Selling With Your Buyers - Nate Nasralla - Revenue Today - Episode # 04

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Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by Rev Genius, and we're on a mission to bring inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. All right, today's guest is somebody that's been a personal advisor to myself as we build out Rev Genius. He's co-founded and sold a startup. that built fundraising software for small nonprofits. Following that acquisition, he built an enterprise sales team from scratch. Then he went on to become the Chief Growth Officer at his next venture, but decided to get back into the founding role to help B2B sales teams. Today, he's the founder at Fluent. Welcome, Nate Nasrallah. Thanks, man. It's great to be here. So nice to have you on with, with us today. All right, I'm gonna jump right in, Nate, right into it.

Let's do it.

It's May 2022. Debunk a myth about generating revenue today.

Sales reps close deals. That's the myth. The truth is that buyers close deals, not sales reps.

Can't leave me just on that. Let me

know. I gotta let it sink in. Because I mean, the whole field is built around this premise of like sales reps close deals. But if you look at the moments that create and kill deals, B2B, it's never during a sales meeting. In fact, sales reps aren't in the room. It's during a buyer's internal conversations, where it's the champion on the buying team that's actually pitching and controlling the message. They're the ones that are getting others engaged, they're handling objections that come up first. And so we like to think, and we spend so much time thinking about the sales meeting as the center of sales activity. But it's all about what's going on and the message that's being communicated in the buying team when the sales rep isn't even in the room.

Yeah, it makes total sense. But isn't this the way it's always been? Like, how can we make it better?

It's, it's true. It's how it's always been. But the idea that this is what we need to build our entire sales process and train reps around, it's not being done consistently. And so that's why this is the area that I've gone very deep into in my next venture. And the question that I'm helping B2B sales teams answer is, how are you creating and then enabling a champion to give a very clear and compelling message when you're not there? And what most teams end up doing is if you look at how, practically speaking, they're guiding that champion's message, and one that assumes that they even have a champion built in the deal in the first place. But let's suppose you do, and if you look at how you're enabling that champion to go sell with you, most times it looks like a standard follow-up email that links some product recordings, decks that all look and feel exactly like the sales team or the marketing team. It doesn't actually sound or feel like the buyer at all, and the reason is that it's like really hard to do that. And so when you look instead at the ideal process, what the top performing reps are doing, they're developing and writing out a very clear and a very compelling business case with the buyer, their words, framing it around what their executives are focused on and what they'll resonate with. And they're thinking about, instead of what are the steps in my sales process and my CRM, they're trying to match and work alongside of how is this buying team going to review the deal? What's the process that the team is already working in today to look at and evaluate different projects, new priorities, problems, so on? And then how can I build out the sales cycle for this account to work within that, as opposed to creating more friction by trying to get the buying team to work through my own process? So that's something that certain reps will be doing, the highest performing reps, but not everybody. So even though, like, as we start to unpack this idea, sales reps don't close deals, you might sort of say like, okay, you know, I get it. But if you look at what's actually happening, It's very different from like the intellectual assent of like, I agree to, okay, I'm now practicing this in every deal.

So the best reps are writing out these detailed plans, putting in the buyer's words, creating the business case alongside them, and then handing it to them just to do whatever behind their backs?

Okay, great question. And so when we talk about plan, I guess one thing that I'll clarify, mutual action plans, maps, these are becoming more popular in the space. But what I'm talking about is the message as opposed to like the timeline, tasks, roles, so on. And so what the most effective reps are doing is they're writing the message alongside with their champion. And then they are developing that throughout the sales cycle as more and more people come into the deal. Because this is, this is the challenge is you're selling larger deals, you're starting to work on more complex deals, you have so many different contacts that are coming in with a different set of opinions, different set of view on the problem, different roles, goals that they're responsible for hitting. And so that business case or the message begins to evolve. So what the good sales reps are doing is not just saying, hey, here it is, hope the conversations go well. They're earning their way into those conversations. by selling with their champion, as opposed to like, I'm the sales rep selling to you, we are now selling together in developing our message over the course of the sales cycle.

Yeah, I love it. But the idea of having one champion, especially on bigger deals, is something that I've been taught isn't the case, right? Like, let's say you have multiple stakeholders, because now we're doing bigger deals, you have the head of sales, the VP of sales, the VP of marketing, and the VP of product that all have to buy in. They have different OKRs each, Nate, you and I know this, right? So, so is one champion enough for this?

So it starts with one champion, but you want to develop multiple champions. So let me level set on what a champion actually is. So to have a champion committed in your deal, one, they have influence, like they can actually affect change. Sure. 2, they have some type of incentive. So they've got to want the deal because there's a personal win in it for them as well. And then 3, they have some type of information that's hard to find otherwise, and you can't otherwise access that. If all 3 things aren't present in that one contact, they could be a coach, for example. You know, they have incentive and information, but no influence to actually help get the deal done. So you have to have all of those 3 things to be a champion. Now, ideally, you have multiple different champions inside the deal. That's the strongest indicator that your deal is on a good track to close. But you got to start somewhere. And usually there's one champion that you develop first. And as you begin to develop, back to this idea of the message, to speak to and resonate with the different goals, to your point, like a head of product versus a head of sales, They may be— well, they will definitely be focused on different things. So how have you worked with the head of sales to get some insight on how do we engage the head of product and convert them into a champion with the deal as well? Starts with one and expands over time.

