Florin Tatulea

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

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

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

Course Author

Common Room

GTM Partner

GTMfund

GTMramp Member (Investor)

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 Barley.

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. 



“Rewarding” your sales team by 2-3xing sales targets after they SMASH it has got to be one of the dumbest things that VC-backed companies do.

And it happens all. the. time.

The sales team almost NEVER ends up hitting the new targets. 

It just goes to show that there is no thought from leadership about building momentum and a winning sales culture, which ultimately bleeds into company culture. 

Ryan Walsh put it nicely this morning: 

“In tech sales your culture is defined by being put in a seat where you can achieve quota. You might LOVE your manager, your VP but if nobody is hitting plan, the culture is going to suck.”

If your average attainment across your team is 40%, LEADERSHIP is the problem. 

Not the sales reps. 

And you can pretty much guarantee that the "culture" the org keeps talking about is not looking too hot. 

Nobody is saying that you can't have ambitious targets. Just please base them in reality...

Sincerely,
Most sales reps

There are plenty of orgs that are doing things the right way btw.

Check them out and sort by quota attainment: https://lnkd.in/gA-WNr89

I get virtually zero cold emails over the weekend. 

30-50 a day on week days. 

If you are messaging executives, it’s a huge opportunity to break through the noise.

Got some emails scheduled for Monday? 

Move them to Sunday between 5-7pm. 

Less inbox competition.

Most sales people know about the MEDDPICC framework.

But here’s the secret that ELITE teams use to actually implement it properly and nail forecasts:

MEDDPICC but specifically with a POINT SYSTEM in place.

When it comes to forecasting, committing deals and coaching they are cut throat.

If a deal doesn't have a specific score, regardless of how positive the rep is about a deal, it cannot be moved to commit or to the next stage.

No exceptions.

It makes it so that there is close to nothing left for interpretation. 

A lot of reps actually hate this.

It creates a lot of "admin" work and need to update the CRM constantly.

But it takes away any

That's why this functionality that allows for AI scorecards that you can adapt in Attention is epic. 

Anis and his team have been "dog fooding" this internally with impressive results on win rates (not to mention blasting past $2M ARR in 14 months). 

🔥🔥🔥

#sales


Decided to wake up today at 4am and start cold calling right away. 

While everybody is starting their day now I’ve already been calling for 4 hours. 

You may think that you are bothering most people, but you’d be surprised how many founders and execs are up, working out and doing cold plunges at 5am. 

I’ve had a ton of good conversations. 

I also woke up a bunch of people but I was always able to objection handle my way out of it. 

Has anybody else tried this? 

Can’t stop, won’t stop. 

Rise and grind baby 😤

#winning

It's 2024 and most cold emails are still TERRIBLE. 

Here's a simple framework that I've used to book 1000+ meetings (h/t to Chris Orlob for summarizing it perfectly last week):

1. Trigger.

The first sentence should provide context as to why you're reaching out. It should be both personalized and relevant (these are distinct things). The more you can go from generic to specific, the better your reply rates.


2. Problem. 

Great cold emails capture the pain and problem better than the buyer can themselves. They read like a short journal entry from your buyer's mind and emotions. Describe the 'current state' better than they can, and you're halfway there.


3. Ideal state.

Notice I didn't just say "solution." Most reps pivot to the product here. And it falls short. Describe the ideal outcome, narrative-style. And use compelling social proof (see video for example).


4. Interest-based CTA.

None of this "do you have 30 minutes on Wednesday?" It's too easy to say "No" to that. Instead, ask if they're interested in a chat about solving the problem you described." Interested in a quick chat about upskilling your revenue team?" That's much easier to say YES to.


5. Include a P.S.

Copywriters and direct marketers know this. The "P.S." is often the most-read part of any piece of content, aside from the headline (or in email's case, the subject line). They're proven to work.

I go deep on breaking through the noise in my email conversion course: https://go.pclub.io/florin

I've reviewed HUNDREDs of cold emails.

Here's two other major mistakes WAY to many sales reps make that leads to low reply rates:

1. Not using social proof

There is a reason the first thing you do when you watch a movie or buy something online is look at reviews. 

Every single time I do these "re-writes" the first thing I do is look for customer quotes or reviews. 

2. Not being specific enough

Get to the point. What do you actually help with? 

Buyers are busy, they don't have time to de-code what you are saying. 

Make it extremely easy to understand what problem you are solving. 


P.S. join 8500+ other sellers who receive weekly tactical tips like this in my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eE-RZS96

#sales #outbound 

Signal-led outbound is HOT right now but nobody really talks about how to actually do it.

