The Death of "Let Me Get Back to You"

For most of sales history, "let me get back to you" was a perfectly acceptable answer. Respectable, even. It signaled diligence. It gave you a reason to follow up. It bought you time to loop in your SE, dig into the pricing question, or find that case study the prospect asked about.

That phrase is now becoming a liability.

Why this old playbook worked

"Let me get back to you" used to work because buyers expected it. Enterprise software is complex. Pricing has nuance. Technical questions require technical people. There was an unspoken contract: you ask something hard, I go find the answer, we reconnect. Nobody was offended. The follow-up email was part of the dance.

And honestly, it created opportunity. Every "let me get back to you" was a reason to re-engage, a chance to add value, a touchpoint in a multi-threaded deal.

So what changed?

Buyers live in a world of instant answers now

Your prospect spent their morning asking ChatGPT to summarize a 40-page report. They Slacked a question to their team and got three responses in two minutes. They Googled a competitor's pricing and found a Reddit thread with real numbers.

Then they get on a call with you.

"What's your uptime been like this year?"

"Let me get back to you on that."

The words land differently now. Not because buyers are impatient (though some are), but because the contrast is so stark. When everything else in their life delivers instant answers, your delay feels like a gap. Maybe you're unprepared. Maybe your product is more complicated than it should be. Maybe the competitor who could answer on the spot is just... better.

It's not rational. But buyer perception rarely is.

The cost of the follow-up loop

Beyond perception, there's a real mechanical cost to "let me get back to you."

Every time you pause a conversation, you lose momentum. The prospect's attention moves on. The urgency they felt in the meeting fades. The champion who was nodding along now has to re-explain your value to their CFO without you in the room, and they're working from memory, not from the crisp answer you would've given live.

Sales cycles stretch… and not because of big, obvious blockers, but because of these micro-delays that compound. Three "let me get back to you" moments across two calls can add a week to your deal! So, multiply that across a quarter and you're looking at pipeline that should've closed but didn't.

The follow-up email isn't a touchpoint. It's a leak.

Real-time competence is the new baseline

Here's the thing: this isn't about being smarter or more prepared in the traditional sense. Nobody can memorize every pricing edge case, every competitor's latest move, every technical spec across every product line.

The shift isn't from "unprepared rep" to "prepared rep." It's from "prepared rep" to "augmented rep."

So this means the AEs who are winning now aren't the ones who studied harder. They're the ones who have the right information surfaced at the right moment without having to go find it. They can answer the pricing question because the context is already in front of them. They can handle the competitor objection because the data appeared the moment it was raised.

This isn't about memory. It's about access.

What this means for how we sell

The bar is moving. Five years ago, showing up prepared meant you'd done your research the night before. Today, showing up prepared means you can respond to anything in real time, because your systems are doing the work that used to require a follow-up.

The reps who figure this out will close faster, build more trust, and stop leaking momentum to the follow-up loop.

Of course the phrase "let me get back to you" won't disappear entirely. Some questions genuinely need more time. But it should be rare. It should be the exception, not the reflex.

Your buyers have already moved on from waiting. The question is whether you'll move with them.