In enterprise sales, "simple" doesn't exist. Complex Sales: Decoded is the podcast for sellers who are navigating long, nonlinear buying cycles. Each week, we unpack what it actually takes to close high-dollar, multi-stakeholder deals that span quarters with top AEs and sales leaders at the best companies in the world. Listen for in-depth breakdowns of how complex deals actually get done. You’ll get playbooks to develop champions, guides on how to uncover hidden stakeholders, and step-by-step systems to sell between meetings that keep deals from stalling out. If you want every episode to leave you with something you can implement in your next deal, this show is for you.
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One Quarter Close: The $1M SMB Deal (with Morgan Shelly Erazo) | Ep. 5
Episode 5
Wednesday, April 22, 2026 • Duration 24:46
Most sellers have lost a deal because they didn't see a stakeholder change coming, or because a big opportunity moved too slowly and died in the pipeline. This episode is about both of those problems.
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Meredith Chandler sits down with Morgan Shelly Erazo, Founding Head of Sales at Revenue Vessel, to break down how Morgan closed a $1M+ deal in the SMB segment at Deel, in under a quarter, on a closed-lost opportunity that came back inbound. They cover what created that deal's velocity, how prep and honest expectation-setting moved stakeholders fast, and why LinkedIn connections are one of the most underused tools in any active deal.
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Morgan also shares what becoming a buyer for the first time taught her about how bad most outreach actually is, and how she's building her team at Revenue Vessel around the same principles that made her one of the most recognized SMB closers on LinkedIn.
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👤 Guest Bio
Morgan Shelly Erazo is the Founding Head of Sales at Revenue Vessel, an early-stage logistics sales intelligence platform that gives freight forwarders, customs brokers, and 3PLs comprehensive import data across air, ocean, and cross-border shipments. Before joining Revenue Vessel full-time, she spent 4.5 years at Deel as a Senior Account Executive, where she closed a $1M+ deal in the SMB segment and ranked among the top sales performers in North America. She was named to the 100 Powerful Women in Sales '25 list.
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📌 What We Cover
How a PE acquisition and new stakeholder hires turned a closed-lost opportunity into a $1M+ deal that closed in a single quarter
Why new stakeholders entering an account are often a buying signal, not a reset, and how to approach them differently
How Morgan used an Aligned deal room as a direct differentiator: the key stakeholder cited it as part of the decision-making criteria
Why brutal honesty with buyers, including delaying her own onboarding timeline, built the trust that accelerated the close
The pre/post call prep structure that turns a 30-minute meeting into actual deal momentum, and why blocking internal debrief time immediately after calls is a top-1% behavior
How to use AI for account research without letting it replace genuine curiosity about the buyer's business
What Morgan now sees as a buyer: why most outbound is unreadable, what gets a response from a sales leader, and why fifth-grade language outperforms jargon every time
Why connecting with every stakeholder on LinkedIn at the start of an evaluation is one of the most underrated deal moves in the book, and how it creates a live feed of buying signals throughout the cycle
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
Aligned — AI deal workspace for multi-stakeholder enterprise deals
BTLs Don't Sign Checks, But They Kill Deals | Ep. 4
Episode 4
Wednesday, April 15, 2026 • Duration 07:22
Most sellers multithread by going up the org chart. They get the exec meeting, pitch the economic buyer, and assume momentum will follow. It won't - not without the people below the line already on your side. In this episode, Meredith Chandler uses a real internal evaluation she ran at Aligned to show exactly how below-the-line players shape buying decisions - even when they have zero budget authority. The plays she shares are specific, repeatable, and built for complex deals where consensus is required and one skeptical end user can quietly kill your momentum.
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📌 What We Cover
Why multithreading down the org chart matters as much as getting exec access - and what you miss when you skip it
How Meredith ran a real call recording tool eval at Aligned and what her reps' daily inputs revealed about BTL influence
The "out of sight, out of mind" executive reality: why your deal is not top of mind for the buyer's leader, and what that means for your BTL strategy
Four specific plays to build below the line support: sending relevant resources, gamification, asking directly how to help them get it approved, and echoing day-to-day language over ROI
Why speaking ROI to a BTL signals you don't understand their world - and what to say instead
How keeping BTLs looped in between calls surfaces critical deal intelligence, including procurement involvement you wouldn't otherwise know about
Why your BTL is likely the one who walks you up the chain - and what it costs you if that relationship is weak
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
Aligned - AI deal workspace for multi-stakeholder enterprise deals. Build your first room free.