How did this become so interesting for you in your life?

Well, it was— I mean, candidly, it was the number one reason why we lost deals. When I would look at where over half of our pipeline would just dissolve, It wasn't because we didn't have a person who felt some pain points, came in, booked a demo, they liked the product, they were resonating with it. Typically, they couldn't get any traction internally. They were psyched about the product when they saw it, but then it just fell on deaf ears. And the reason is because the competitors that we were truly facing up front was, one, they didn't want to change, or two, there were other types of projects totally unrelated to the product that would grab attention, and we couldn't get any traction. And so we'd be following up, hey, checking in, did the VP read the proposal? Hey, want to schedule a follow-up meeting? And nothing. And so as I started to go deeper and deeper into like, why are deals dying out on us after the demo, it all came back to this idea of crafting internal narratives. Like it wasn't about the product at first, It was all about whether that first contact we were working with was able to get other people in the deal, if we were multi-threaded, because they could speak very articulately about the problem, why it was a big deal, what it was costing them, the fact that they need to move on this now. And if they couldn't talk about that very clearly and sharply, I mean, all bets were off. And so we began, I began to see the first job of our account executive, Yeah. was to give that first champion in the deal a message to go get others involved. And the message very rarely looks like the product decks and standard follow-ups that we would be sending after demos. So I started to say, okay, like, if we want different results, we got to operate differently. Where do we start? And it all centers on and came back to this idea of, are we enabling a champion with a very compelling message? And that's, that's where we began to say, okay, let's sell together, let's sell with you. As opposed to looking at the posture and the sales processes, we're selling to this person all the time.

Nice. And what did you learn from others? Because you've worked with a ton of teams outside of yours, you have some aha moments.

But

I'm sure you built some more, right? Like, you know, along the way, can you boil that down to some, like, you know, an overall list of things that you'd recommend folks do to really Excel deals like this?

Yeah. So it starts with discovery. Number one, if you're not doing deep, thoughtful discovery, it's going to be very challenging to create just a good message that resonates, because that sets up the content that you are then giving to the champion to go sell with. So going deep and figuring out the right way to frame a problem, and to create just a really sharp problem statement. So one friend that does this very well and has some good thoughts on discovery is Charles Mulbauer at CB Insights. He writes a lot on discovery. So we've kind of talked about how do you, how do you pull out all of the, you know, the meat, the good stuff up front to carry you through the sales cycle, number one. 2, there are kind of 2— well, one, one example that I'll give you. So you are starting to collect inputs for your message. The question is, what do you do with it? Yesterday, I was talking with a strategic AE named Matt Rogers. He sells into utility companies. And every company is a little different. And so the question that he asks that is smart and totally tracks with my experience as well is asking, hey, when you go back to talk with your team or you're setting up new projects, how do you review those together? And is there some type of format that you typically follow? And then he'll ask, hey, would you mind sharing like a blank copy of that? I'd be curious to take a look at that. And so when he builds his message and his follow-up, it's done in their template, their format, so it looks and feels and tracks with exactly how the whole buying team that he's ultimately going to try to engage with is already used to checking out new opportunities, reviewing projects. So I'll stop there. But those are 2 really kind of important points. Are you collecting good inputs for the message? And are you building the, the medium or the materials to guide your message in a way that is familiar to your buyers? Are you camouflaging it with what they're already doing internally.

Got it. And that's enough to just send it away with your champion like

that. That's enough to get you started and get others in the deal. And then it— and then you're talking with somebody that you haven't met before, they're entering the sales cycle for the first time. And it's like, hey, I'm curious what resonates? What have we missed from your perspective? What's the impact of this problem on your goals? Where does this fall on your priority list? And that's how this whole idea of selling with them becomes kind of the process. Now you're including their input. They have some buy-in because they've helped reshape the message, and then they want to go champion this and bring somebody else into the deal and say, hey, here's my view on this, and so on and so forth. But it all comes back to this idea, like, are you operating from a message that people are interested in before you can even get to the, the quote maps, the how do we close this deal, the tasks, the timelines, and so on. You got to get people bought in on the deal in the first place.

This knocks it out of the park in the sense that like we're talking, like yesteryear, it was just sell your product, right? This is my product. This is how it works. Then along the way, it became, oh, This is the problem we solve for you, most likely. Let's validate if that's actually a problem. 50% chance. And now, a probable chance, whatever. And now, it— the best folks have always done this. But now, for me, more mainstream, right? Like, they've done this, but it really hasn't scaled. They just separated the top performers from the other. But now everybody's on there, saying, how could we make it person, you know, persona, the person-centric, like, I don't even want to say persona, it's not all VPs of sales acting the same way. It's the VP of sales named Todd at Company XYZ, who this quarter has these OKRs, this goal, and these top 3 priorities.

