FLUINT CASE STUDY

How Samantha Landed a Fortune 500 by Getting Everyone on the Same Page (Literally)

"From what I’ve seen, there’s really no better resource than Fluint right now for supporting your buyer through a complex buying process"

Samantha Price, Global Account Director

BACKGROUND

Samantha’s journey started in journalism, with a stint as a local news reporter.

After a move across the country, she took some time off to be a kayak guide in Southern California, where she took large groups to see gray whales migrating.

After her career break, she decided to focus on the environment and conservation. She ended up finding her niche at the intersection of sustainability and sales, a space which didn't exist even 10 years ago.

COMPANY

Carbon measurement & reporting

Persefoni’s software helps companies measure, manage, report, and decarbonize their carbon emissions.

THE DEAL

What used to be a nice-to-have for companies is now a regulatory requirement.

Persefoni lets companies report on their carbon emissions in the same way they’d report on their financials.

Sustainability tech really didn't exist a decade ago, which makes it a uniquely challenging field to sell into.

What would you say to someone who is considering selling with Fluint?

If you're passionate about helping your buyer, it's a no-brainer. From what I’ve seen, there’s really no better resource than Fluint right now for supporting your buyer through a complex buying process.

And something I really needed and have gotten great feedback on internally is building really concise, timely deal briefs for my own leadership and deal team inside Persefoni.

A decade ago, Samathana (“Sam”) quit her 9-5 office job on a whim, and became a kayak guide in San Diego. She wanted to find a career she was passionate about — but she didn’t yet know what that would be. So she traded spreadsheets for swimming with gray whales in the Pacific. 

Years later, after she jumped back into the workforce, she found her way into selling climate tech at Persefoni. Today, she helps Fortune 500 companies with their decarbonization and sustainability strategy.

It’s a highly-competitive space, and one that’s likely somewhat similar to your industry: 

Sustainability professionals just aren’t used to buying software. 

Which means running a buying process is completely new for them. Key steps like securing budget, selling executives, and aligning a wide group of people doesn’t always come naturally.

So after enabling her buyers inside Fortune 500’s for the last few years, Samantha’s biggest ‘‘aha moment” was realizing that is her biggest competitive differentiator. 

It’s not just her software, or its AI features. 

It’s how she guides her prospects throughout their buying journey, while helping them navigate their own company, to successfully get deals done.

In the rest of this write-up, we’ll unpack her approach to simplifying complex deals — and how you can do the same.

How Sam sells with her buyers.

There’s one thought Sam’s constantly thinking about:

“How can I make this easier?”

Which means she works hard to cut out friction from the buying process for her buyers. Practically, this looks like asking herself two things:

  1. What does my buyer need to take their next step?
  2. How can I write that out in its simplest form, so it’s easy for them to share and understand?

Which is how we first got connected. 

When Sam first read about the concept of selling with buyers, by enabling them to share a written business case internally, it resonated:

“I’m at my best when I’m helping my buyers to sell their own vision to their team, and I saw that approach mirrored in Nate’s book ‘Selling With.’ It’s the perfect way to say it, so I just felt this spark, like I knew where I wanted to focus my attention and skillset.”

Getting everyone on the same page with executive summaries.

Here’s how Sam recently did what most sellers can spend a career working toward: 

Landing a 6-figure deal, with a Fortune 500 brand.

During her early discovery conversations, Sam heard one buying team contact say what most buyers feel while looking at carbon accounting platforms: 

‘I don’t know what I don’t know.’ 

He was pragmatic, and craving guidance, which opened up an opportunity for Sam: 

She started to guide him through the buying process by creating a shared executive summary. Which she started to build before the buying team even had a clear project definition, or budget approved.  

Since Sam had a good understanding of what was important to them—the real ‘why’ for buying carbon accounting software, outside of compliance—she added her notes and call transcripts into Fluint, to generate a written summary for them. 

