The Real Reason Executives Are Ghosting You | Anthony Reeves - 2025

Every seller has been there. You send the perfect proposal, deliver a great pitch, and then the exec on the other end goes silent.

I sat down with Anthony Reeves, a former global executive at Amazon, WPP, LVMH, and Airbnb, to talk about the real reason executives ghost you. It's not what most sellers think.

Executives Aren't Ghosting You, They're Protecting Themselves

• Executives get to their position by protecting their career and their company, and staying out of trouble.
• The number one question running through their head in a pitch is whether this decision could embarrass them personally or embarrass the company.
• If a sales conversation doesn't address that fear directly, it gets pushed to the back burner, which looks a lot like ghosting.

Slow Down. You're Probably Over-Preparing

• Anthony spent years as the final decision maker at companies like Amazon and WPP, with back to back thirty minute meetings from morning to night.
• By the time a deal reaches an executive's desk, it's often already been vetted by their team. They just want confirmation, not a full pitch from scratch.
• Sales reps who try to sell all the way through the meeting are working against how executives actually make decisions.

Get to the Point in the First Few Minutes

• Anthony has sat through pitches that took twenty five minutes to get to the point. At his level, he needed the point in the first few minutes.
• He recommends opening with a short greeting, then moving straight into what you're there to talk about: the product, the plan forward, the price, and the benefit to their organization.
• That structure resets a busy exec's mind fast, since they're usually jumping straight from a completely different meeting into yours.

Let Data Do the Convincing

• One of the best lessons Anthony learned at Amazon was to make decisions with data, not opinion.
• Jeff Bezos's rule was that seventy percent of the data is usually enough, with the rest filled in by good judgment.
• Data driven pitches remove the office politics and personal bias from a decision, which makes it easier for an executive to say yes.

Data Levels the Playing Field for Junior Sellers

• At the enterprise level, a purchase usually has to clear procurement, legal, compliance, and IT, four teams that rarely speak the same language.
• Data is the one language all four of those teams can agree on.
• Anthony says a junior sales rep with strong data can out argue the most senior person in the room, because the data doesn't care who's presenting it.

Think Like the Person You're Pitching

• Executives are jumping from meeting to meeting all day, often with almost no gap in between.
• Anthony suggests opening with a quick, genuine greeting, then naming exactly what the meeting will cover so the buyer can mentally reset.
• That small structure change respects their time more than small talk does.

Don't Hide the Facts, Especially the Price

• Every fact in a deal comes out eventually, so there's no reason to delay the ones that matter most, especially price.
• Anthony compares a slow sales pitch to a used car lot that won't just tell you the price. Buyers respect a rep who's upfront, even about the tough numbers.
• Getting to price early doesn't kill a deal. It builds the trust that keeps the conversation moving.

Build a Set of Principles You Won't Cross

• Anthony points to Amazon's leadership principles, especially customer obsession, as an example of a rule that guided every decision regardless of the revenue on the table.
• He's turned down revenue in the past because saying yes would have gone against a personal or company principle, and it paid off long term.
• Reps who define their own non negotiables ahead of time make faster, more confident decisions in the room.

The Real Reason Executives Ghost You

• If you push a short term sale that embarrasses or overwhelms the buyer, you lose the long term relationship, and most future business comes from existing customers.
• Sometimes the right move is to say no to a deal, because protecting the relationship is worth more than the transaction.
• Thinking long term, and putting the buyer's reputation ahead of the sale, is what keeps executives responding instead of disappearing.

"Sometimes saying no and not embarrassing the customer is actually a really good thing. It'll benefit you in the longer term." — Anthony Reeves

Resources

• Connect with Anthony Reeves on LinkedIn.
• Visit Anthony's website.
• Keep track of your sales activity and boost your results with the Prospect Pro sales tool.
• Step up your sales game with Sales Mastermind. Get accountability, stay motivated, and tackle the blockers keeping you from hitting your goals.
• Visit Blue Mango Studios for help creating podcast production content.
• Join our LinkedIn cohort and learn to prospect the right way.

Sponsorship Offers

1. This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot.

With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn.

Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse.

1. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation.

Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin.

Credits

As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify. Audio provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.