Right. Well, and that's a very important point that you raised too. The specific words that certain people choose to use different from others in your pipeline is critical. And so you've got to shape your message around those words. So a question that you could ask is like, hey, in the last few all-hands meetings when your CRO or your CMO is leading them, are there any certain phrases they keep using over and over? Like what, what is in the team slides and the team briefs and the updates? And their choice of language is always very intentional. And so if you in your message can match the exact same phrase that the person you ultimately need to reach is already using, they're going to say, hey, this relates to the thing that I care about and find important. So if I'm, I'm a CRO and I'm talking about boosting net revenue retention, and I see at the headline of a brief that says the path to a 20% higher net revenue retention, I'm gonna say, heck yeah, let me weigh in on this. You know, I want to take a look. And so I love the point that you raise that because it's not just about the persona. It's about this, the specific language that a person is choosing to use different from other accounts in your pipeline.

That's awesome. And it's potent. Let's, let's go on. What are some of the KPIs that are important to you today?

And you're, you're talking about me personally, as opposed to like a sales team?

Yeah, you personally, with how you're running your business in your current role. Yeah.

So the one, and the reason why I appreciate how you start all of the podcasts, like, let's debunk something. The very first one for me is, am I thinking differently than I was yesterday? And so trying to develop a new category, buyer enablement in the sales tech space, trying to continue to push the way things are done. I'm always trying to learn something to adjust my view of reality. Like, am I, am I seeing the world as it actually is a bit more clearly than yesterday? So that's the first one is what am I thinking about differently today than I was yesterday? And it's kind of a softer, you know, KPI. The, the second one that I think about a lot is a little bit more measurable in that it's about meaningful conversations. And so for me, I can't tell you how often a conversation that I had in the past where I didn't really know where it would go, but it was meaningful in some way, it was rich, I was intentional with my words, comes back around and becomes relevant over time. And so for me, it's not a volume thing, it's how many meaningful conversations did I have today or this week? And then the last one is, the amount of time per day I spend on one big thing. And the reason why is like the job of a seller, of a founder, I mean, any person like living today, it's a very distracted and chaotic calendar oftentimes. And what I found is like, let's say, let's say I decide kind of my most important thing. I've been doing a lot of writing. Content has driven a lot of the interest in our company. And so let's say I want to write down, you know, 1,000 words on a blog post. I might be able to get in 1 hour, 200 words done, because there's a lot of like forming and thinking about what it is that I need to do first. In 2 hours, I could get 1,000 words. In 3 hours, I could get 5,000 words. And so for me, having a block of time to focus on one big thing and the amount of time I spend on that each day, that's the third thing. Um, so those are like my 3 KPIs. And then I guess the, the very, very last thing that I'll, I'll reference it, um, I guess it's kind of a wrapper around all of those things.

Yeah.

So I love philosophy. I read a lot of philosophy. Seneca the Stoic has this saying, what progress have I made? I am more a friend to myself. And the reason why I like that is I'm always kind of thinking about, is the voice in my head, is the person I'm becoming, are they a nicer person? Do I want to spend more time with them? And if I'm thinking differently, bringing a new point of view to people, if I'm having meaningful conversations, I'm spending time on what matters most. I just find that the way I talk to myself becomes a little nicer. My interactions become a little bit more meaningful. So it's just kind of a guiding idea. It's like, do I like the person I'm becoming more today than yesterday?

Yeah. I mean, it's spectacular to align KPIs around you as a human. It's always cool. One thing you said really stuck out. buyer enablement. The irony that sales enablement came first, selling you something instead of you buying something. Unpack the importance of buyer enablement, like, like as a category, and why doesn't it exist yet? If it doesn't, like, it shocks me right now.

Well, I agree. So the term buyer enablement comes from Gartner. So I love the phrase. And what I found is that there was all kinds of research talking about this idea that ultimately, that in my words, sales reps don't close deals, buyers do, because it's about the conversations that are happening with the buying team. But if you look at the way sales process, sales tech reps are operating, it doesn't match up or line up with that reality. And so what I found is like with my own team, when we were testing stuff like building a message in a plain, unformatted Google Doc with the buyer. When rates went up, when I started talking to the highest performing reps on different teams, they were opening up Notion, Canva, Coda, Miro, Mural accounts, all of these different things to try to match what their buyer was already working in, very collaborative apps. And I was like, this is very interesting, despite how frickin crowded sales tech is. I mean, there are so many sales tools out there. Nobody has created ways for reps to sell with their buyers in a very easy way, and there's even research validating all of this through Gartner. Their term buyer enablement. So that's where I'm like, okay, we need to go build this. And that was that was where the motivation to you know time will tell if I was very smart or very stupid to say I'm gonna go create software for this and give this give this to every B2B team that needs it. That was, that was where the motivation came from.