Crafting that shared summary helped her champion lock down an official budget for the project. And even though Persefoni wasn’t a “vendor of choice” just yet, doing this meant:

  1. Persefoni was already at the top of the list during the buying team’s evaluation.
  2. Multiple different buying team members were already familiar with Sam — including the sustainability executive, who she was able to multithread with.
  3. Sam’s own team at Persefoni used the exact same executive summary internally. It served as a briefing document to drive demo’s, deal reviews, and rollout planning.

Sam’s main takeaway? 

“Creating that executive summary early in the deal opened up three use cases:

  1. It was an internal briefing document for my own team.
  2. My champion attached it to meeting invites while socializing us internally.
  3. It helped align both my executive team and theirs, in multithreaded conversations.”

In short, her executive summary made sure everyone was on the same page. Very literally.

Enjoying the journey:

Finally, here’s what Sam had to say if this practice of crafting executive summaries is new for you:

“What I love about sales is that it's a journey.

It’s a personal journey as I’m always refining my skills, and learning new ways to stand out from the masses and our competition.

It’s also a journey for each buying team I work with, so writing out a shared executive summary early in the process is the best way I’ve found to capture where they are, to guide where they’re going, and discover together what the deal is really about.”

Where are you on your sales journey?

Working to land your first or next Fortune 500 brand? Crafting your first or next executive summary? 

In either case, check out the platform Sam’s using, grab the same frameworks she’s using, and take the next step in your own career.

The full conversation

We sat down with Samantha to unpack exactly how she sells with Fluint.

What was happening when you decided to start exploring the idea of building business cases?

I've always been curious about what LinkedIn “influencers” are posting, and the content that they're putting out there.

I’d been part of a bi-weekly sales meeting run by Amy Volas. After following Amy for a while I was like, “Wow, this person's legit. She's a real, no-BS kind of girl.” I totally aligned with that. I don't like surface level conversation, I just get down to it.

So when she posted about Nate’s book, Selling With, and said it was a game changer, I wanted in. I started following Nate, and eventually found Fluint. 

I’m at my best when I’m helping my buyers to sell their vision to their team, and I saw that approach mirrored in Nate’s approach. It’s the perfect way to say it too, so I just felt this spark, like I knew where I wanted to focus my attention and skillset.

How were you doing these things before Fluint? ‍

It’s so hard to say, it feels like a million years ago, even though I start using Fluint this year. 

Before Fluint, I would just piecemeal information from mentors and influencers on how to sell effectively. But I never had a true process that I loved and aligned with. 

What I was searching for and found in Fluint was a beautiful roadmap for enterprise sales, that showed how to remove the messiness and simplify the process.

It was exciting, because my brain was just trying to wrap around the complexities of selling software to Fortune 500’s. And although I was doing it and had successfully closed a number of deals before Fluint, Fluint became a way to really hone my process.

What would you miss the most if Fluint went away?‍

I would die – I would just quit sales.

I’d miss the internal debrief for my team, which has been the biggest time saver for me. There have been times I've spent hours turning all this information, notes I've taken, company sustainability reports, calls transcripts, and I just spend hours trying to whittle that down into a simple internal debrief.

Since using Fluint, I've been able to shave hours off of my internal prep. That’s  massive.

This had been something I really needed, and helped address some feedback I’d received underlining how important being timely with briefs is.

Of course, the business case and executive summaries and selling with my buyers is major, but the thing I’d miss most about Fluint is the internal team debrief.

What would you say to someone who is considering selling with Fluint?

At the end of the day it's, where do you see yourself and your passion as a seller?

If you're passionate about helping your buyer, it's really a no-brainer to consider. Because working with Fluint is a way to support your buyer through really a complex buying process.

If you really feel passionate about helping your champion, from what I’ve seen, there's really no better resource than Fluint right now.

Where can folks connect with you and learn more about what you do? 

The company I work for is called Persefoni. It's named Greek goddess of warning and it's https://www.persefoni.com/ To find me personally, my LinkedIn is Samantha Price.

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