I was a commission-based salesperson at a SaaS company for several years.
Your cold-email outreach didn't work because it was probably also AI written. When I was selling, I would write super short, warm, personalized emails by hand that sounded like a human wrote them, and wouldn't use AI to clean it up. My response rate hovered between 0.5 and 1.5%. My coworkers would copy and paste Claude-written emails into Gmail, and their response rate was 0.005%-0.05%.
My biggest question, and this is not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious for your reply: what was the problem that led you to build this product? Did you have the problem yourself? Did you talk to current and former coworkers about whether they were also having this problem?
The other people here are rightly pointing out that your description of your own product sounds AI-written and soulless. The way you overcome this is by passionately talking about the problem instead of the product :)
As someone who used to be in SaaS sales selling a complex platform, this might be the case for you if you're constantly doing a lot of research and keeping up with the market, but it's not for the vast majority of others. I can't tell you how many software engineers and leaders I cold called who thought our platform did one thing, but was surprised to learn we GA'ed a different capability, and then they'd mention they were talking about that with their team in standup recently, and then they'd take a meeting.
Again, not doubting there are people like you out there who stay up to date with vendors, but there was a lot of useful education being done in those cold call connects. That company still employs an army of BDRs doing the same thing today.
As an associate financial planner working under a lead planner at an RIA firm, this is an interesting article but I was very disappointed by the comments here in this thread, like "I don't understand why advisors still exist" (meanwhile the RIA world is absolutely exploding and our firm can't handle the amount of families contacting us for advice). The purpose of my job, and this profession, can be split into two halves. We work primarily with families with a net worth between $500k and $10M, for reference.
The first half: complex planning cases involving multiple generations, tax planning, inheritance issues, etc. Occasionally I'll Claude for an opinion on something and it gives me answers that I would flat out never recommend to a client, ever. These cases often involve weird tax scenarios, but do also involve investment planning. We work with a couple in their 30s who together earn seven figures in AGI, and both are incredibly cautious people. We had them complete a risk assessment through Riskalyze in which they both indicated that they are extremely uncomfortable with market drawdowns (even after counseling them on their long time horizon, etc), so we ultimately implemented a plan that is heavily weighted towards bond index funds. If this couple went to Claude and asked what they should do, Claude would've told them to put all their money in equity index funds. That is the unequivocally wrong answer for this client because they run the risk of freaking out during a market drawdown, selling in a taxable brokerage, and thus unwittingly creating a realization event which could be disastrous in the short term.
The other half: very smart, high earning people who find personal finance incredibly boring and uninteresting, and if it weren't for us they would never get around to implementing a plan because they're so busy. We have so many business owner clients in law and medicine (and some in engineering leadership) who are almost impossible to get ahold of and need a LOT of follow up in order to make sure the plan gets implemented correctly. These people often come to us in their late 30s or early 40s with NOTHING set up or optimized. Acting like these people are going to sit down on a Sunday afternoon for 3 hours and prompt a full financial plan and then implement it and then spend one hour every quarter checking in and optimizing is not realistic whatsoever.
This profession is incredibly psychologically rewarding and our clients love us. I understand why people who have simple cases and are also very self-motivated might not immediately see what a more complex situation might look like, but to cross the line by implying that Claude can do my job is insulting.
The housing shortage has nothing to do with a lack of electrical engineers or plumbers. It’s entirely self inflicted and cheaper electricians will not change that.
More directly: I doubt there will be a meaningful increase in housing in states that have banned construction of new data centers (NY, Maine) than those where data centers are allowed to be built.
Lack of skilled tradesmen is a widespread problem and a major source of project delay (on top of massively higher housing production costs).
I assume next comes the zoning-causes-all-shortages and if only we could fix zoning then we'd solve housing – a thesis for which there's zero evidence.
That "lack" of labor is the norm because construction is a boom-bust business and nobody wants to pay to retain talent and skills they aren't actively profiting off. And very few want to spend time training new people when they are currently earning 3x their normal rate working a boom cycle.
If the AI boom crashes, how many of these people will get laid off and unable to find comparable paying work for years afterward? Even if it picks up again 5 years later, many of those people have moved on to new careers. And the only way to get them back, even temporarily, is pay them way more than their current career to pay for their losses and hardships of quiting their current career path. So ultimately boils down to "pay people more" because you aren't just incentivizing people to work for you specifically during a boom cycle, you are also trying to poach workers out of other industries for a job they know is temporary.
Yes, the labor supply for skilled tradesmen is very inelastic. Which is one reason it sucks to have so much of it drawn into a probably-speculative boom.
There is almost zero overlap between residential and commercial electricians. There is a shortage of residential electricians because the customers are a nightmare to deal with (both builders and homeowners, homeowners are incredibly entitled and I refuse to deal with them, lol) and the pay sucks.
Don't forget health insurance for when they have to use that sick time to get treatment - so they can get back to work ASAP. Plus, during a bust if they get laid off, we don't have universal health insurance, so they have to factor that in as well.
I mean, obviously not. (Though no travel for free estimates, estimates are just done by phone.)
Obviously my electrician isn't making anywhere close to $30040 hours52 weeks = $600k+/year - and I don't begrudge my electrician making a good living.
But from my perspective as a homeowner, skilled trades are punishingly expensive, and my response was to a post specifically claiming that the pay sucks.
> But from my perspective as a homeowner, skilled trades are punishingly expensive, and my response was to a post specifically claiming that the pay sucks.
My post is a response to yours, showing that the provider’s pay can suck even if you find a service punishingly expensive.
Volatility of pay, body wear and tear, hours per day and flexibility of schedule, extensive travel greatly increasing morbidity/mortality risk, and other components go into whether or not pay sucks or not.
Your cold-email outreach didn't work because it was probably also AI written. When I was selling, I would write super short, warm, personalized emails by hand that sounded like a human wrote them, and wouldn't use AI to clean it up. My response rate hovered between 0.5 and 1.5%. My coworkers would copy and paste Claude-written emails into Gmail, and their response rate was 0.005%-0.05%.
My biggest question, and this is not rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious for your reply: what was the problem that led you to build this product? Did you have the problem yourself? Did you talk to current and former coworkers about whether they were also having this problem?
The other people here are rightly pointing out that your description of your own product sounds AI-written and soulless. The way you overcome this is by passionately talking about the problem instead of the product :)