# Marcus Delaney, VP of Sales at Verdant Software (62 employees) — read of Lead Timing Optimizer, May 13 2026 > 11 years carrying a bag and building teams, currently managing 9 reps on a SaaS product for commercial HVAC contractors. Tool stack is Salesforce + Outreach + Gong. I coach my daughter's U10 soccer on Saturdays and do the 40-minute commute to Denver five days a week. I have very little patience for demos that waste my time. --- ## How I got here Searched "best time of day to call B2B prospects 2026" because one of my reps asked me in a 1:1 and I wanted something more recent than the HubSpot blog post I've been citing for four years. Google returned a mix of listicles and a few tool pages. This showed up around result six or seven. The domain "wishdeal" meant nothing to me. I clicked because the title was specific, not because I trusted it. ## What I clicked first The headline landed. "Stop calling at the wrong time" is real. Not clever, just accurate. I've had that exact conversation with reps who burn three hours on Friday afternoon getting voicemail. "AI identifies the exact moment each prospect is ready to engage" is where it started wobbling for me, because "exact moment" is doing a lot of work there. Exact how? Exact based on what? But I kept reading. ## Where I paused The honest disclosure section stopped me cold. "We don't have live customers on this idea yet." That sentence, buried after the pricing table with its confident dollar amounts and feature bullets, completely reoriented what I was looking at. I had to reread the whole page with new eyes. This isn't a product you can buy and plug into Salesforce by Thursday. This is a business concept someone is selling the blueprint for. The "Unlock the dossier $5" and "Adopt the build $99-$199" copy confirmed it. I spent about two minutes just sitting with that. ## What I distrusted The stats. "34% Average connection rate increase" and "28% Faster sales cycle" are presented in big bold callout boxes as if they're from a study or a customer cohort. The fine print says the ML model is "trained on 50,000+ successful sales calls" but there's no sourcing on whose calls, which industries, which deal sizes. Those numbers mean almost nothing without context. A 34% lift over what baseline? A roofing company with one rep and a construction SaaS with twelve reps are going to have wildly different starting points. Also: "Prospects engage faster when you reach them at the right moment" is tautological. That sentence is not information. The "1 in 7 Meaningful-success odds (Fermi)" line is weirdly refreshing and deeply unsettling at the same time. I appreciate them publishing it. I also can't believe they put a pricing table for $299/mo above it. That sequencing is backwards. ## What would convince me If this were a real product, I'd want to see a single real customer's Salesforce data showing connection rate before and after, with the industry and average deal size visible. Not a logo wall. Not a testimonial quote. A before/after chart with a company I can look up. One real data point beats ten polished slides. If it's a blueprint product, which is what it actually appears to be, I'd want to see someone who bought the $99 package and shipped it. What did they build, what did they charge, did they get their first 10 customers. One operator story. Doesn't need to be a unicorn. Just needs to be true. ## What I'd ask in an email reply 1. The page says the model is trained on 50,000+ successful calls. Who collected those calls, and is the training data at all specific to deal cycles over 30 days? My reps work 45 to 90 day cycles and I'd want to know if that sample is actually relevant to our motion. 2. The $299 tier limits timing predictions to 1,000 prospects. My team touches closer to 8,000 prospects a year in Salesforce. Does the prospect count reset monthly, or is that a static cap? 3. I noticed the honest disclosure says you don't have live customers yet. So the connection rate stats, the 34% figure, where did those come from specifically? I'm not being hostile, I just want to know if I'm looking at projections or someone's real data. --- ## Verdict: on-the-fence The problem is real and I'd pay for a tool that actually solved it. But by the time I finished reading I still wasn't sure if I was being sold a SaaS subscription or a business-in-a-box starter pack, and a page that leaves a VP of Sales confused about what he just read has work to do. --- *Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-13. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*