Multithreading Deals: Building Individual Relationships Across Stakeholders | Ep. 3
Episode 3
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 • Duration 08:06
Most sellers think multithreading simply means getting more people onto the same Zoom call or flooding a group inbox. But the top 1% of sellers approach it completely differently. Host Meredith Chandler breaks down how to build individual relationships across stakeholders to keep complex deals moving forward.
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To navigate non-linear buying cycles, you have to run parallel conversations. This requires meeting with stakeholders individually while actively building group consensus. You cannot talk to a sales leader the same way you talk to marketing, RevOps, or finance. You have to tailor your outreach.
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Meredith shares real examples of multithreading done well and multithreading done poorly. You will learn how to send targeted agendas, write tailored email recaps, and warm up key players before a meeting ever happens. If you want to stop chasing a single person who might never show your tool to anyone else, this strategy is mandatory.
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What We Cover
Why multithreading requires one-on-one or small group meetings to build individual relationships.
How to tailor your interactions to what matters distinctly to sales, marketing, RevOps, and finance leaders.
What to do when stakeholders cannot attend every single group call.
Sending separate agendas ahead of time so you can focus strictly on delivering value during the meeting.
How to write recap emails that highlight outstanding questions for both the large group and specific individuals.
The danger of looping senior leaders into highly technical communication threads without setting the stage.
Why keeping an executive up to speed without asking for anything makes them naturally curious and more prone to engage.
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Why Multi-Threading Saves Your Deal When a Champion Leaves | Ep. 2
Episode 2
Wednesday, April 1, 2026 • Duration 07:12
Let's dig into one of the most misunderstood roles in enterprise sales: the champion. Meredith Chandler breaks down what actually makes someone a champion and why betting your entire deal on just one person is a massive risk. A true champion does far more than reply fast or love your product. They sell on your behalf internally when you are not in the room.
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Meredith explains how to tell the difference between a real champion and a helpful ally. Sellers often suffer from "happy ears" when someone shows initial excitement. But if that person does not know the internal buying process or lacks influence, your deal will stall. You need a stakeholder who can actually show you how to buy.
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This solo episode details the criteria every champion must meet: power, motivation, and personal gain. Meredith also shares a recent story about a large deal that slipped because the sole champion left the company. You will learn why multi-threading from the very first call is critical to surviving internal transitions.
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What We Cover
The exact difference between a true deal champion and a supportive ally.
How to pressure test a prospect's excitement to confirm actual purchasing power.
The specific traits every champion must have: power, influence, motivation, and personal gain.
Why your internal sponsor needs a direct tie to their core KPIs to push a deal forward.
How personal goals like leaving work on time drive urgent purchasing decisions.
The danger of single-threading and why win rates jump 30% when engaging four or more stakeholders.
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Resources Mentioned
Aligned: The AI deal workspace to handle complex multi-stakeholder deals. Build your first room for free at .
Early Executive Involvement: Reaching Out Without Overstepping | Ep. 1
Episode 1
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 • Duration 05:29
Waiting until the final approval stage to involve executives is a quick way to stall your deal. Sellers often fear that contacting leadership means going over their champion's head. Meredith Chandler kicks off this multi-threading series to kill that urban myth entirely.
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Meredith breaks down why early executive involvement is critical for enterprise deal execution. She explains how to get your name on an executive's radar without flooding their inbox with requests for 20 minutes of their time. The secret is sending updates with absolutely zero asks.
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Meredith shares a real evaluation story where early executive outreach revealed hidden success criteria. Discovering those different priorities early saved a month of selling to the wrong use case. Applying these tactics keeps your stakeholders aligned and separates you from competing vendors.
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What We Cover
Why the fear of going over a champion's head is an urban myth that slows down sales.
How to loop executives in early using group communications or individual updates.
Writing zero-ask outreach to keep leaders informed without requesting a meeting.
Using LinkedIn to proactively align stakeholders before formal introductions.
How discovering different executive success criteria early can shave weeks off your sales cycle.
Setting yourself apart from competitors by proactively managing the evaluation.
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Resources Mentioned
Aligned: The AI deal workspace is built to handle complexity in enterprise sales. Build your first room for free at alignedup.com.
Welcome to Complex Sales: Decoded
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 • Duration 00:37
In this trailer, host Meredith Chandler introduces Complex Sales: Decoded, a show for sellers and sales leaders working long, nonlinear enterprise deals. Expect practical conversations with top AEs and sales leaders on how to build champions, uncover stakeholders, sell between meetings, and keep momentum in high-stakes opportunities. If you want every episode to leave you with something useful for your next deal, start here.
