Will Allred

Will Allred is co-founder and COO of Lavender, a sales-email coaching product that scores and rewrites drafts before they are sent. He built Lavender around the belief that cold email fails when the writer does not know the customer.

Pivoting to Lavender with 45 Days of Runway

Lavender was not the first plan. Allred and his team were selling a psychology-based marketing platform when COVID hit, customers stopped paying, and the company had 45 days of runway left, according to a NeoWork profile. They pivoted to an email coach for sellers.

Asked by Mixmax what he tells first-time sales development reps, he said: "know your stuff, and know the needs of your customers." Lavender can edit for clarity, he said, but if the draft is only "I'm great, and check out all the features," the scores will stay bad.

Coaching Emails at Send Time

Lavender sits beside the draft, scoring tone, length, personalization, and readability, then suggesting rewrites. The email he wants it to produce shows homework: "Hey, I've done a little bit of my homework, I have a general sense of understanding of what's going on and problems you might be facing. And I think I can actually help."

In the same interview he redefined the cold-email call to action. Marketers taught conversion, but "Sales is a one-to-one conversation." His better asks are whether the prospect uses a tool like yours today, whether the problem is a priority, or whether making it easy would raise its priority, all aimed at starting a dialogue before booking a meeting.

Pushing into Tougher Conversations

Asked about career challenges he half-joked "Can I just stop at 'Lavender'?" and then described the skill he still works on: pushing into tougher conversations with curiosity instead of assuming bad intent. "I've never come out of a tough conversation worse off than I entered into it."