Florin Tatulea

Common Room

Head of Sales Development

Sales Flo

Building meaningful pipeline for GTM brands by engaging their audience through content creation on LinkedIn, Substack & X. 

I also do Sales Workshops and GTM Advising for some of the best B2B companies in the world: Shopify, LivePerson, Zendesk, Docebo, and Vendr.

Founder

pclub.io

Best Selling Course - Copywriting, Cold Email and Sequencing: https://go.pclub.io/florin

Course Author

GTMfund

GTMramp Member (Investor)

Barley

Helping People/HR teams make smarter compensation decisions to stay competitive:

-Global Salary Benchmarking Data 
-Comp Planning Workflows & Reporting 
-Pay Equity Analysis 
-Total Rewards Communication

Director of Sales

Plato 

Built the BDR/SDR function from scratch. 

Plato helps Engineering & Product teams build their skillset by providing access to the top mentors in the world from orgs like Google, Meta, Netflix, Spotify etc.

Director, Sales Development

Loopio

First sales hire at Loopio and part of an elite sales team as an SDR, AE & SDR Leader that grew revenues by 65x in 6 years leading to a high 9-Figure valuation.

As an SDR Leader, I helped scale the Inbound & Outbound function to a team of ~25 across Commercial, Mid-Market & Enterprise segments.

Senior Manager, Sales Development

Manager, Sales Development

Closed 100+ deals across Commercial, Mid-Market & Enterprise segments.

Notable deals include: Square, Ceridian, Mcdonalds (Dynamic Yield), Databricks, TripActions, Carbon Black, Bentley, Gainsight, Grammarly + many more.

Senior Account Executive

Team Lead, Sales Development

Founding SDR

PenPal Technologies

Business Development Manager

Banking Associate

STS Capital Partners

STS Capital Partners is an international investment banking firm specializing in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, strategic consulting and advisory services for mid-market businesses. 

Worked on five $10MM - $100MM transactions within the real estate, airport logistics, IT & security and healthcare industries.

Analyst Intern, M&A

Sales Leader | LinkedIn Top Voice 2023 | GTM Advisor | Focusing on Seed → Series B

I'm a passionate leader that lives and breathes all things sales.

I was lucky enough to be the first sales hire at Loopio and have had the opportunity to be a part of and contribute to the exponential growth that had led us to a sales team of ~50 strong. In my 6.5 years at Loopio we grew revenue by 65x. 

I am now doing it all over again at Common Room

Whether it's been as an SDR, AE, Manager or Director, I'm constantly looking for ways to reinvent myself and my team.

I'm a people-first leader that understands that leading a team is not about me. It's about lifting others up and seeing them succeed. My success is simply a bi-product of my team's success. 

As a sales leader, I'm curious about scaling sales teams, generating pipeline, increasing win rates and lowering ramp times in a remote world.

As an individual, I'm passionate about copywriting, sequence/cadence building, leveraging social selling and the future of sales technology.

Pumped to officially welcome Ardavan to our team!

And finally be able to work in person with somebody here in Toronto :) 

Was getting lonely up here.

An absolute killer addition to the best SDR team I've ever built:

Clare McDonagh-Poh
Clayton Miller
Harry Sims
Heidi Origer-Stephen
Nate Hippauf

LETS GOOOO!

GTM Leader | LinkedIn Top Voice | Advisor

SDRs - using assumptive tones in your emails is turning your buyers off. It's something I didn't even realize I was doing and makes sense when thinking it through as a buyer myself. Thanks 💜 🔮 Will Allred for the realization. 

Let me explain:

A lot of the times in emails to prospects we use strong assumptive language like:

-I saw you're hiring. According to {blog}, X% of new sales hires don't hit quota.
-Noticed that while XYZ as an org has been increasing headcount overall, the engineering team has lost a few members in the past year
-It costs about $40k per head to hire an engineer and almost all heads of engineering I speak with are behind on hiring, and it's why retention is critical

The problem with this type of language is that you are a random person in a buyers inbox and the buyer is thinking... "Who the hell is this person, telling me about my business with no context?".

A better approach is to use softer or an "unsure" tone. Here's some examples:

-I saw you might be hiring. I could be wrong, but are you starting to think about ramp?
-I might be off here, but it looks like although your org has been increasing headcount overall, the engineering team has lost a few members in the past year
-This might not be the case for you, but It typically costs about $40k per head to hire an engineer and it's common for most heads of engineering to be behind on hiring

Words like "might", "typically", "it's common" soften the email and get's more replies.