I think it's massive. I was on the phone with a client yesterday, and they used this quote. They said this, which was like telling, they just dropped, they said, yeah, I mean, about, I have about 60 different Asanas. And I'm like, is that because they wanted it? Or is that because each one of the deals that they're monitoring, like, that doesn't sound that great. To have 60 different Asanas, does it?

No, it doesn't. And that's actually, you know, if you're a more enterprising sales rep, you like the idea of the founding role or entrepreneurship, like the best thing that you can do is try to find ways that people are hacking together tools that don't belong in a certain space, they weren't designed for that, to try to get a certain job done, and then help them do that better. And like, this was You know, part of your insight with Rev Genius is like people were trying to build connections, to learn and get better at their job in very ad hoc ways. There was no like meaningful central place for them. And so you built something.

Yeah, I mean, it's all about the buyers, yet so often we talk about it. But the products are sales engagement platforms. The products are— I guess revenue intelligence is neutral. It might be buyer-leaning. What if it was a buyer engagement platform? We don't need to go down that tangent. I have no idea what that would look like. But the sentiment is there, right? A sales engagement platform, anybody who's listening, now is a spamming tool if you don't do it right.

Right.

Is there a way that buyers would prefer? I mean, probably not today because they're so used to it. But if this was started at the beginning, maybe they would have bought in, right?

Well, that was part of the fun thing in doing the design behind the product is that one of the users are buyers. Like, we have 2 different types of buyers. There's sellers and buyers, 2 different types of users, sellers and buyers. And in talking with buyers about their experience on the receiving end of the follow-up and the content and the product X and so on, they would talk about this idea of the treasure hunt. They would get a stack of links in a follow-up email. They would go through and pick out the 2 or 3 sentences in each that actually made sense or resonated or were relevant. They would translate those into something that in their own words would actually resonate with their team. And then they would put that in their own internal deck, doc, whatever it is that their team uses. And so they were essentially building their own sales materials. And they were like, this, this sucks, because it takes a lot of time. And if I really need to solve this problem, if I've bought before, I'm rather experienced, I'm going to do it to get the deal done. But if not, if I haven't bought before, or I'm not like super engaged in the sales process, I'm just gonna walk into a meeting and wing it and be like, hey guys, checked out this interesting tool. It's, you know, kind of interesting. We should look at it. And that was what buyers were saying is basically, you have done one of two things, either let me wing your message and your pitch, or you forced me to build the material for you, neither of which is great. And that's why the sales reps that, albeit very manually, were doing this work with their buyers using all different types of tools, and I'd call this the top 5% of reps that were actually doing this, they were loved by their buyers. Buyers genuinely appreciated the partnership and the teamwork throughout the sales process. So from the words of over 200 buyers and user interviews with us.

Yeah, in my history selling as well, like once I was in the door, if I could become trusted, I would attend like as like a partner meetings, whether it was internal or whatever, and be like an advisor. And like understand exactly what they were trying to do. And You know what happened? I got invited to birthdays. I got like, you know, like the relationships go through the roof because, you know, we so often think of sales as, you know, win-loss and all of that. But like, it's much more impactful to the person that's buying if you help them look like an all-star, if you make their life easier. If you save the money that actually like goes towards something that they needed to do, if you just save the money to save money, like if you're a big company or whatever, that can get lost. Like, like it's a nice to have. But if you save money for a person that's like one of their OKRs was to like cut costs by 12%, and, and, and you single-handedly did 14%, Oh my gosh, like then they don't have to talk to 500 other people. They save it all the time. They took out the spreadsheets. Maybe they're still doing it because they're obsessed. But, um, you're this person that's a homie, for lack of a better phrase. This is, this is what being a homie is, right? Like it's—

That's right, that's right. And I, I love the language that you use too, like be a homie. In the sales process. And the way that you can figure out if you're being a homie is like, one, I, I will have past buyers come and stay at our house when they're traveling through Denver. They're like, it's been too long. We want to catch up and we'll have 'em over for dinner. Um, I've had the chance to rewrite job descriptions for past champions that I've worked with because as a result of how they've led a new project and got everybody bought in, they were being promoted. And they're like, hey, you work with people in this role, you know, so many different people, what are you seeing that's typically in the job description? Like those types of, call it data points, experiences, will show you if you are truly building a meaningful experience for the buyer.

Yeah, one anecdote that comes to mind is I watched, I looked at one of my old contacts at a company, like my top company in the territory, my top client, that I won from the competitor. They left their job and I was looking at their resume on LinkedIn or something. And one of the line items on their resume was what we did together.

Yeah.

Did this, this efficiency of that. And that was such good validation, right?

Yeah. There you go. You were a homie to that person and it showed up in some, like a very measurable, direct way. line items on a resume. There you go. We talk about personal KPIs. That's a great personal KPI.

