Become a Category of One Seller Through Effective Writing

Brandon Fluharty

August 31, 2022

⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

In this edition, you’ll understand how effective narrative writing can improve your strategic sales win rate, not to mention, unlock completely new opportunities in life.

The mission:

→ Read this in <9 minutes right now
→ Understand the power of a daily writing habit
→ Develop your own daily writing habit using the resources below

Let’s go…

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you click a link and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you).
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Write Better, Sell Better

Looking back on my sales career, particularly over the most prolific portion when I consistently closed 7+ figure deals with Fortune 100 level brands in a 4 year time span…one skill stands out at the top effective narrative writing.

It’s the type of skill that Khe Hy describes as $10K/hr work.

That’s a fitting mental reframe, because effective writing is a foundational skill that produces high leverage in all of the other skills you need in high performance strategic sales–communicating, presenting, ideating, teaching, visualizing value, challenging, designing solutions, negotiating, and closing.

Unfortunately, it’s still a major skills gap in the industry, even at the upper levels of enterprise and strategic sales.

Let’s close the gap for you by making writing a daily habit.

Here’s the why and how deconstructed:

Why effective writing will level up your strategic sales craft

To fully understand why writing will help your sales (and eventually, your entrepreneurial) career, it starts by understanding the 3 key components that you consistently need to nourish as a top performer:

How you THINK 🧠
How you OPERATE ⚙️
How you sell (CRAFT) 💎

This operating model, comprises the fundamental layers of thriving as a revenue generator.

When you improve the way you think, it changes the way you operate. When you change the way you operate, it increases the capacity to elevate your craft.

The skill that ties all 3 layers together?

Writing daily.

My journey to writing daily

Here’s an example of how I developed a daily writing habit to improve each layer, and then harmonize them to systemize the outcomes I wanted in business and life:

→ Think: A common problem holding a lot of sellers back is Imposter Syndrome.

As I learned from working with Amber Deibert, a top performance coach helping SaaS sellers improve their mindset, Imposter Syndrome is actually a sign of growth because you are moving into uncharted territory (vs you actually being a flawed human). It comes in 3 flavors:

Feeling like a fraud
Blaming it all on luck
Downplaying everything

Sound familiar?

The simple method I used to reframe these limiting beliefs was to consistently write, and the best place to start was writing down my past accomplishments. This was a good reminder that I was not a fraud, I wasn’t lucky, and I didn’t need to downplay my success…whew…immediate relief!

From there, we used a daily writing practice using a simple self-coaching framework that helped keep my negative thoughts in check and reframe them to become my sales superpowers.

→ Operate: Improving the way I thought using simple frameworks became a powerful way to optimize how I worked.

I was now in a position to use other mental models to define the way I operated, because if I could improve how I worked, it meant I could make the most from the finite resources we all have–time, energy, and attention.

The foundational skill that improved this intentional way of working? You guessed it…writing!

A simple practice I got into was to write in a journal each morning and evening. These were anchor routines for me that helped me warm up and wind down for the day.

They also happened to be areas of each workday that I could control, whereas, the prime selling portions of the day were more out of my control because of prospect and employer demands.

The guiding principle I used to fuel this writing habit was “when I give to myself, I’m in a much better place to serve others.”

This turned writing every day into a fun game.

I explored free-form writing, structured writing and gratitude journaling until I settled into a rhythm that worked for me (a combination of all 3 on a single page).

→ Craft: Feeling the awesome benefits of this writing habit personally, I started to harness it more effectively in my profession.

The guiding principle I used to ensure I was writing effectively for others was “what can I write that will make an impact?” This improved everything I wrote: emails, social posts, presentations, proposals, and internal memos.

To make the biggest impact possible, I had to invest in undistracted time to do the deep work necessary to create effective narratives.

This further changed the way I had to think (more strategically) and how I had to operate (more intentionally) demonstrating that each layer feeds one another and that making writing a consistent habit is the nucleus to keeping each layer optimal.

How to become a more consistent and effective writer

Step 1: Learn from other good business writers

Were you aware that Amazon’s meteoric rise to becoming a mammoth company is built on an effective writing habit?

I didn’t either until I started working at a company that hired a lot of former Amazonians. These leaders brought over two powerful communication tools - the 6-page memo and the PR/FAQ.

The key to them working effectively is that they are structured and written in a way to help the reader form an opinion quickly and take action. This is key in strategic sales, as the majority of your sales wins will come when you’re not in the room.

Once I incorporated both of these effective forms of narrative writing into my sales motions, I was able to accelerate deal closure with a Fortune 10 company that had been dragging on for nearly 24 months (my longest sales cycle of my career).

⚡️Level up by learning from Amazon’s effective writing habits here:

Step 2: Start writing (and do it in public)

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” -Stephen King

Reading others’ good writing is a great way to learn, but nothing makes you a better writer than, well, writing. And long gone are the days of needing to lock yourself in a cabin in the woods with a typewriter to become a better writer.

With LinkedIn, X, Medium and other options available at your fingertips, writing online and in public will serve you well, because it’s a forcing function to show up every day and write for someone other than yourself.

Then, you can use data (like engagement, shares, and questions) to find out what’s resonating with your target audience.

Today, writing is the cornerstone to my creator business. Two days after retiring as a corporate seller, I launched 7 Steps to 7 Figures and went from $0 - $100K+ in 140 days with just:

A weekly newsletter
A single product (an ebook)
A main social platform (LinkedIn)

All of it built on a daily writing habit - low effort, high reward!

But this wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t an instantaneous skill I focused on. Rewind the clock about 4 years ago, and my writing was all over the place. I had disparate ideas, low engagement, and poor formatting.

However, I was intentional about staying consistent. I was also committed to sharing my own personal voice vs just regurgitating my company’s marketing materials.

⚡️Level up by getting help to start your daily writing practice:

Start writing in public
Implement the Content Operating System
Join a cohort of others starting their writing journey

Step 3: Stay consistent until you become a category of one seller

Showing up each day and committing to write in public set the foundation for improving my writing because I had constant feedback loops. These feedback loops help fuel my curiosity to understand the type of writing and the audience I wanted to appeal to for the writing to stick.

Eventually, I went from sharing my company’s boring marketing posts, to putting my own voice to them, to becoming my own marketing and inbound lead engine.

This commitment to write in public further improved my writing as a strategic seller. I differentiated myself with higher quality “emotionally sensitive” emails, open letters, narrative proposals, and executive memos - all stuff I now share with the Make More Hustle Less Club.

I became a category of one seller because my personal and professional writing habit helped me answer the following 3 key questions:

What makes you unique?
What makes your company unique?
Who is the best audience to receive this narrative?

It worked as a strategic seller, and now I deploy the same, simple principles as a thriving solopreneur…now just with a lot more time to write!

⚡️Level up to become a category of one seller with these tools:

Start using Fluint
Subscribe to Category Pirates
Download my free Personal Narrative Framework

🚀 BONUS: Here are my top online writers to follow:
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See you next time!

TL;DR

To sell better, begin to write better
Effective writing improves how you think, operate, and sell
Follow these 3 simple steps to develop and improve your writing:
1. Study other good writers
2. Start writing (and do it in public)
3. Stay consistent until you become a category of one