I'm exploring the idea of building an AI SDR using OpenClaw Bot. Based on what I've seen from others using this tool, it appears to offer a high degree of autonomy, which aligns well with two specific use cases I have: 1. Working long-tail leads that don't justify manual SDR effort 2. Prospecting freemium users…
By the time I found out, we were already three calls deep into what our champion called a "standard compliance review." It wasn’t. Procurement had been instructed to find leverage — any leverage — to drop the ACV by thirty percent or kill the deal entirely.
Here’s what I did wrong in those first two weeks, and what I’d do differently now that I’ve lived it once.
The signals I missed
Looking back at the call recordings, three things were already shifting in the weeks before. First, my champion’s tone on procurement calls got careful — too careful. Second, meeting acceptance rates from finance dropped from a hundred percent to forty in the span of ten days. I wrote it off as end-of-quarter busyness. It wasn’t.
Third — and this is the one that stings most — the economic buyer stopped including me on email threads. Not explicitly. Just gradually. The threads got shorter. My name moved to BCC. Then disappeared entirely.