There you go. Nothing more personal. Like, yeah, that was, that was a cool one. But let's, let's go. Let's roll on. Like, it seems like you're pretty well balanced, Nate, but there's got to be something keeping you up at night. Is there?

Yeah, it's a lot of different things that keep me up at night. I mean, what I've, what I found is that In seasons where life is intense, my calendar is very crowded, I'm running through the day, I don't have like the brain space for processing, deep thinking, unpacking like what I went through in the day. And so when I go to bed, it's like the first time where screens are away and my brain is just running. It's trying to catch up with my body and it's trying to unpack everything that I just went through. And so typically it takes me about an hour On average, some nights it's a little longer, but it takes me typically about an hour from the time that I lay down, no screens, to when I'm actually asleep because my mind is just running, trying to catch up with me. So it's not a specific thing like this topic is what I'm worried about. It's just a lack of white space often that does it for me.

Now, you're not the only one. I mean, myself, I do it the other way. Like, I could conk out right away because I'm just beat. But then I'll wake up, like today I woke up at 3:45 AM. By the way, I didn't need to wake up at 3:45. I could have slept till 7.

Yeah.

With like anxiety and like stuff like running different scenarios. So like my body like proverbially dies and conks out. Um, but like what advice can you give to others like you, like me?

So the first thing that I found that's helped me is journaling. There is like a release. There's this moment of catharsis when you take something from your head and you put it down in written word. It's like you give it a new space to live. It's like, you can live here on paper. You don't have to live in my thoughts all the time. So that's the first thing that's been very powerful for me. And turns out, like, I've actually used that. So I've been doing that for about 10 years now. And I've used that skill in writing in a lot of different ways. So that's, that's number one. The second is I would look at the amount of time that you spend in total stillness every day. So no stimulus, no music, nothing like that. And that's how I start my day now is I go downstairs, I sit down on the couch, and I sometimes, if I really need it, I'll play some classical music, but otherwise my day starts in, in just stillness. And it gives me like a way to push back all of the demons that come rushing in me and just trying to like grab my attention at the start of the day. And that's your first job is just to push them back and say, I'm gonna take a little space. And if you can set that precedent for yourself very early, it sets the tone for the rest of the day. So that's the second practice. And then the third practice would be honestly conversations like this. The fact that we get to talk about this is irregular. And I would be willing to bet that the majority of people listening to this haven't had a conversation where they were able to unpack and say, I'm anxious. This is what I'm feeling. This is the stories that I'm making up and telling myself. And if you don't have that, try to find at least one person. Like, you need a homie in your life to be able to share a conversation like this with. So journal, create stillness in the morning, and find a homie where, like, when you hear somebody else say, me too, like, I have those thoughts too, I'm also feeling a little anxious, it just lets you know, like, you're not abnormal. Like, there are, there are others like you trying to figure it out alongside you.

I love that advice. I, I'll, I'll add in, you know, in the stillness, be a homie to yourself. So often we are hard on ourselves.

It's true. It goes back to—

this doesn't get you away from your mental thoughts onto yourself. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we're definitely not saying this is easy. We're just saying it's, it's worth it. And it go— it goes back to that, like, the reason why I like that, um, quote from Seneca is like, are you becoming a better friend to yourself? Are you becoming the type of person that you want to spend more time with? And it starts with, I mean, we're always our own harshest critic, giving yourself a little grace and saying like, it's okay, I'm a work in progress, but I am becoming more of that person that I want to spend more time with every day.

Nice. And what excites you the most about the future?

What excites me? So on a personal level, it's growing our family. My wife and I have been working on having kids for years. And so My prayer over the last year is make me a father and a founder. And so I've got the founder one checked off. I'm still working on the on the father one. So I'm very hopeful, and I'm staying very optimistic. So I'm excited for that. And then the the second thing is I'm I'm excited to break down some of the anxiety in the sales profession by giving people a new process to follow. Sales in in we're saying it. I mean, we're recording this in May. It's Mental Health Awareness Month. And what makes me hopeful is just the number of stories and openness that I am now seeing in the sales profession around just the fact that it's a one, it's a really hard job, but two, that creates a lot of anxiety. And so I want to see more reps realizing that, man, the path to hitting quota is just focusing on my buyer, having a process that is more meaningful for them. And in doing so, on the flip side, I end up hitting my number and I'm less anxious about that. I have more brain space available for other things in my life as well. And so that's what I think about why we're truly building this product. Here, I'll put this in, in a, a quick anecdote. Yeah. Last week I was, I was talking to a user, his name is Blake, and I was saying, Blake, like, why did you even take the time to check out Fluent? You know, small company, small brand. Like, why are you interested? And he is like, well, I've been trying to develop my personal sales operating system, and this looked like it could help me with that process. And I said, well, why is that important to you? Like, what's this operating system about? He's like, well, I'm expecting my third kid. We're about to go on— I'm about to go on paternity leave, and when I come back, I want to be able to sell more in less time so that I have more time for my new son who's about to come into the world. And I was like, that's legit. That's why we're building a product. So the fact that We can get there as a profession. And on a very individual level, hearing stories like that, that keeps me hopeful in the professional space.