Why Reps Revert to Pitching the Moment a Call Gets Uncomfortable (with Sam Barry) | Ep. 8
Episode 8
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 • Duration 25:45
Most sales training looks good in a workshop. Then a rep gets on a live call, feels the pressure, and goes straight to features. It's not a methodology problem. It's a neurological one.
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Meredith Chandler, Head of Sales at Aligned, sits down with Sam Barry, SVP of Sales at Braintrust Growth, to dig into why that happens and what actually changes seller behavior under pressure. Sam's framework, NeuroSelling®, doesn't start with an acronym and work backward. It starts with how the brain processes trust and makes decisions, then builds the communication structure from there.
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This conversation covers what that means in practice: how to open a call with real trust-building instead of rapport theater, why most reps are only doing 50% of the trust work required, and how to use pain quantification to move a stalled deal without a single manipulative tactic.
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👤 Guest Bio
Sam Barry is SVP of Sales at Braintrust Growth, a neuroscience-based sales training and communication consulting firm founded in 2009 and headquartered in Mason, Ohio. Braintrust has been named a Top 20 Sales Training Company by Selling Power every year since 2022. Sam brings over a decade of sales leadership experience, with prior roles including Regional VP of Sales at Richardson Sales Performance and Director of Sales at DecisionWise. He studied human psychology and has spent his career applying those principles inside enterprise sales organizations.
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📌 What We Cover
Why the brain defaults to features and benefits under pressure, and why adding a new methodology doesn't fix it
Meet Buyers at the Moment of Attention (with Keegan Otter) | Ep. 7
Episode 7
Wednesday, May 6, 2026 • Duration 34:42
Most sellers treat a website visit as a buying signal. Keegan Otter says that's the first mistake. In this episode, Meredith Chandler talks with Keegan Otter about what it actually takes to build a GTM motion that converts warm leads, not just collects them. They cover why intent data puts you at the start line, not the finish line, and what most teams get wrong when they try to act on it too fast.
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The conversation moves into how Keegan approaches GTM builds in 2026 vs. 2019, why he invented the PTP framework (Process, Technology, People), what live intent data changes about warm calling, and where AI is creating chaos inside sales orgs that aren't managing it with structure. Aligned sponsors this episode.
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👤 Guest Bio
Keegan Otter is the Software Cowboy: President of WarmLegency and CRO at Warmly, an AI-powered pipeline acceleration platform that identifies and acts on high-intent website visitors in real time. He joined Warmly in May 2023 as the founding revenue leader and has scaled the company from an unfinished product to crossing $8M ARR. Before Warmly, Keegan held sales leadership roles at Outreach.io, Sendlane, and Postscript, and was recognized by Outreach co-founder Manny Medina as one of the top SDRs on the floor.
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📌 What We Cover
Why seeing who's on your website and knowing they're ready to buy are two completely different things, and what to do with the difference
How Warmly killed every direct CTA in their outbound email, replaced them with educational content, and watched click rates go from 2% to 14-18%
Live intent vs. lagging intent: the grocery store analogy that explains why timing changes everything about warm calling
How to Sell With Procurement, Not Against Them (with Michael Shields) | Ep. 6
Episode 6
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 27:14
When procurement enters a deal at the final mile, the seller has already left them with one lever: price. Meredith Chandler and Michael Shields spend this episode examining that dynamic from both sides of the table.
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Michael has been leading procurement teams at enterprise tech companies for over 10 years. He challenges the assumption that procurement is the adversary in a deal and makes the case that sellers have largely created that dynamic by arriving late and leaving procurement with nothing to do but negotiate on price.
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If you're navigating a complex deal where procurement is in the picture, or trying to build a process that stops stalling in the final stage, this conversation will change how you approach it. Brought to you by Aligned.
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👤 Guest Bio
Michael Shields is VP of Procurement at Tropic, an intelligent spend management platform trusted by 500+ companies to bring visibility and control to their software spend. He built the procurement function at Qualtrics from scratch, has led procurement organizations at multiple enterprise tech companies, and is an adjunct professor at BYU in operations and supply chain. He speaks at SKOs and regularly coaches sellers on how buying works from the other side of the table.
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📌 What We Cover
Why procurement's top pain point with sellers isn't price pressure but being looped in too late, after the only lever left is commercial negotiation
How to qualify what kind of procurement person you're actually dealing with, from strategic partner to purchasing checkbox, and why that changes your approach
Multi-Threading Above the Line: Why You Can't Wait Until Signature | Ep. 9
Episode 9
Wednesday, May 20, 2026 • Duration 06:11
Multi-threading goes wrong when sellers treat executive sponsors like a closing-mile play, pulling them in at signature when they don't even know your name. This is the fifth episode in the multi-threading series on Complex Sales: Decoded, and host Meredith Chandler breaks down how to engage above the line throughout the deal cycle, not just at the finish line.
