Fluint

We've been heads down making lots of product updates, and advancing Fluint's content models. Here's the latest y'all 🎉

**WARNING: This is a shameless plug for an amazing technology.** Friday, I wrote about the importance of listening in customer and partner relationships. The best way to show quality listening is to summarize and confirm what you have heard. In customer relationships, writing a value-add business case is a lost art. It is also a lost opportunity for both parties. The business case is a great place to partner and collaborate. It's a place to describe and define value and expectations. It's a place to show quality listening. Today, our commercial and customer teams kicked off our partnership with Fluint. If you don't know Nate Nasralla and his team, you will. We're investing in Fluint to help our team listen to our customers better. And to drive more value with them. We're very excited about this partnership and the big impact it will have on our relationships.

We spent roughly 40 hours (an entire workweek) reading through leaked internal emails and memos from Fortune 500 executives. At companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla and others. Pulling out exactly what sales teams focused on complex deals need to know. Join this 25-minute workshop next week for a detailed breakdown that teaches you to: - Land larger, more strategic deals with top brands. - Enable your champions with exec-level messaging. - Speak directly to what actually matters to executives. See you there? https://lnkd.in/g-8NTipN

The latest Fluint x How the Deal was Done | Deal Stories Podcast Episode (#46) is out now. Tune in to hear this Fortune 500 deal story featuring Strategic Account Executive Samantha Price. We cover the deal setup, challenges, and tactical steps taken leveraging Fluint and Nate Nasralla's flagship One Page Business Case. 𝗕𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: - Samantha Price transitioned from being an on-air reporter to sales and now works at Persefoni supporting clients with environmental sustainability digital transformation 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀: - Selling software to buyers unfamiliar with purchasing software. - Navigating the complexities of budget approval and competitive differentiation in a niche market. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀: - The One Page Business Case is the key to driving a Fortune 500 deal over the line. - Simplifying communication and reducing friction for buyers is 🔑 - The One-Page Business Case can be used to align both external AND internal stakeholders Link to full episode in the comments!

My definition of a “good” deal review: you don’t need a meeting, and you don't even need to ask your rep for an update. Because you can just open up a written doc and see *evidence* of buying behavior. What's happening behind closed doors, in internal buying convo’s. So you’re getting the reality of where the buying team believes they are in *their* journey, straight from the source. (A journey that’s been guided by thoughtful discovery, woven into a unique and clear point of view, alongside your rep.) And this is VERY different from how most leaders run deal reviews. I covered all the nuance and how to actually do this in a 25-minute crash course yesterday. Killer turnout for EOQ. Here’s the deck, but you’ll probably want the voiceover for this one. So you can grab that + the editable frameworks here: https://lnkd.in/gdnk5EKV

I achieved 246% YoY sales growth from year 1 to 2 as a Strategic Account Director. What changed? I adopted a single guiding principle: “Make it easy for large companies to buy from us.” Throughout my sales career, I noticed the same big problem (two actually): 1) Selling software is hard 2) Buying software is even harder So instead of focusing on the first problem (where most sellers spend their time, energy, and attention on a sales-centric process), I focused on solving the buying challenge. “Design a better buying experience” was my mantra in each engagement. I learned that the best way to do this was through effective narrative writing. Especially when I wasn’t in the room. The story and the business case could stand on their own without me or anyone on our team actively influencing it. My Fortune 500 prospects needed: - The bottom line up front - An easy-to-consume narrative - Believable facts that supported the story - Ability to share it across the organization simply - Multiple pieces of information to make a decision - Obtain information that was most applicable to them - Something that looked and felt like theirs, not a vendor's I tried everything: - Prezi - PDFs - Yesware - Vidyards - Microsites - Short email sequences There was just no one way to communicate it all well and simply. Until now… Meet Fluint an intuitive space that helps you generate written business cases for your champions so you can start selling WITH them, not TO them, and stop losing deals when you're not in the room. Sign up here and try it free for a week using my partner link: https://buff.ly/3VI0mOV 🐝 P.S. This is not a sponsored post, but I do receive a small commission if you make a purchase at no additional cost to you. I only work with tools I've used and trust myself, so I don't promote anything I wouldn't use in my own personal tech stack. I've seen multiple sellers improve the key "sales trifecta" using Fluint: ✔️ Boost win rates ✔️ Shorten deal cycles   ✔️ Increase contract sizes It's worth a try.