Here’s how you tactically execute a signal-led outbound strategy in 4 steps:

First of all, signal-led outbound is not something new.

We’ve used signals (like job changes) for a while… but previously we over indexed on 1-2 signals at a time.

Now we have the ability to capture 100+ signals at a time to tell us which leads are the lowest hanging fruit.

That’s a HUGE amount of context for sales reps to have in one place and it means that we can now get HYPER-specific with our messaging and sequences.

Each signal that is important to your organization should have its own purpose, messaging, and sequence built out.

Step 1: Write down all the signals that you currently have access to at your organization. 

Here’s a list of 100+ signals so that you can brainstorm: https://bit.ly/447woXl

Step 2a: Map out where each signal implies a lead is in the buyer journey

Look at the image below. You can see that a signal and therefore message has to adapt to where somebody is in the BUYER JOURNEY.

Step 2b: Create a lead-scoring system that takes into account which signals (or combination of signals) tend to imply that an individual and account is ready to buy or at least talk to sales. 

This usually happens when they are in the “Solution Aware” and “Product Aware” stage.

Step 2c: Cross reference these leads with your account level- ICP criteria. 

Not all leads that exhibit buying behavior work at accounts that are good fits for your business. (THIS IS CRUCIAL). 

Step 3: Create messaging (i.e. email campaigns, outbound sequences etc.) for each signal.

You can get even more complex here and create messaging or sequences for combinations of signals.

Step 4: Set up alerts and workflows so that if a lead provides a certain signal or hits a certain threshold they get put into the respective “campaign”.

Tools like Common Room help with Steps 2 - 4, and they curated the list of over 100 signals to help sellers get started at Step 1.

THREE OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER:

1. Top of funnel leads that aren’t ready to talk to sales go in automated sequences that are more focused on education (this can either be done by marketing or SDRs)

2. Mid-to-Bottom of funnel leads are sent to the sales team and are put into the appropriate sequences (emails + call scripts + LinkedIn message templates are already built out by the team). It is up to the SDRs/AEs here to do additional research and tie your product's value to your prospect’s strategic priorities.

3. Consider the size of the account and the number of owners on the buying committee. Start multithreading into the various decision makers/economic buyers who will influence your deal so you establish momentum early. (Common Room also identifies Economic Buyers across an account for you.)

(h/t FletchPMM for the great visual)

#sales #outbound 

You know what’s “dead”?

Your sales career if all you do is send automated template-based email sequences with zero customization/research. 

Oh, and here are some other things that are dead:

1. Break-up emails

How are you breaking up with somebody you never “dated”?

2. Spray & pray outbound

You have access to WAY too much data and technology in 2024 to not have sequences for each intent signal you track.

3. Sequences that are not mapped to phases of the buyer journey

Your marketing team should break down your signals / content based on the AIDA buyer journey. 

-Awareness (Symptom Aware)
-Interest (Problem Aware)
-Desire (Solution Aware)
-Action (Vendor Aware)

Your messaging and sequences should be VERY different depending on where people sit on the above. 

4. AI-generated emails with no human element

Saw a quote the other day “Everybody wants to use AI to create content, but nobody wants to consume content from AI”

Classic example of people not taking a step back to think whether they would want to be on the receiving end of your message. 

5. Saying things are “dead” (ironic much?)

No channel in itself is dead. You just aren’t doing it properly. 

Capiche? 🌶️🌶️🌶️

P.S. Mixmax just dropped their new Outlook integration. Do outbound the right way with personalized messaging: https://bit.ly/3TGtCDk

#sales #outbound

One of the biggest mistakes people make in cold e-mails: 

Wasting the crucial first sentence on meaningless personalization that doesn't tie into the point of your email.

Calling out basic observations and compliments like the fact that they transitioned roles is not helping you. 

Cut to the chase and save the compliments for the P.S.

Here's an example of what you should do instead:

More examples in my email course: https://go.pclub.io/florin

My general rule for SDR onboarding:

During onboarding and as you ramp up, it's best that you get good at sharpening all the tools in your set. 

Once you prove you can hit quota, I'm all for reps focusing on their strengths and running with it.

I think having the ability to be able to have conversations on the phone is SUPER helpful for when these SDRs want to become AEs.

I tend to find that if you are just sending emails all day, it's a more difficult transition to run proper discovery, ask the right questions, demo, and handle objections. 

Active listening, deep discovery and conversation are still an area that AI hasn't been able to replicate for now. 

If you are one-dimensional in your skill set, you are going to be replaced. 

Something to think about for the SDRs and Managers out there. 

#sales #outbound 

This is what happens when as sales people we push tactics like the "break up email". 