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The episode covers when to reach out to execs, what those communications should actually look like, and how to stay visible without becoming the rep execs avoid. Meredith uses a marriage-proposal analogy to make the point: warming someone up over time is what makes the big ask possible. She walks through three rules for above the line outreach, the right reasons to send, and a real-world example of a deal that got killed because the right people weren't in the loop. Brought to you by Aligned.
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📌 What We Cover
Why pulling in an executive sponsor at signature is the late-stage move that kills deals
The dating analogy for multi-threading, and why "who the hell are you" is the response you can't afford to get at signature
Three rules for above the line outreach: short and sweet, outcomes not activities, and "no action needed" as the closer
Why every above the line touch should provide momentum, not pile on asks
The right reasons to write an executive: alignment between solution and company goals, POV kickoff or wrap, confirming consensus before pricing
Why writing to check a CRM box or appease RevOps is the email that gets deleted
A real example of an internal eval that got killed because the buyer and team weren't multi-threaded
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
Aligned deal workspace, for moving multi-stakeholder deals out of email threads and developing champions with mutual action plans
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The difference between personal trust and professional trust, and why being strong at only one of them is still failing
How to open a first call with a point of view that builds credibility before you say anything about your product
Why rapport-building tactics like commenting on someone's background actually erode trust with senior buyers
How to quantify pain at multiple levels so a dollar figure becomes the anchor before you ever discuss price
Why the anchor you set controls the comparison a buyer makes, and how that plays out in pricing and negotiation
The cortisol-to-dopamine sequence: how naming a financial cost to inaction generates urgency, and how presenting your solution then shifts the emotional state
What sellers miss when they hear a problem and run with it before truly quantifying what that problem costs
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
Aligned — AI deal workspace for multi-stakeholder enterprise deals
Braintrust Growth — NeuroSelling®, NeuroCoaching®, and NeuroServing® programs for enterprise teams
The PTP framework (Process, Technology, People) and why building in the wrong order costs you headcount you didn't need to hire
What Keegan does first when dropped into a company that's still running pure cold outbound in 2026
Why AI projects inside your sales org need a PM, dedicated timeslots, and the 10% project rule
The outreach tactics that actually earned meetings (a personalized putting green) and the ones Keegan wants to see die (Venmo payments, unannounced calendar invites)
How Keegan applies the same GTM framework to his bootstrapped window screen business in Phoenix
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
Warmly - AI pipeline acceleration platform, Keegan's company
Aligned - Episode sponsor; AI deal workspace for enterprise sales
Outreach.io - Sales engagement platform; where Keegan started as an SDR
Sendlane - Email and SMS marketing platform; prior role
Postscript - SMS marketing platform; prior role
Forrester / Topo - Research cited on buyer self-education before demo
Gong - Revenue intelligence platform; referenced for the general's tent analogy
Qualtrics - Experience management; prior company of the Gong VP referenced
HubSpot - CRM; referenced for lifecycle stage logic in AI automation discussion
Apollo / Outreach / Instantly - Sales engagement and sequencing tools mentioned
RB2B, Bombora, Demandbase, Clearbit, LiveIntent - Intent data providers integrated in Warmly's platform
Claude / Claude Code - Referenced in discussion on AI enablement guardrails
Scott Leese - B2B sales leader and consultant; referenced for applying process-first thinking to a landscaping business
The three questions procurement asks before price ever comes up: does this tie to a business result, why is this prioritized over the other hundred projects, and why now
Why every concession you give without a condition trains procurement to push harder next cycle, and the difference between flexibility and optionality
What ABCD (Always Be Constantly Discovering) looks like in a multi-stakeholder deal, and why treating discovery as a phase instead of a continuous motion puts your deal at risk
Why champions fail in internal approval rooms when they can't answer "why this vendor," "why this problem," or "why now," and what sellers need to give them instead of a pitch deck
How procurement's land-and-expand goal is structurally more aligned with sales than most sellers realize, and what it takes to become a supplier they want to grow
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🔗 Resources Mentioned
Aligned - AI deal workspace for enterprise sales; show sponsor. Build your first room free.
ABCD (Always Be Constantly Discovering) - Michael Shields' framework for treating discovery as a continuous motion rather than a deal phase
