Formative (fka CloserIQ) grew 6x while eliminating 80+ emails per client

Here’s the TL;DR:

Challenge: Formative's enterprise sales team faced increasing complexity in managing strategic B2B deals with multiple stakeholders. Their traditional email-based approach resulted in fragmented communication across 75-80 email threads per deal, making it difficult to maintain momentum and ensure consistent messaging. With a growing sales team and evolving processes, they needed a more sophisticated system to scale their operations effectively.

Solution: Formative implemented Recapped to create centralized, collaborative workspaces for all sales communications and documentation. The platform enables them to standardize their sales process while maintaining flexibility, track buyer engagement, and ensure consistent delivery of their value proposition across their expanding team.

Results: The implementation has transformed Formative's sales process, enabling them to present a more professional and organized buying experience. The team can now effectively manage complex deals with multiple stakeholders, maintain consistency in their sales motion, and make data-driven decisions based on buyer engagement analytics.

"Having that perfect culmination of needing a more polished system that we can use that is collaborative and streamlined across all of our motions, and having Recapped be there and be a very good tool for that... it was really serendipitous," explains David Ihlenfeldt, who spearheaded the Recapped implementation at Formative.

Simplify complex deal management through centralized communication

Formative's deals involve multiple stakeholders across different roles - from venture partners and board members to talent leaders and CEOs. Their previous process had several critical limitations:

• Communication scattered across extensive email threads of 75-80 messages per deal
• Manual tracking of proposals and contracts in separate workspaces
• Difficulty maintaining version control during company rebranding
• Need to individually update each sales representative with latest materials and messaging
• Risk of deal decay due to fragmented communication

"We were sending materials over as attachments, and at that point it becomes a little bit of a black hole," explains David. This lack of visibility made it impossible to track engagement effectively.

Formative implemented a structured approach to deal management through Recapped:

• Sales representatives accelerate deals by creating dynamic workspaces that evolve with each opportunity, starting from their first discovery call: "At the tail end of that, we're normally bringing up a blank version of the project management site and saying, 'Hey, I'm gonna take everything that we just talked about today, and create a summary of that,'" explains David.
• The team improves proposal management by maintaining separate workspaces for proposals and contracts, allowing them to track engagement with each component separately
• Marketing ensures brand consistency by updating materials in one central location, eliminating the need to individually update each sales representative's materials
• Sales leaders maintain quality standards by implementing templated workspaces that ensure consistent delivery while allowing for customization

"Our ability to present a very buttoned up and well-organized evaluation process has been incredibly effective," notes David. "Having a common workspace allows us to really present to the buyer an incredibly professional experience."

Drive strategic engagement with key Decision Makers

Formative faces complex stakeholder dynamics in their deals, where engagement from champions doesn't necessarily translate to deal progress. Key challenges included:

• Inability to distinguish between meaningful engagement and "fake news signals" from non-decision makers
• No visibility into which materials resonated with key stakeholders versus peripheral participants
• Risk of misallocating time following up with engaged but non-influential stakeholders
• Difficulty tracking actual decision-maker interaction with critical materials

"We send the recap to like 6 different people... we've got the venture partners on it, maybe someone that sits on the board, the talent person, and then the CEO. We're not expecting all of those people to look at the recapped. We really only care about the CEO and people that are signing it," explains Alexandra.

Recapped provides Formative with actionable engagement intelligence:

• Sales leaders improve deal qualification by focusing on engagement from actual decision-makers rather than champions who "ultimately can't do anything to actually move the deal along"
• Representatives track proposal and contract engagement separately through dedicated workspaces, providing insight into which critical documents are receiving attention from key stakeholders
• The team prioritizes follow-up based on meaningful engagement patterns, ensuring time is spent pursuing actual decision-makers rather than supportive but non-influential stakeholders
• Managers gain concrete data for deal reviews: "When I sit down weekly with my team for one-on-ones, and as we're going through what's in the hopper right now and how do we nudge this deal forward, we are coming back to Recapped and saying, 'okay, well what's their engagement level here?'"

"If we're putting this incredibly professional, tight and buttoned up vision forward for them, it obviously bodes well in competitive selection processes," explains David.

Scale excellence across growing Enterprise Sales organization

Formative underwent significant growth in their sales organization, creating several operational challenges:

• Need to maintain consistency as the enterprise sales team grew from one to six representatives
• Difficulty ensuring all team members used the most current versions of materials
• Inconsistent follow-up processes and resource sharing across the team
• Risk of quality degradation as the team scaled
• Time lost checking whether representatives were using correct materials: "Hey David, did you remember to put in the correct services overview? Jack, did you put in the services overview? What comp report are people adding to things?"

Recapped enables Formative to standardize their sales motion while maintaining flexibility:

• Sales leaders ensure process consistency by creating templated workspaces that guide representatives through each stage of the deal: "Having the common workspace allows us to really present to the buyer an incredibly buttoned up experience"
• The team maintains brand standards by centralizing all materials in one location: "Making sure that we just had to update that in one place as opposed to like, hey, David. Did you remember to put in the correct services overview?"
• Marketing improves efficiency by updating rebranded materials in a single location, automatically ensuring all representatives access current versions
• New representatives accelerate their learning curve through standardized templates: "From the content pieces that we create over time... having a variety of content pieces at your disposal certainly helps that newer member of the team ramp"

"With more people involved in the BD process, we needed to be able to consolidate and templatize what was going out. So we knew that no matter what person on our team was chatting with a client, their follow-up and the resources they were getting after those calls were consistent," explains Alexandra Adamson.

Optimize deal qualification through buyer engagement tracking

Traditional deal qualification relied heavily on subjective feedback and "gut feel." The team struggled to:

• Accurately assess deal health
• Identify early warning signs of stalling deals
• Quantify buyer interest beyond verbal commitments
• Prioritize follow-up activities effectively

Recapped provides concrete data to support deal qualification:

• Sales leaders improve forecast accuracy by incorporating engagement metrics into deal health assessment
• Representatives identify at-risk opportunities early through real-time engagement tracking
• The team prioritizes deals more effectively by analyzing patterns in buyer behavior
• Managers conduct more effective deal reviews using objective engagement data

"We can triangulate that with some hard concrete observations around how they're using our system and the content we've put out there, it allows us an extra set of eyes to triangulate on the particular opportunity," notes David.

Implementation tips

• ‍Start with Core Processes: Begin by implementing Recapped for your most critical deal stages, then expand usage as the team becomes comfortable with the platform.‍
• Prioritize Template Development: Invest time in creating comprehensive templates that can be easily customized for specific deals while maintaining consistency.‍
• Focus on Key Stakeholders: When analyzing engagement, prioritize tracking decision-maker interaction over general stakeholder activity.‍
• Leverage Analytics for Coaching: Use engagement data during deal reviews to identify best practices and areas for improvement across the team.

Looking ahead

Formative is expanding their use of Recapped beyond sales into post-sales processes, particularly for search intake calls and customer documentation. This expansion will create a seamless transition from sales to implementation, ensuring all customer information remains centralized and accessible.

"A big next step for us is doing the post-sales piece of our work in Recapped," shares Alexandra. "Getting the team comfortable using Recapped for search intake calls and making sure that all that documentation lives here and isn't just floating around in emails."

The team continues to discover new ways to leverage the platform's capabilities, with plans to:

• Implement more sophisticated engagement tracking for different customer personas
• Expand usage across approximately 45-50% of their opportunities
• Develop more specialized templates for different deal types
• Integrate the platform more deeply into their post-sales workflow

Through these initiatives, Formative aims to further streamline their processes while maintaining the high-touch, professional experience their customers expect.

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