I’ve now been involved in buying software at 4 companies. I never realized how many mistakes I was making as an AE until I was on the other side. Why is “How we buy” not a part of every AEs onboarding? 

AEs listen up. Here is where I got it wrong and what I think is important to understand:

1️⃣ Your buyer has a full-time job. Evaluating software is an additional task that is time consuming, requires some internal political pull and can likely mean they are putting themselves (or their jobs) on the line.

Understand this and don’t take it lightly. It’s important you understand whether this person has bought software before and HOW RECENTLY.

Why? If I happened to just buy a software last month, I likely used up some of my “internal pull” and energy on it. This matters more than you think. 

2️⃣ Buying cycles are slightly different based on whether somebody came inbound or outbound. 

If I request a demo, it may be out of curiosity, but usually this is an initiative that has already been talked about internally with various stakeholders, potentially a budgeted line item and half the decision has already been made.

This person is likely a champion, needs less convincing of the problem/solution and is probably talking with other vendors. Focus on differentiation early here.

For outbound, this potentially means a much larger uphill battle for your buyer. You must identify key stakeholders early and start multi-threading and helping that champion sell.

One of my favorite things to do here is spin up a digital sales room like Aligned and uncover who is actually looking at the material I’ve sent over.

3️⃣ Buying software is not rooted in rationality. 

Humans are not rational actors. Your ROI numbers are likely irrelevant… especially if we didn’t specifically sit down and confirm them.

Example: Let’s say your solution ultimately helps me get more qualified pipeline.

There are HUNDREDS of ways that I can go about doing this. Better contact data, better signals, better research on accounts, better emails, better training etc.

You need to help me prove that you are the BEST way to do that.

4️⃣ Make it extremely easy for me to sell internally.

No exec watches demo recordings, reads case studies or has time for 20 slides in a deck. 

Gal Aga said it best in a post the other day:

1. Equip them with a CXO-ready business case
2. Co-build all internal assets (ROI, TCO, FAQs)
3. Pre-plan rollout (beyond just closing)
4. Pressure-test expected internal objections
5. Prep champions for CFO skepticism
6. Map risks openly—no deal is risk-free
7. Constantly challenge: "What could kill this project?" 

Please don’t just send over a bunch of links or PDFs. Get yourself Aligned and make it easy for buyers to have a hub with all documentation in one place. 

Try it for free here: https://lnkd.in/eqcE6G9r

Brand partnership • GTM Leader | LinkedIn Top Voice | Advisor

We are on an absolute tear right now and we NEED more Commercial & Enterprise AEs. Since I joined last May, we are doing 5x the pipeline a month 🤯 

Poor AEs :)

We are looking for the best of the best. Here is why you should consider an AE role at Common Room:

1. You will get an opportunity to sell to some of the most forward-thinking and elite teams on the planet. Customers like: Atlassian, Databricks, Snowflake, Asana, Notion, Figma, Hubspot

2. It helps to sell a world-class product. Our product team is ELITE and is a competitive advantage. This platform was built by leaders that built some of your favorite platforms at Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft & Stripe... Just to name a few. 

3. You will be well fed. You don't think that Harry Sims and myself would really let you ever be starving did you? I can confidently saw this is the most elite sales development org I've ever built. And I'm not even a year in. 

4. You get to use the very product you sell every single day - how many people can say that? 

5. You get to work and learn from some of the most lethal and hands-on revenue leaders I've ever had the privilege of seeing in action in Matt Kroon & Chris Nethercote.

Remote US only. Exceptions for incredible talent in Canada :) 

Fair warning. If you don’t truly understand TOFU don’t apply. You'll have a big advantage if you’ve sold GTM tech, been an SDR Leader, and worked in PLG, COSS or PLS land. 

Check it out: https://lnkd.in/eHvqMsSy

A truth I wish more salespeople understood from somebody that has done a lot of hiring...the part of the interview where you ask questions is like HALF of what you are being judged on. Asking 2-3 generic questions as a salesperson in an interview is DIABOLICAL.

First of all, your job in sales is to do discovery, be curious and uncover information/pain. If you aren't doing it in an interview, you likely aren't doing it in your job. 

Second of all, salary and OTE are NOT the only thing that matters.

You need to interview the company, opportunity and the hiring managers as well. 
 
