Creating summaries from long texts using AI is no longer a novelty. The real focus is using these summaries to boost B2B sales. However, it’s not about generic extracts from ready-made product presentations 😉. They need to be tailored to each buyer. And here’s a startup that found a fantastic and straightforward way to do it.
Essence of the project
B2B sales are a long and painful process.
B2B service providers often think that their sales team closes deals. However, 90% of purchasing decisions are made when sales representatives are not even present, in closed internal meetings or in executive offices.
Therefore, it is impossible to close a complex B2B deal if the seller does not find an “internal champion” – an employee of the company who benefits from closing such a deal because it will bring him points within the company: bonuses, career advancement, increased influence, or something similar.
However, such an internal champion needs to be provided with materials that will help him justify the purchase decision at different levels and at different stages of the discussion of a possible deal within the company.
Fluint is a platform that helps create such materials in the form of one-page documents
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The problem is that traditional sales presentations with many slides and a lot of information do not sell! They may still be able to interest a future internal champion who is knowledgeable and looking for levers for their own advancement within the company.
But he cannot send such a presentation to his management and other persons involved in the decision-making process. Because such presentations do not have the right logic, argumentation, words, and there is too much unnecessary information.
On the Fluint platform, you can click one button to create one page of compelling product description under a compelling headline. And such a page can already be sent to the right people within the company.
And no, this page does not represent a simple summary from a presentation! First, it would be too simple in these times. Second, it is impossible to create an individual summary for each buyer in this way, in which the necessary facts about the product would be collected, presented in the right words.
Therefore, to generate a summary, Fluint uses several sources of information. The first source is the original presentation. The other sources are the transcribed texts of online negotiations with company representatives (internal champions). These conversations discuss the functionality of the product that is needed for their company and the options for its implementation that are close to them in spirit and goals. In addition, they use the “correct” words and formulations for their company. Fluint thus summarizes all of this material, resulting in a summary that includes the most important things for the given company, and even in the words that are accepted in that company.
Therefore, to generate a summary, Fluint uses several sources of information. The first source is the original presentation. The other sources are the transcribed texts of online negotiations with company representatives (internal champions). These conversations discuss the functionality of the product that is needed for their company and the options for its implementation that are close to them in spirit and goals. In addition, they use the “correct” words and formulations for their company. Fluint thus summarizes all of this material, resulting in a summary that includes the most important things for the given company, and even in the words that are accepted in that company.
The types of these summaries can be different because different information is needed at different stages of the deal discussion: a general description of the product, a description of individual functions, a description of implementation at another customer, a plan of the intended actions for implementation in a given company, or simply a reminder letter about a stalled discussion. Each type of summary has its own template on the platform. It is enough to select the desired template, click on the button, and instantly get the finished text of the required document.
The seller must still agree with the internal champion on the automatically generated document and edit it as needed. This does not require repeatedly sending documents back and forth, as the platform has a convenient editor with the ability to collaborate on a document, in which you can highlight and comment on individual parts.
A text editor AI assistant is currently in beta testing on the platform. It provides recommendations for improving a document, based on both general rules for creating persuasive texts and data on previous edits of this and other documents, specific to a particular product or particular customer.
Fluint was created last year. The startup has now raised its first investment of $1.6 million.
What’s interesting
In its overall spirit, today’s Fluint is similar to AutogenAI, which I wrote about a week ago. AutogenAI created a platform for generating compelling tender bids, commercial proposals, startup presentations, employee letters, and similar documents. Inside its platform, there’s also a special AI engine capable of creating persuasive texts. It turned out to be so in demand that AutogenAI, founded just last year, has already raised $65.3 million.
However, it’s evident that AutogenAI’s roots are tied to the tender history, structured on a “one-shot” principle where you either hit it right at once or miss forever. Therefore, the use of the AI engine in the platform is focused on creating a single impactful sales text, not on B2B sales.
B2B sales are a multi-stage process, requiring different types of sales documents at each stage. As mentioned earlier, B2B sales are practically impossible without having an internal advocate in the buyer’s company. Such an internal advocate is not just a “conduit” but a “co-author” of the deal, capable of advising on the specific document needed and its focus, based not only on the product specifics but also on the company’s specifics!
