Brandon Fluharty 🐝

Forget case studies. Forget trying to use herd theory. Forget trying to use stories without relevance. The best way to use social proof in sales is to get under the hood with your most innovative customer today. Then, dive deep into understanding the executive behind that transformation. - What did they go through? - Why did they make a bold move? - How did they go about the change? With this understanding, you can better stand in the shoes of your *true* ideal customer profile (ICP). Here's a full breakdown of how to do this effectively well. It was the foundation for how I generated $27.3M ARR in less than 4 years with Fortune 500 companies: https://bit.ly/48Nvtwj

From 2018 - 2022, I closed $50M TCV w/ 11 Fortune 500 companies. They were all B2C brands. I did it with the help of others within our SaaS org by following "The Diamond Standard." It's built on a few powerful principles: 1. Be a customer of the brand. 2. Know more about the customer experience than those you meet with. 3. Show the brand love through the eyes of being their most loyal customer. These simple principles kept me and the supporting account team committed to fully understand that brand's customer experience. We could then work backwards to design how we can improve it and connect the "jobs to be done" to each person we met at the brand. Here's the cheatsheet that kept us on track: https://bit.ly/Diamond-Standard-Cheatsheet

Let's use an example of a strategic seller who's being asked to comply with cold call blitzes that they feel is not taking full advantage of their skillset. Here's a more objective approach: -> STEP 1: Break down how you spent your time over the past 4 weeks -> STEP 2: Draft up an internal business case -> STEP 3: Outline your strategy (that you both can agree on) Here's a real-life example broken out in detail using this 3-step approach: https://bit.ly/41tCX55

Once you on more neutral ground, you have the ability to discover a new perspective that was holding you back. Or you may indeed find that your leader is going off script (away from the company's principles). Instead of relying solely on your initial gut reaction, you validate it more objectively with "Why is this decision being made" and "Where is it coming from?" You have the right, in fact a duty, to ask these questions. But doing so from an objective place vs an emotional space allows you find common ground and build a bridge towards mutual growth.

To elevate your performance, it's important to view feedback as neutral - seeing it as a simple data point vs a personal attack. If we get caught up in labeling something "good" or "bad" it can put blinders on our own self development. Example: A leader is critical of your account win strategy (happened to me many times, even when I was a top-performer). Instead of thinking it's a personal attack, try this: Use something both sides can agree on (say like your company's principles) to find common ground. This will help create a bridge between your POV and theirs.

In sales, you need to focus on $10k/hr skills to communicate value to your prospects and clients. And there's 1 skill that's more important than the rest: Effective narrative writing. Why? Because effective writing produces high leverage in all of the other skills you need in high performance strategic sales: - designing solutions - visualizing value - communicating - challenging - negotiating - presenting - teaching - ideating - closing Unfortunately, effective narrative writing is still a major skills gap in the industry. Here's how to close the gap: https://bit.ly/46T1xxi