Broken down into 3 sections, here are a few great questions: 

1. SDR related 
2. Company related
3. Manager related

SDR Related:

-What is the average tenure on your SDR team? Are you happy with that as a manager?
-What % of your SDRs are hitting quota?
-How many SDRs got promoted to AEs in the last year?
-What is your average ramp time? 
-What does your top SDR do that your other SDRs don't?

Company related:

-Who is your top competitor and what's the main reason you are losing to them?
-Is marketing incentivized on MQLs or on closed revenue?
-What is your Net Revenue Retention? (110%+ means the business is generally in a good place)
-YoY revenue growth in the past 2 years? Projections for this year?
-What is the biggest threat to your business in the next 2 years?

Manager Related: 

-What is your management philosophy?
-How often do you hold 1:1s with your team?
-What does the onboarding program look like?
-What kind of training do you have in place for SDRs?
-Do I have the ability to craft my own messaging and adapt as I see fit?

If you ask these questions you automatically will stand out above 99% of SDRs. 

You don't have to ask them all on one call btw.

Super freaking excited to officially welcome Monica McIlroy 🍵 to the team!!! 

We are building the avengers of sales development at Common Room. 

We are in the fortunate position of building an incredible product, in a hot space at the right time. 

This has allowed me and the team here to be very opportunistic in our hiring and getting the best in the industry. 

I asked myself the question: 

Who is the last person that I would want to have to compete against in building pipeline. 

Monica, was the answer. 

She has broken into the largest accounts in the world. Once, booked over 110 meetings in a month and has scaled BDR teams at a number of orgs. 

She gets it. 

She’s been building relevant outbound campaigns at scale for years using signals and deep research. 

Now we get to have her on our side. 

This means our customers will also benefit from the campaigns that we will build internally as well. 


This competitive market is a game of execution and having distribution as a competitive advantage. 

Let’s go do this🔥

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After a record breaking Q4, we ended Q1 last week at 105% of our pipeline goal after setting what we thought was an INSANE goal. 

67% increase QoQ...

We are at 7x pipeline coverage going into Q2. 

How many teams can say that? 

PIPELINE IS KING. 

And we have some serious heavy hitters joining us this quarter... stay tuned. 

Shoutout to the best marketing team I've ever worked with. And a SPECIAL shoutout to our incredible pipe gen team:

Ardavan Hosseini
Clare McDonagh-Poh
Clayton Miller
Harry Sims
Heidi Origer-Stephen
Nate Hippauf
Parth Dhingreja

I would genuinely hate to have to compete against you 🤣

Something interesting I’ve noticed in the outbound world and I’m trying to understand why.

The knowledge gap around email deliverability between most outbound agencies and for those leading outbound teams in the start-up/growth world is MASSIVE. Let alone the enterprise.

If you ask the average growth marketer or SDR leader how they are doing from a deliverability stand point, or how to improve things, they will have no idea. 

I know because I’ve asked. 

It’s such a critical part of setting up your email infrastructure and it deeply affects your pipeline numbers.

If you don’t have good deliverability nothing else matters. Not your account list, not your copy, not who you reach out too…

There is literally no more excuse. A lot of email deliverability infra used to be pretty manual to set up. 

It took me 5 MINS to get these things configured 3 weeks ago in Maildoso:

✅ IP rotation to dodge spam filters and protect your domain
✅ SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured automatically
✅ 98%+ deliverability—even to Outlook inboxes

Oh and it starts at $1.80/mailbox, with free domains included.

How we doing over here? :D

#outbound #sales

WE HAVE TOO MUCH GTM DATA, IT'S EXHAUSTING. Everybody and their uncle has access to some form of data...signals, intent, account research etc. Every day a new vendor announces signals. I get it it's hot right now. You know what we are missing?

Action. 

Brendan Short put it best in his newsletter today..

Actions > Insights

"Intent & signal data alone isn’t enough. SDR and AE teams need context and actionable next steps."

Sales reps have a lot going on. The only way this works properly at scale is if you tell them what to do and feed it to them on a silver platter. This is not a diss to sales reps, it's just the reality. 

As a sales rep I want to be told EXACTLY how to execute on the data given to me, and then be given the choice to add the "human touch". 

You know what the "human touch" entails? 

It entails taking all the GTM data that is summarized to you, going and figuring out the nuances of an org based on "internal data" that is not online and can't be scraped by AI and combine it to paint a narrative for that account. 