That's so rad, man. Now, the first half of the conversation we learned from you, and we learned a ton.

The

second half, we're going to learn about you. With that said, who are you?

I learned something about myself. So I'll start with this. And this was an exercise that my therapist had me go through. It's called the SparkType assessment. I had never done this before, but it basically tells you what gives you energy when you feel like you're just in it, in flow, and like you're at the top of your enjoyment during the day. Like, what is driving that? And so my SparkType is a Maven, which is basically somebody that gets very excited about acquiring more knowledge. And just like that process of learning something that they didn't know gives them energy. And that was very interesting for me because I would've told you there's this other spark type called the maker. And typically I describe, like, if you go listen to other podcasts that I was on like a month or 2 months ago, you'll hear me talk about myself as a builder. Like, I love building and creating things that didn't previously exist. And what I've now realized is that I like doing that because I am constantly pushed into new spaces where I don't know much about it. I'm on the boundary of that knowledge, and so it's my process of acquiring new things that I didn't know before. It's kind of fun. We're always changing. Now, I discovered I'm more of a learner than a builder, and I build in order to learn.

I could have guessed that. I find that people that have roles within communities in particular are learners. Did you see that at your time at Gann at all?

Yes, I did. It's the people who want to have a conversation because they're so curious to know what's in your head that's not in mine, and can I download some of that over here? What I found is, and this challenged my view on community, is I first thought it was more of a place for extroverts to come together, have big parties. What I've realized, I'm very much introverted by nature, but my desire to learn overcomes that just natural tendency or inclination to stay reserved. And so what I found and what I appreciate about the Rev Genius community specifically is that it's an inviting space where people can just be them. So even if you're introverted, community is a place for you, just the same as somebody else who's there to have a big party and have as many conversations as possible.

Nice. You mentioned, and thank you for For the love of the community. Like, it's a big thing that I realize is important to me too. You, you mentioned, you know, in discussing what excites you about the future, the 2 Fs— father and founder. And the irony is they rarely go at the same time. They, like, one holds you back from the other, or at least it's perceived. How does that work out in your life? Like, how'd you— The most, um, time that you need the most quote unquote stability, at least social conditioning. And I don't know your personal finances and wellbeing there, but isn't typically the time when you have your first child?

No, that's very true. And that's why I count myself very lucky to have gone through my first founding experience early, when I could make a couple thousand dollars a month and pay rent and I was happy. So there's just a very practical financial reality on the one hand, Um, I guess the short answer to your question is I don't know, because I've never done this before. I've never done both jobs, you know, roles as a, as a human before. So part of it is we'll see. The other part of it is that I'm, I'm always very interested in patterns or analogies. For example, I don't read a ton of sales books. I read books from other disciplines and find ways to apply those to sales. And what I'm expecting is that there will be a lot of the same. I learned things like patience, prioritizing time because of my role as a father that now cross over and I can apply them as a founder. And so I'm very curious to try to figure out where those parallels come into play, because I don't see them as a totally binary thing. You know, at one moment I'm a founder, one moment I'm a father. I think there are going to be things that I take from both that I'm able to, able to use in both circles.

I'm sure you You will, but from a psychology standpoint, it could be a lot. Something I took away from a previous interview with Andrew Guszdecki, who has a child, wife, family, but he's done it a few times successfully, but he's like, this time there's non-negotiables. Mm-hmm. I have lunch with my wife every day. I, I, I'm, I, uh, I pick up my kid or do certain things with my child every day. I spoke with Mark Roberge and he's like, coach all my kids' teams. So I find it, I find it might help and I think it might be pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they are very clear about what's important to them and then they're able to design their life around those things. And I sense myself over time drifting and kind of floating a little less nudged along the way of other suggestions. And now I am more likely to start with saying, this is important, and then let me create the environment, the calendar, the things that afford me the ability to do that. So that's cool. I mean, 2 pretty awesome guys in Andrew and Mark saying, hey, I'm doing this. This can be done.

It can, and it can be done very successfully. I'm curious, you're in Colorado now, right?

Yeah, you got it.

I've been seeing a lot of talent in the startup world coming from there. What's the climate like? Because I think you came from Illinois, Chicago area?

Yeah, that's right. Born and raised in Chicago, came up through the Chicago startup scene, and I moved to Denver about just over 5 years ago. And I mean, the, the tech scene in Denver has one exploded. There's, it was always kind of call it more Boulder-centric, um, in the past.

Yep.

