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Are They In The Room With Us Right Now?
I was listening to the Pivot podcast this week, Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher doing their thing and Prof G dropped something that wasn't even the point of the episode. He was talking about reading power dynamics in a business meeting and he said something like: know who's in the room, and know who's not in the room.
And I had to pause the thing.
Because that sentence is basically the entire thesis of good pre-call intelligence, compressed into 14 words.
When you show up to a discovery call, or any sales conversation, you aren’t just talking to the person on the other side of the Zoom. You are talking to every agency that pitched…every podcast they've listened to….every LinkedIn thought leader they've been reading & not heeding…every bad vendor experience…every internal champion who greenlit this conversation…and every internal skeptic who absolutely did not.
All of those people are in the room.
And if you haven't done your homework, you are thinking that you are talking to one person when, in fact, this is presentation to a big, but largely invisible, audience.
Let Me Introduce You to The Ghosts
The Ghosts are every influence, opinion, past experience, and invisible stakeholder that shapes the way your prospect thinks, speaks, and makes decisions. And they've been talking to your prospect long before before you ever say a word.
The Ghosts aren’t on the Zoom, but they are absolutely, 100% in the room.
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Here's the Ghost roster
Ghost #1: Their Socials: This one is free real estate and most of you are leaving it on the table. A prospect's social presence, especially the company accounts, is the manifestation of every marketing influence they've absorbed. What they post, how often, what they celebrate, what they ignore, it's a tell about how they think things ought to be done.
Are they reposting inspirational quotes from Gary Vee? Are they doing heavy-hitting thought leadership? Are they running product promos on LinkedIn like it's a Sunday circular from 1987?
All of that tells you something about who they think their customer is, what they believe converts, and who they've been listening to. If they're doing a lot of video content and you come in talking about a blog strategy, you have just walked into the room without knowing that their Ghost is a video-first evangelist who's been in their ear for months.
Know who they're following. Know who they're boosting. That person is in the room.Ghost #2: The Tech Stack: Okay, this one takes a little more work but it's worth it.
Tools like BuiltWith or Wappalyzer can tell you what's running under the hood of a website. And what's running under the hood tells you something about the appetite of the organization.
Are they running on MailChimp or knak? Are they on a headless Shopify build or are they on Squarespace with a PayPal button? Are they using Attio or are they using a spreadsheet labeled "CRM FINAL v3 USE THIS ONE"? (Note - if you interested in Attio - the link gets you 10% off)
This isn't gospel. But it's a signal. A company that has adopted forward-thinking, non-standard tools has shown a willingness to change and invest. A company running legacy tech that "still works" is telling you that their Ghost is the ghost of whatever consultant set that up in 2016 and told them it was fine.
If you show up to pitch a DTC brand with a vintage AS400 backend and start talking about your cutting-edge tech integrations... you are going to hit a wall. Because the Ghost in that room is inertia, and inertia does not want what you're selling.Ghost #3: The Website: You'd be amazed how many agency owners don't actually read a client's website before the call. Like, read it, slowly, with purpose.
Because, on some level, the website is a philosophy document.
Is it mostly content? Education is their conversion hammer. Is it mostly promotions and discounts? Buy NOW is their mantra. Is it image-heavy and sparse on copy? Aesthetic > message. Is it a wall of testimonials? Social proof is their jam.
That philosophy was formed by someone… a previous agency, a book they read, a podcast they love, a competitor that they want to be…that Ghost haunts their website. If you are pitching something radically different than what the ghost says, and they aren’t ready, it doesn't matter how good your idea is. If they aren't ready to give up on the ghost, they aren't ready. It sounds emotional bcause it is emotional. You aren't just challenging the way they do things; you're challenging their historic Ghost.Ghost #4: The Org Chart (Specifically, The People Who Aren't On The Call) This is the one most people really miss. If you're talking to the VP of Marketing, that's great. But who else matters?
Pull up LinkedIn. How long has the CMO been there? If it's less than six months, that person is probably hungry for a win and open to change. If they've been there for nine years, they might either love what's working or they are in preservation mode
Is the CEO posting? What are they posting about? If the CEO is publicly obsessing over efficiency and AI and "doing more with less" and you come in with a labor-intensive creative strategy... there's a Ghost in that room who is going to scare you away.
I had a client once where I was talking to the VP of Marketing and the whole conversation felt great…genuine connection, real problems, obvious fit, and then it stalled. Completely. Turned out the CEO had been burned badly by an agency two years prior and had basically put an informal veto on any new agency relationship that had aannual contract value >$50K (we were at $72K ACV). I didn't know about that Ghost.
If I'd looked a little harder? I would have seen the CEO's LinkedIn posts from that period - they had vague, slightly bitter references to "vendor relationships" and "accountability." The Ghost was right there, waving at me. I just wasn't looking.Ghost #5: The Agency Graveyard: This is the most important one. Many prospects you are talking to have worked with agencies before. Most of those relationships ended - and the reason they ended is in the room with you.
If you can find out who they've worked with before, and sometimes you can, through LinkedIn connections, case studies, Clutch reviews, or just asking, you will learn something enormously important about what not to be.
Did they leave a big agency because they felt like a small fish? Don't pitch scale. Did they leave a boutique because they outgrew it? Don't pitch intimacy. Did they leave their last agency because of communication issues? Make communication your first differentiator.
The fired agency is a Ghost. Unlike most Ghosts, this one is a mischievous poltergiest, actively haunting the room. Your prospect is sitting across from you, consciously or not, looking for the thing that made the last agency fail. If you trigger it, you're done. If you name it first, "I know a lot of brands your size have had issues with [problem with last agency], here's how we handle that", you just ghostbusted that little devil.
How To See The Ghost Guests Before You Walk In
Here's the TL;DR on running Ghost Guest research before any discovery call:
Socials: 30 minutes, look at what they post, who they amplify, what they seem to believe about marketing. Note it.
Tech Stack: BuiltWith is free. 10 minutes. Is this an organization that moves or one that sits?
Website: Read it like its a cram session for the Euro Civ class in college that you had to pass… This whole discovery and sales process is a final exam on their culture ^ philosophy. What do they believe converts? Who taught them that?
Org Chart: LinkedIn, 20 minutes. Who's new? Who's been there forever? What is the CEO publicly saying about the business?
Vendor History: This takes digging. Clutch, LinkedIn job history of their marketing team (agencies they've tagged), case studies, or just asking a warm contact. Worth every minute.
This is, by the way, exactly what the three-layer research framework in Discovery Lab Pro is built to do: market, industry, and company research that maps the Ghosts before you ever say hello. Because knowing who's in the room isn't magic. It's methodology.
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The Most Dangerous Presence On Your Discovery Call
Here's the thing about Ghosts… they don't accept your meeting request.
The person on the other side of your Zoom doesn't say, "Just so you know, I've been deeply influenced by a marketing guru who thinks paid social is dead, and I also have a CMO who's been here eight years and is terrified of change, and also we fired an agency last year who overpromised on SEO and it went very badly."
They just... act from that place. They push back in ways that seem slightly irrational. They get quiet when you hit certain topics. They say things like "we tried something like that before" in a tone that means it was a disaster and I'm still not over it.
If you haven't mapped the Ghosts, you will interpret all of that as resistance to you. And you'll spend your time trying to overcome objections that were never really about you in the first place.
If you have mapped them, even partially, you can hear those moments differently. You can think “…ah, that's a Ghost talking…” And you can respond to the actual thing, instead of the surface thing.
The most dangerous person on your discovery call is the one who isn't there.
Know who's in the room. Know who isn't. Win the ones who should be yours.
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