Saw Andrew Kobylarz post this email he received on X the other day. 

A friendly reminder to sales people that a prospect doesn't owe you ANYTHING. 

You have to earn a meeting. 

You earn meetings by: 

1. Taking the time to research prospects at an individual and account level 

2. Come with an interesting POV based on above. Why is this the right time for them to consider your solution? What do you know that they don't?

3. Have humility and realize that people are busy. The world doesn't revolve around you and your quota. 

It's that simple.

#sales #outbound

Simple and specific. 

That's how you break through the noise in outbound. 

Tomorrow (March 27) at 12pm ET Jason Bay, Vin Matano and I are dissecting and re-writing cold emails live on the Sell Better Show. 

Here's one I just wrote for the folks at Hyperbound.

Register here: https://hubs.la/Q02pPLR-0

#sales #outbound #coldemail

What if I told you that AI is going to save your inbox from spam? 

And not for the reason you might think. 

Hear me out:

The reason that you as a buyer are getting spammed all day is because you are getting blasted by companies that are hoping that you are open to / in the market for their solution. 

Until recently, we never had the technology to actually know if you were or not.

SEPs like Outreach and Salesloft made it 100x easier to hit up everybody and find the 10% of buyers that were actually interested…but it led to massive amounts of spam for the rest.

This is no longer the case. 

You can now use platforms like Common Room to aggregate 100+ signals across product, social, communities, and data from your sales teams to predict exactly who is in market at the individual and account level. 

Here’s a list of those signals: https://lnkd.in/gwZwUb2D

As we continue to get better at these predictions, it’s going to make less and less sense to hit up people that aren’t in market.

You may now ask “well Florin , does that now mean that if I start to show signs of buying behavior that I’m going to get bombarded by 20-30 vendors?”

Well, yes it is. 

And in my opinion, it’s actually in your best interest to know who all the vendors are and do a proper analysis.

Most people don’t do a “proper analysis” today because nobody has time to go out and actively research 20 vendors. 

Buying solutions is exhausting.

That’s exactly why outbound is powerful. You can reach out to buyers at the right time. 

It’s the only time you will likely get “spammed” and quite frankly, you likely won’t even care.

Because you are actively looking to make the best decision for your org (hopefully).

That’s how I feel about it at least. 

Am I wrong here?

Something I never really understood about us salespeople.
 
Just how easily we are willing to discount on price in a negotiation. 
 
You just worked a $100K deal for 6 months and on a negotiation call with the DM, they ask for 10% off. 
 
Within 30 minutes, you just lost $1,000 of commission (assuming you take 10% of the deal).
 
That’s a rate of $2,000 / hour.

WTF?!

Chris Orlob just wrote an extremely impactful newsletter on developing your skillset and negotiating that hit me hard. 
 
The SINGLE most impactful skill ($ wise) you can master as a salesperson is negotiation and it’s not even close.
 
Look at this table below:

If you want to get better at sales, you need to figure out what the most impact skills you need to build are and figure out how to automate or spend less time on the ones that matter less. 
 
Food for thought.

P.S. pclub.io has been crazy valuable for me as a resource. Going through the discovery and negotiating masterclass as we speak!

Your product alone is never going to close enterprise deals. 

Elena Verna is one of the most badass growth leaders on this planet and has transformored product-led motions at SurveyMonkey, Miro, Amplitude and now Dropbox (to name a few). 

She just dropped an absolute master class on going from product-led sales to enterprise sales in this podcast.

Here’s 5 things every PLG company needs to understand:


1. Your product alone will almost NEVER sell itself into an enterprise, no matter how good it is

Product is good at helping people or a team solve a problem. You need a sales team to tell the story and tie it to an orgs strategic priorities. 

2. Product needs a built in viral effect

Product needs a pushing mechanism to help with the viral effect. Any new sign-ups from an existing account already in your system should be asked if they want to join that account. You don’t want rogue users.

3. 7 users is the magic number 

 7 users at an account is the magic number and generally signals that an account is ready for an enterprise conversation. 

This falls in line with platform virality in systems like Facebook/Instagram. Generally, there is enough value when 7 users at an account are users to have an enterprise conversation.

4. Behavioural signals are key for sales to engage. Two that stood out:

-If there is an admin switch in the account, an evaluation is likely happening.

-If somebody from an account is on your Privacy / Terms of Service. Means that enterprise evaluation is likely happening.

5. It takes about ~1 year of product usage to escalate from an individual to a company level evaluation. 

Your sign ups now are driving future growth. It will take longer than you think to start closing those enterprise deals consistently. 

Be patient. 

This is a must watch: https://lnkd.in/g-Q-aG8F

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