And what I found is that over time it's moved more both into Denver and then just Colorado as a state, uh, more generally. And part of the reason why, and what I think is driving this, is it all comes back to this idea of like, people want to design their life around what's important to them. And what drew my wife and I out to Colorado was we love to ski, bike, hike, run, and we can do that here. And then that's what was important. And so what allowed me to move was at the time after my first startup was acquired, I was building out this enterprise team and I convinced my CEO to say, hey, let me build this team all remote. Nobody, everybody was based in Washington, DC at the time. Nobody in the company was remote. I was like, we're going to be traveling anyway. This is the type of life that I think is going to be great for my family. And I think there's a lot of talent as well that wants to be remote. Let me do this. And so eventually, after a lot of pestering, he said, okay. And so what I think has happened is that people have realized now when I come to Colorado, I can have both the lifestyle that I want as well as the career that I want. I don't have to choose between those 2 things. And it's attracted a lot of just really good people to the market.

Do you think your early-on inclination to have everybody go remote contributed to you founding a company quicker than you might have?

Oh yeah, I do. I do. And part of it is that I was just able to— when you're flying to meetings all the time, which was my old life, enterprise sales, there's just not the same volume or like velocity of learning and conversations that you can have when people are expecting you to be there to really go deep. But it's just hard to find the patterns to accumulate what you need in order to really say, okay, this is the thing that's next. And so, you know, the Zoom life in many ways contributed to that.

Geez. And I'm curious, how did the nonprofit life lead you to The VC world. I mean, assuming that you go in that direction, but your clients probably are in that world of software as a service and probably other technology.

Yeah. So a lot, a lot. And I'll tell you why. So first, when people hear nonprofit, or they hear small nonprofit, they think no profit, like there's no opportunity here. But every year, over $450 billion with a B dollars is given to nonprofits. So one, just by market size, the fundraising for nonprofits is larger than the majority of industries that a lot of people listening to this are operating in. 2, there's over a million nonprofits accounts inside of the US alone that are trying to raise money without a full-time fundraising staff. So if you just, if you just look at the market size or opportunity there, there is huge potential. And that's, that's why we were able to take on funding from the VCs who saw this. And we're willing to think differently and say, oh my gosh, there actually is a huge venture-scale opportunity here, number one. Number two, what's very interesting, if you have a sales job selling to nonprofits, you have arguably worked with the most challenging buyers and sales environment. The reason is that the typical rules around ROI don't apply. If they don't feel immediate empathy for the mission, they're going to write you off. And the most important thing is that Even if you are talking with the CEO of an organization, the executive director, and you're selling, let's say it's, you know, a relatively small ACV, $5K, $10K, chances are they can't sign off on that. And they're going to bring it to a board meeting for approval. And no sales rep is going to be sitting in that board meeting delivering the pitch, handling the objections and the questions. And so it's all about how are you training and teaching somebody to sell with you when you can't be there. And that was my— that was where I first kind of cut my teeth on this idea of building deal champions to sell with. So it was very formative. At the time, I couldn't tell you what it was leading to, but looking back on that, it's very clear to me.

Geez, how did you get started in the nonprofit world, out of curiosity? We have, uh,

yeah,

it's everything that is you.

So my, my first job, um, I was working for an organization called Leader Treks, where we used, um, different types of mission trips, international trips, as a platform for teaching leadership curriculum to students. And so I was raising money. Part of like my own payroll was money that I raised at the organization.

Right.

But then I went the opposite direction into startups, and I started developing the sales team for a company called Tiesta Tea. So I was selling to grocery stores, restaurants, trying to develop our first sales program, getting into national chains and accounts. And it was, I mean, very different environment. But I loved it. I was like, but I really don't want to do tea. I don't want to be program staff at a nonprofit. What do I want to do? So I went into consulting for a year and built these big old financial models, valuing some type of IP technology in litigation. And it was very interesting work. It kept me very intellectually stimulating, but I was like, tech is cool, but this whole consulting thing, it's not for me. And then when I met Brian, who was the co-founder and the visionary behind DonorPath, was the name of that first startup, I saw, okay, there's this blend of nonprofits, more meaningful work, tech, which I've been loving over this last year. And then my experience working on go-to-market, bringing a new product to the market. And Brian was very much a product visionary. And so after 2 weeks of meeting, I just We talked to a guy who said, you need to talk to Brian. We met for a couple weeks, left the consulting firm. I was like, okay, I'm in. And then we went and built that company, and I wouldn't have changed a thing about that experience in hindsight.

That's awesome. You've lived a long life. You've had some good experiences. I don't mean that in any way outside of some really, really eclectic background, which actually Is very aligned with every single move that you made. It seemed to me like that.

Yeah. It all melts together. And it's why I'm a big fan of— there's this book called Range by David Epstein. And the basic thesis of the book is that generalists will triumph ultimately in a very specialized world. So if you want to build a high-performing team, look for people of non-traditional backgrounds. And you're starting to see some of this come out more and more. in sales, you're seeing posts talking about our SDR team is built of former teachers who are transitioning career fields and all different examples of it. But I'm a big fan of looking at the people with— I love the way you said it— very eclectic backgrounds.