We're hiring again, and here's the fun part: we'll buy you and your +1 a roundtrip ticket to anywhere in the world — if we hire someone you refer. Seriously, anywhere 🌎 You can even check baggage. (Which I refuse to do, because I much prefer a good double backpack setup on multi-week trips. My wife thinks that + my white socks are hilarious, so she takes pictures.) Looking for a Principal Engineer: → https://lnkd.in/gPMVc6JF We spent a LOT of time writing up the job description, so hopefully it does a good job helping you share what we're about. They'll work alongside with 3 seriously impressive engineers, committing code to prod on week 1, and getting direct feedback from highly-engaged customers. Info on applying in the JD, and we're looking for Denver-area folks or those willing to come to Denver. (We really like building shoulder-to-shoulder.) PS, where in the world would you go?!

Oh baby. Our new website is LIVE! Some reasons why you might care… 1. Ungated demo & more product up front 2. Much more obvious pricing page 3. Lots more customer love And while I’m no copywriting pro, I did have a lot of fun “hand writing” every single word on it. Including the 110K+ words in our blog (zero SEO fluff). Or as Sam put it: “Even before I signed up for Fluint, the frameworks on your site took me from 70% to 110% of goal. More revenue-per-word than any site.” There’s a download or writeup for pretty much any mid-funnel topic. From multithreading to champion building, it's there. I’d be stoked if you wanted to check it out: → www.fluint.io And while you're here, can you give Benjamin Wordell a shoutout? He leads marketing here, and poured himself into the design ❤️

Averaging a bit over a new logo per week so far this year. There are 2 tools that fly under the radar right now that have helped me, the only full-time seller here (and a terrible one at that) make this happen: Fluint and Deeto: For a bit of context, we're a mid-markety kind of sale. Usually between 2 - 5 stakeholders. Leveraging these 2 tools has cut the number of calls I've needed to hold in half, and shortened the sales cycle dramatically. Fluint: Any non-transactional salesperson that isn't using this is missing the boat. Big time. Take your call recording. Immediately turn it into a clear, concise, single-page business case using the buyers language. The kind of thing that check-writers actually want to read when your champion brings them something for approval. I dont think I need to say much more than that. Deeto: Most users leverage this platform to manage their customer references and make it easier for their prospects to book reference calls in later stages of the sales cycle. I say to hell with waiting until late in the sales cycle. I don't wait until later in the sales cycle. I don't wait for prospects to ask me for references. I send them to the Deeto platform after the first call (provided my feels are that they have legitimate interest as a prospect). I LEAD with my references. After all....why not? "Before we reconnect next week, feel free to book some time with another VP Sales or CRO who has been a member of Sales Assembly and get some unfiltered feedback." The reality is that they very rarely do book a reference call that early. The beauty is that they don't really need to. After logging into the platform, they see names of 10, 20, 30, 40+ people they might recognize, leading revenue for logos they're familiar with, and are able to peruse customer stories and testimonials at their leisure. All of them WILLING to hop on a reference call at the click of a button. That's usually all the validation they need. If they do end up deciding on a reference call, well, that's why I keep sending Keith gallons of ice cream every quarter. As long as the positive feedback keeps flowing, I keep his blood sugar nice and high. 🤝 Anyway, there are a lot of tools out there to evaluate. They all promise great things on the sales side of the house. A good amount of them actually deliver on those promises. Fluint and Deeto most definitely do.

This 4,262 word email leaked from Mark Zuckerberg. There's an 18-point masterclass on crafting messaging for enterprise execs buried inside it too. But you have to look closely, so I made a 20-min video breaking it all down. LinkedIn only lets me the upload the first part of it here though. So get the full video, email + some more frameworks here: https://lnkd.in/gMtZK-XR ______ And if you just came to get your scroll on, here's the TL;DW: 1/ Internal buying conversations are where deals actually get done. 2/ Message the “Kairos” moment: vanishing windows of opportunity. 3/ How you frame an issue early is how you win a deal later. 4/ These are the 4 universal decision criteria: - Impact (gain captured, loss avoided) - Effort (what’s invested to create impact) - Risk (how likely the effort is to create impact) - Complexity (multiplies risk and effort) 5/ Execs consider outcomes in terms of “time horizons.” You should too. 6/ Multithreading 2+ business units won’t happen without exec support. 7/ Always find and frame your deal around all-consuming priorities. 8/ Discover and repeat an exec’s internal “catchphrase” over, and over. 9/ Small anecdotes get big deals done. They’re sticky & shareable. 10/ People remember narratives and often forget/ignore ROI. 11/ Related: execs make big bets on instinct, then backfill with data. 12/ Lead with the TL;DR, then share detailed support afterward. 13/ Address common objections upfront. Add a supporting FAQ doc. 14/ Competitive positioning is a BIG deal to execs. 15/ There are lots of paths to 1 outcome. Align on the approach. 16/ Budget is rarely an actual issue when tapped into a priority. 17/ What you’re looking for is sponsorship + internal referrals. 18/ Repetition is persuasive.