirers, sister companies, legacy brands, rebrands & investors
• Sizes every company it finds, trusting published numbers over LinkedIn counts
• Sizes the deal off the biggest company the attendee can buy for, then 1 of 3 answers:

→ Keep: 50+ employees, with sources

→ Cancel: every check says small

→ Unclear: I make the call. If the verdict is Cancel, the 2nd skill takes over.

Skill 2: the cancellation

It cancels the booking & drafts an email for me to review: an apology for the late notice, plus the best next steps for a smaller teams.

Nothing goes out without me. Which brings me back to his email.

He told me to "prepare in advance and never cancel at the last minute, regardless of what it looks like." He was right about preparing.

Now the research runs before I touch the cancel button.

getswan.com

SIT WITH THIS

What did your last cancelled meeting cost you? Nobody tracks the buyers who never came back.

I still cancel meetings. I just do the homework first now.

COMMUNITY NOTES

The approval step is built into how Swan runs sales workflows: anything that goes to a customer waits for a one-tap OK from me first.

-Jeremy