AutogenAI is not able to address this task (yet?), while today’s Fluint is specifically tailored for it. Although the general idea of an AI engine creating persuasive texts based on provided information sources is the same.
This once again reminds us that based on the same technology, completely different products can be created. Or, from another perspective, the technology itself is not the product 😉
By the way, the technology of creating summaries using AI is not new at all. But the idea that you can take a product presentation, negotiation texts with a specific client and create a summary based on them to help sell the product to that specific client is a brilliant move. Although, from a technological standpoint, there’s nothing new here.
This is another reminder that a successful product most often represents an assembly of known technologies in a new configuration. It’s not about inventing some new “unique” technology, which many startup founders love to do 😉
I drew attention to the implementation of B2B sales with the help of internal lobbyists back at the beginning of last year in the review of the Consensus startup, which created a platform for creating interactive demo versions of cloud B2B products.
Consensus claims that companies spend only 17% of the time required to make a purchase decision on communicating with suppliers. The remaining 83% of the time is spent on internal discussions of “to buy or not,” where the supplier can only influence through internal lobbyists.
Thus, B2B sellers transform from “sellers” into “buyer’s assistants.” They need to provide internal lobbyists with tools to help them justify the need for a purchase. In the case of Consensus, these are interactive product demonstrations, not one-page documents like today’s Fluint.
But the general principle of increasing the likelihood of closing a deal is the same. You need to give internal lobbyists something in the most suitable form so that they can spread it within the company to influence the purchase decision-making process.
This approach has proven so successful that Consensus raised $138.9 million in investments, $110 million of which came in a single round after my review.
By the way, the founder of Consensus even wrote a book titled ‘Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder:‘ where he promotes the thesis that for successful B2B sales, you need to stop selling — you need to start helping to buy 😉
Where to Run
It’s a funny coincidence, but I recently wrote a post on the Dark Side titled ‘Don’t Learn to Sell — Learn to Help.’
- ‘Learn to sell’ echoes from every corner. This creates a dangerous illusion that you can sell any invented thing if you just learn how to do it. But it doesn’t work that way 🙁 So, it’s better to rephrase the task.
- Poor sales are a problem not only in sales but also in the product. Therefore, you need to replace two separate tasks of ‘coming up with’ and ‘selling’ with one — formulate how you want to ‘help’ a person (or a company). This gives four important advantages.
- Firstly, you can only help someone with something. So, you immediately get a description of the target audience — a) who they are and b) what they do or in what situation they are. This is clear targeting, separating your target audience from pseudo-target. It also provides a hook for the offer, allowing the target audience to instantly understand ‘yes, this product is for me.’
- Secondly, helping is for something, for achieving a specific result. So, you immediately understand what specific result you should provide, and you can evaluate how effective your product is for this. People also see a bait on the hook — why they should pay for it.
- Thirdly, experienced people (and parents, haha) know that you can’t help someone who doesn’t want it. So, you immediately start listening to the consumer, trying to understand if they want you to help. Instead of persistently pushing your own idea of their life.
- Fourthly, when you formulate to whom, in what, and for what you want to help — you start getting various ideas about how you can do it. And these are different product hypotheses that you can test. Instead of unsuccessfully looking for different ways to sell what you’ve already done.
- In short, take the idea of your startup and rephrase it as ‘I want to help [someone] [with something] [for something].’ And start helping! People will never refuse needed and effective help 😉
So, the most general conclusion from today’s and my post is to rephrase the sales strategy of your existing or future startup, moving from ‘pushing’ to ‘helping’ the buyer. And this applies not only to B2B but also to B2C products.
Well, a specific direction of movement can be creating analogs of the mentioned Fluint or Consensus.
Or even something in between. What could be the simplest way to combine these two ideas?
About the Company
Fluint
Website: fluint.io
Last Round: $1.6M, 28.11.2023
Total Investments: $1.6M, Rounds: 1