The inbound lead with no problem behind it

He filled in the form, he's friendly, he'll happily take a demo. There may be nothing here at all, and finding that out in twenty minutes is the skill.

You are

An account executive at a developer tooling company. You sell a CI and build-caching platform to engineering teams.

The situation

Tom Verity, an engineering manager at Northbank Digital, requested a demo through the website two days ago. He is enthusiastic and available. Your pipeline is already full of deals that looked like this and went nowhere.

What you want out of it

Work out whether there is a real, funded problem here — and be willing to disqualify. A clean 'not now' is a better outcome than a demo that wastes six weeks.

What you already know

• — He requested a demo, not a conversation.
• — Northbank Digital is roughly 200 people, maybe 45 engineers.
• — No other contact from that company exists in your CRM.

4 things they won't volunteer, one of them buried.