People Buy from People - Here's How to Get the Attention of Your Prospect

The Open Rate of a FedEx Box Is 100%

Kris Rudeegraap is the co-founder and co-CEO of Sendoso, the largest direct mail and gifting platform in the world. But before building a company with global warehouses and $150 million in funding, he was a seller who got creative when email stopped working.

When we talked on the Thoughts on Selling podcast, we covered the origin story, the psychology of reciprocity, and why dimensional mail is the channel that never stopped delivering.

The Dog Bark Moment

In 2014, Kris was getting 90% email response rates using mail merge. He was copying and pasting parts of old emails, making them look like follow-ups, exporting and importing Salesforce fields to track his sequences. It worked.

Then the email sequencing tools arrived—Yesware, ToutApp, SalesLoft, Outreach, Apollo. Response rates tanked. Email became spam.

So Kris started doing something different. He wrote handwritten notes. He heard a dog bark on a sales call and sent a dog toy from Amazon. He stole swag from the marketing closet and packed up mugs and beanies.

"I was running a little mini mail room," he said. "It was a nightmare. I would run down to FedEx."

But it worked. He was booking meetings. He was the top seller. And because he was the top seller, his managers let him keep expensing Amazon receipts and FedEx packages.

That's when the light bulb went off: maybe I can build a platform that outsources all this operational complexity.

100% Open Rate

Here's the psychology Kris talks about:

"The open rate of a FedEx box on your doorstep is 100%. There's the reciprocity of getting a gift—you feel more inclined to reply. And there's scarcity. Not everyone is doing it, so you don't get as many."

For a while, sales and marketing teams were hooked on the cheap drug of email. It was easy. But easy isn't effective anymore.

"Now it's like, well, I can go after the harder channel because I'm desperate for more pipeline, I'm desperate for more meetings, I'm desperate to close these deals faster."

The Kansas City Ribs Story

The creative campaigns are what make this memorable.

A prospect came by the Sendoso booth at a conference. He had a broken rib from a skiing accident and was on crutches. The team followed up by sending a rack of Kansas City barbecue ribs to his office.

"Things like that are so out of the ordinary that you just can't not smile," Kris said. "He shared that story with his whole company, and we got the deal."

It breaks down the divide of a company selling to another company. It's person to person.

People Buy from People

Kris's motto is simple: "People buy from people."

I added to it: people buy from people they trust. And trust comes from making deposits in the relationship bank account—offering something of value without asking for something in return.

The more customized that value is, the deeper the relationship goes.

What's Next

Sendoso is doubling down on AI and data. They're pulling interests from Gong call recordings to recommend gifts six months later. That data is usually lost in transcripts. Now it powers an interest graph.

"Good data powers really good AI," Kris said. "You'll start to see more autonomous agent workflows through our platform."

Digital fatigue is real. Dimensional mail isn't just a tactic anymore—it's becoming a channel.

The Takeaway

You don't need Sendoso to start. Pick six people. Mail them something this week. But if you want to scale it, the infrastructure exists.

You can find Kris on LinkedIn or at sendoso.com.