Welcome
Welcome to Purlin. I'm glad you said yes, and I want your first month to go better than mine did. Most of what you need to know here is written down somewhere: in HubSpot, in Slack, in a dozen Google Docs. Very little of it is written down in one place, in order. This is my attempt at that.
You're joining the enterprise team at a busy moment. We launched Pulse in March and had a rough first week with it. We changed how we price in July. We lost two enterprise AEs in January and split their accounts across the team, and some of that is still being untangled. All three stories are below, with links to where each one is written down.
FOR YOUR FIRST TWO WEEKS Don't sell anything yet. Learn your accounts, learn Pulse well enough to demo it without help, and sit in on as many of Kevin's and Priya's calls as you can.
You were hired because you've spent three years selling to our buyer and you know where these deals stall. Say so when you see it here. The playbook is six months old and still changing, and you'll be helping change it.
- Read Priya's CFO Motion doc before our first 1:1
- Get HubSpot, the Pulse demo sandbox and call recording access on day one
- Shadow five of Kevin's and Priya's calls in your first week
- Ask questions in #sales-enterprise, not in DMs
My calendar is open, and our first 1:1 is Monday at 9:30. If something in here doesn't match what you're seeing, tell me. That's a gap in this document, not in you.
Your role
You're the third AE on the enterprise team, alongside Kevin Yates and Priya Nair. Enterprise at Purlin means customers with more than 300 employees, and in practice it means a finance leader joins by the second call.
The team started the year with four AEs. Connor Walsh left for Corvane in January and Kira Daniels left two weeks later, and their accounts were split between Kevin and Priya until this role was filled. You now take over the **Central and Mountain territory: 31 named accounts, 9 of them Connor's**.
BEFORE YOU CALL ANYONE Six of Connor's accounts still list him as the owner in HubSpot. Brendan Park is fixing that this sprint. Until then, check an account's activity history, not the owner field, before you assume nobody has spoken to them.
In April, Priya wrote up why our recent wins looked different: the champion was the CFO rather than the CRO, and the pitch was forecast accuracy for cash planning rather than pipeline visibility. Scott turned that into Sales Playbook v1 in May. Kevin and Priya both run it, slightly differently, and it is still being tested.
Discovery, question one: "How do you forecast cash today?" Do not open with pipeline process. If finance isn't in the room by call two, ask why.
Sales Playbook v1, discovery section
In July we moved new deals from per-seat pricing to a **base subscription plus volume tiers**. Once finance teams started using Pulse, every finance user cost the customer another seat, and customers were rationing access away from the exact people we were selling to. Renewals move to volume pricing at their next renewal date, so you'll see both models in your accounts for about a year.
YOUR FIRST LIVE DEAL Halden Software is $280K ARR on the old seat model and renews at year-end. Halden was acquired in April by Thornwick Capital Partners, which standardizes its portfolio companies on Corvane. Ryan Chu owns the renewal for Customer Success. You and Kevin own the commercial side.
31 Named accounts in your territory, 9 of them inherited from Connor Walsh
The people you'll work with
These are the people you'll work with most in your first ninety days. It isn't the whole org chart, just the people whose calendars you'll end up on.
- Scott Mercer (VP of Sales) — Runs the sales org and wrote Sales Playbook v1. Sends quick questions on Slack before 8am and doesn't expect answers before 9. Your manager: weekly 1:1 on Mondays and the Thursday deal review.
- Kevin Yates (Senior AE, Enterprise) — Closed Tamarack Payroll in April, the largest deal in company history. Runs the CFO motion more by feel than by the book, and is the best person to ask how a first call actually goes here. Your onboarding buddy for the first month, and your partner on the Halden renewal.
- Priya Nair (Senior AE, Enterprise) — Wrote The CFO Motion, the doc behind the current playbook. Thinks about deals structurally and writes everything down. The person to ask when you aren't sure you have the right champion.
- Ryan Chu (Senior CSM, Enterprise) — Owns Halden Software and most enterprise renewals, and has been preparing the Halden renewal since the acquisition was announced. The relationship is his; the pricing conversation is yours and Kevin's.
- Brendan Park (RevOps Lead) — Owns HubSpot, territory assignments and the deal desk queue. Reports to Marcus Holt, the CFO, not to sales. The person who can tell you who really owns an account when HubSpot says otherwise.
- Claire Ashford (CEO and Co-founder) — Co-founded Purlin in 2013 and still joins enterprise calls when a CFO wants to hear from the CEO, which happens more often since the CFO motion. Your skip-level. She holds open office hours on Friday afternoons.
Kevin and Priya have been covering four AEs' worth of accounts since January. They're both glad you're here. Take them up on the call shadowing.
Reporting structure
You report to Scott Mercer, VP of Sales. Scott reports to Claire Ashford, CEO and co-founder.
The enterprise team is you, Kevin and Priya. Mid-market is run by Dana Holt and Megan Rios, and the SDR team by Jordan Bell. SDRs book first meetings for both segments; enterprise meetings in your territory reach you through the HubSpot round-robin.
Customer Success is led by Camille Foster, who reports to Scott. RevOps is the exception: Brendan Park reports to Marcus Holt, the CFO. That matters for discounts, because anything above your own limit goes through Brendan's deal desk queue before it reaches Scott.