AI can't find internal data because it doesn't exist online. That's the human advantage. 

If you aren't doing this, you will be toast.

I don't think enough people understand this.

We are entering a world of Person-Based Marketing in B2B. 

B2C brands have figured this out a long time ago. 

It’s why companies like TikTok, Meta and Snap have made billions of dollars in ad sales. 

It took us some time to realize that ABM and account-based intent is not very helpful for sales teams.

But people are starting to get it. 

It’s just not actionable. 

I have yet to meet a single sales person that thinks so. 

Especially when selling to larger orgs. 

The fact that somebody at Salesforce in NYC is showing “intent” doesn’t help me at all in closing Salesforce as an account. 

Exciting times ahead :) 

#abm #sales #outbound

Your list is your message in outbound. Take that in for a moment - it was a huge eureka moment for me. 

Most orgs build a list and then create messaging after it. 

I spent 1-hour with Jordan Crawford last week as he literally blew my mind and showed me how he flips this completely on it's head and uses data to build the message and ultimately the list. 

Here's how he leverages AI and builds custom 1:1 messaging for an HVAC company (we don’t all sell to B2B SaaS after all).

Imagine you are the owner of an HVAC company and get this email. How the hell are you NOT responding to this?

-------

Subject: Your Old HVAC Jobs

Jon - we reviewed permit data for 63,391 HCAV systems you installed previously. Of those, we identified 4,633 systems that likely need replacing (where we couldn't find updated permits), representing an estimated opportunity of $23.6 million.

Check out these 3 properties where you did work before:

4809 SAN VICENTE BLVD, WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33417
Installed: March 12, 2005 (20 years ago)
System: 4 AC Units
Original work: "Replace 4 central AC units with new heat pumps, multi-family"
Value now: $20,000 (4 units at $5,000 each)

721 OCEAN DRIVE, DEERFIELD BEACH, FL 33441
Installed: June 8, 2006 (19 years ago)
System: 3 AC Units
Original work: "Install 3 new AC units for condo renovation"
Value now: $15,000 (3 units at $5,000 each)

1200 PALM WAY, PUNTA GORDA, FL 33950
Installed: May 22, 2004 (21 years ago)
System: 2 Heat Pumps
Original work: "Replace 2 heat pump systems with new 15 SEER units"
Value now: $15,000 (2 units at $7,500 each)

These 4,633 potential replacements are mostly located in West Palm Beach (746), Deerfield Beach (683), and Punta Gorda (385).

Want the full list? Just let us know!

------

It's following his PVP (Permissionless Value Prop) email framework.

1-hour unedited video of Jordan walking me through it here: https://lnkd.in/gnX7aXtJ

P.S. PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND GIVE THIS MAN A FOLLOW. 

Jordan Crawford

We made a big bet on the SDR side this year.

Largely in part because our own AI functionality at Common Room has allowed our reps to focus purely on execution. 

The bet... 

If we can feed reps "in-market" leads that are fully enriched on a silver platter, they no longer need to build lists and do inefficient cold outbound. 

This has unlocked the ability to hire more senior reps, some who are our target buyer, and deeply understand the problem we solve and have networks that make prospecting WAY easier. 

That bet has been paying off massively. 

The 10X SDR is here. 

Had an amazing time chatting with Kyle Norton, who is a friend and one of the best CROs in the game on The Revenue Leadership Podcast. 

Here’s what we dug into:

✔ ️ The 10% Rule: The timing is likely right for AT MOST 10% of your TAM at any point in time. If you can feed these to your reps in real-time, you win.

✔ SDRs Must Level Up. The 10X SDR leverages internal intel (like SKO slides!) that AI can’t scrape.

✔ The Dark Side of AI SDRs: Generic data = generic emails. The winners will combine commoditized signals with exclusive insights.

✔ An elite RevOps team, is mandatory. Otherwise, your outbound engine fails.


Full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gj2YA7DA

10 days until I'm back in San Francisco!!! 

We got speakers from:

Amplitude
BILL
Clay
Databricks
Fivetran
Mural
Sendoso
Twilio
Vercel
Vimeo
Weaviate
Zapier

Going to be at the PLGTM summit with Kevin White & Matzen Shirley.

 I have a few extra tickets to give away. 

First time going to a PLG conference for GTM leaders. 

Pretty pumped :)

Taplio

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