Absolutely. And you started talking about what you like to do outside of work. You spoke about moving to Colorado for some of that stuff. But Yeah. I wanted to learn more about you. Like, what do you do when, when the stoic morning sitting still is done, the bike's done? What else do you get into?

Yeah. So I do like to read quite a bit. I tear through books on Kindle. I, it actually kind of varies on the season. So like in the winter, my wife and I are on the slopes as often as possible. I started out skiing, made the switch to snowboarding. So I'm a big, big snowboarder. The more trees backcountry I can get, Uh, the better. Then it kind of transitions to like, now I'm doing a lot more cycling. Um, getting ready for some kind of long rides, uh, over the summer. And, uh, I guess kind of the, the last thing is I, I really like trying to cook new foods. Um, it's, you know, if I haven't tried it before, then, you know, it's a fun way to experiment. So, you know, a couple hobbies that I throw in there.

What, what book are you reading right now?

Um, so, so I'm reading 2. Um, one is called Decisive. It's by these brothers, Chip and Dan Heath. It's all about kind of the science or frameworks behind decision-making. Okay. Yeah. And then the second one I'm reading is called 4,000 Weeks. And it's a very interesting take on productivity and time management because it draws very much from philosophy in order to say, what's the point of it all? If you're only going to live for about 4,000 weeks, what's the point of just stuffing more things and optimizing your calendar to the nth degree? Um, what's the point of it at the end of the day? So, um, and then kind of the, the last one that I'm, um, uh, working through is an old favorite, um, by C.S. Lewis called Mere Christianity. I love his take on kind of the, I guess, the meta questions of worldviews, and I— he goes very deep into it. So I pick that one up every now and again. So I'm working my way back through it for me, I don't know, maybe the 6th or 7th time.

I'm a big Audible fan.

Yeah,

I never was, but it allowed me to actually read and not have an excuse. I'm reading The Power Law now. Have you read that?

Oh, no, I haven't. But by the name, it sounds interesting.

It's, it's a spectacular history of like financing, and how it leads specifically around the VC financing in the tech world. from East Coast, West Coast, and the entrepreneurs and Spurn. And like, you could understand from Liberation Capital in the beginning to like New Yorkers always wanting like an out, you know, at any deal. But West Coast people like were truer growth capital. And you could see it right down to the Alibaba financing from like Goldman, and how they wanted to hedge the deal at a $20 million, like, put in, they wanted to offshore 1/3 of it, which, which they lost, like $20 billion in opportunity cost on that.

Yeah.

But, but like how China really wanted the new— it's, you'd probably love it.

Okay.

And then, and right now I'm at the point of Y Combinator and how like everything is going towards angel. investing, and Paul Graham and all that, and like, but where he came from, and like the Kleiner Perkins, and like how everybody came about. And it's really, it's really educational and historic. Like, like, it's just fascinating. It's like, that makes so much sense.

That sounds very interesting, because it sounds like it's the story of how the landscape was formed and reformed over time. To what we're living through today.

Yeah, and we're still writing it. It's quite good. And then I, uh, I always have something, uh, personally where I can't read more than 2 business books in a row.

Yeah,

because I start getting numb and like I can't like take it. So like the 3rd could be a spiritual book or, um, geez, I— or, or like, uh, a Michael Lewis type of, you know, like Bringing Down the House or something, if you— or Ben Mezrich or something like that, you know, something super interesting. But

yeah, I, I dig it. I'll kind of mix in, like, the one before this was a book called Never Quit by a guy who became an Air Force PJ, pararescue jumper. And it was kind of interesting. It was his memoir. So, you know, I'll throw some kind of ones from left field and different flavors in there.

Shoe Dog was my left field one. It was really amazing. But they want to Want to finish up here. This has been such an incredible conversation with you and really appreciate your time. For everybody listening, where could people connect with you, find out about you and Fluent?

Yeah, so if you want to find out more about me, you can connect on LinkedIn, Nate Nasrallah on LinkedIn. If you want to find more of the company Fluent, you can check us out fluent.io. If you go to the blog, you can see a lot of what I'm writing on enterprise and complex sales.

And plugging the book that you just came out, The Enterprise Sales Playbook, right?

Yeah, it's free available for anybody to go check out. So hit fluent.io/blog, and it'll be right there on the top.

Thank you so much again, Nate, for being here, learning about you 360, from empowering, you know, enabling the buyers versus the sellers to hiking, mountain biking, your aspirations of being a father, but the founder part clicked off. And literally seeing your eclectic background, which was very in line with your direction and your career growth, has been outstanding, man. I've learned so much. For all the folks listening, thank you. Thank you so much for listening and being here with us. If you've learned something today, or laughed, tell someone about this podcast. Thank you again, Nate. You mean the world to me.

Thanks, Jared. Likewise, I really appreciate it. Good conversation. And thanks for letting me stop by.

Of course. And this has been another exciting episode of Revenue Today. We'll see you next time. Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, Visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in Rev Genius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like two seconds, and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got a Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.