- Weekly 1:1 with Scott, Mondays at 9:30
- Revenue stand-up in #revenue, Monday mornings
- Enterprise deal review, Thursdays at 2pm
- Monthly forecast with Marcus Holt and Claire, last Wednesday of the month
START HERE The CFO Motion and Sales Playbook v1 are the two required reads. Everything in this document about how we sell assumes you've read them.
Two notes on names: Marcus Holt is the CFO and Marcus Webb is a mid-market AE, and Dana Holt is not related to either of them. Check Slack autocomplete before you hit send.
Tools & systems
**HubSpot is the system of record** for everything commercial: companies, contacts, deals and the forecast. If it isn't in HubSpot, it didn't happen, because the Monday forecast and the commission report both read from it. Brendan owns the setup. The tool access matrix lists what each role gets on day one and who approves anything else.
You demo Purlin from the sandbox org, loaded with a fictional 400-person software company's pipeline. The current pitch deck and demo flow are in Google Drive. The deck opens on forecast accuracy for finance, not pipeline hygiene for sales.
When a deal closes, the handoff to Customer Success follows a written SOP: a handoff call within five business days of signature, with the mutual action plan, the buying group and anything promised during the sale recorded in HubSpot first.
- HubSpot: companies, contacts, deals, the forecast and the territory round-robin
- Purlin sandbox: your demo environment, with Pulse health scores on sample pipeline
- Google Drive: the playbook, the CFO Motion doc, the deck, account plans and the mutual action plan template
- Confluence: the GTM space, with the deal desk rules, the handoff SOP, policies and post-mortems
- Jira: PROD for deal blockers and product gaps, REVOPS for HubSpot and territory requests
- #sales-enterprise (14 members): your team's home channel, start here
- #revenue (61 members): the whole revenue org and the Monday stand-up
- #deal-desk (22 members): discount and payment-term approvals
- #wins (180 members): closed deals, posted by the AE who closed them
- #product-feedback (48 members): product gaps and the PMs who own them
- #customer-success (27 members): renewals, escalations and handoffs
Culture & norms
Four habits matter more here than anything in the handbook.
**Discounts have owners.** You can discount up to 15% on your own. Between 15% and 25% needs Scott, and anything above 25%, or any non-standard payment term, also needs Marcus Holt. Requests go through #deal-desk with the HubSpot deal linked, so there's a record of who approved what and why.
**We don't promise roadmap dates.** If a prospect needs something we don't have, log it in Jira as a deal blocker with the HubSpot deal linked, and quote a timeframe only after Lena Muller confirms it in writing on the ticket.
**We're straight about March.** Pulse went GA on March 5, and two days later a CRM sync race condition put duplicate opportunities into health scores for 43 customers. Owen Kwon merged the fix overnight, and it was in production by March 10.
Customer communication: say what happened, say what changed, offer a reference. Do not minimize it.
Pulse sync incident post-mortem
**Losses get written down.** Every closed-lost enterprise deal gets a three-line loss note in HubSpot within five business days: why we lost, who we lost to, and what would have changed it.
- Up to 15% discount is yours; 15 to 25% needs Scott; above 25% also needs Marcus Holt
- No roadmap dates without Lena's written confirmation on the Jira ticket
- Be straight about the March sync incident, and offer a reference
- Loss notes in HubSpot within five business days
Active projects
Your first ninety days have three threads: your territory, the Halden renewal, and getting fluent in the CFO motion.
The Halden renewal is the one with a date on it. Ryan's account plan maps the buying group after the acquisition: a new CFO installed by Thornwick, an IT director who now reports into the portfolio's shared services team, and the original champion, Halden's VP of Revenue Operations, who still uses Pulse every day.
THE BLOCKER Thornwick requires SCIM user provisioning for every application in its portfolio. We don't support it yet. It's scheduled for the December release under PROD-1184, and Lena has confirmed the quarter in writing, so you can say Q4. Not a date.
For the CFO motion, the best single example is **Tamarack Payroll**, which Kevin closed in April for $420K, the largest deal in Purlin's history. Read the deal history in HubSpot from first meeting to signature: the CFO was the champion, the CRO was the evaluator, and pricing was agreed with finance before sales saw the proposal.
- Week 1, accounts and product: read the last 90 days of activity on all 31 accounts, flag the ones with nothing since January, and get demo-ready on Pulse in the sandbox.
- Week 2, shadow and map: shadow five calls with Kevin and Priya, and map the Halden buying group with Ryan.
- Week 3, first calls: take over the open opportunities in your territory, with Kevin on the first few calls.
- Week 4, the Halden proposal: draft two options with Kevin and Brendan, a seat-model renewal with a one-year price lock or volume pricing on a two-year term, and bring both to the Thursday deal review.
$280K Halden Software ARR on the old seat model, renewing at year-end
That's the map as of this week. Some of it will be out of date by the time you read it, and that's fine. Welcome to Purlin.
Open questions
- What does my ramped quota look like for my first two quarters, and do the inherited open deals count toward it?
- Connor's notes on the three late-stage deals he lost in December are thin. Was anyone besides Kevin on those calls?
- Do we know what Thornwick pays for Corvane across its portfolio? Ryan's account plan assumes we'll be benchmarked against it but doesn't say against what.
- Does the 15% discount limit apply to renewals moving to volume pricing, or only to new business?
- Which of my 31 accounts are current customers and which are prospects? The territory sheet doesn't separate them.
- Who decides whether a two-year Halden term can include a cap on volume pricing?