Devantae Masaun

I love buying things for myself, but the satisfaction of being able to do this for people you love is unbeatable. Last Xmas I brought my mom a £50 perfume, the year before I got her nothing because I had nothing. This Xmas it’s a 5 Star holiday to the Caribbean. Big W

WALKED INTO FIRST CLASS LOUNGE TO BOARD MY FLIGHT. Sit down and feel someone tap my shoulder….. It’s only one of highest billers in DealFuel pacing to $1M in commissions this year who is also flying first class. You can’t make this up. We’re unstoppable.

If you actually sat in my office for a week and watched how I operate, you’d never want to compete against me. I genuinely believe I’m operating on a completely different frequency when it comes to speed, intelligence and execution. My desire to win is fucking uncontainable and, more importantly, permanently consistent. That’s the part I think most people underestimate. External circumstances have almost zero influence over my internal dialogue or the mission I’m pursuing. I could be having the best day of my life or the worst and you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. I show up the same. I think the same. I execute with the same intensity. I don’t need a record sales day to feel motivated and I don’t need somebody to reassure me when things go to shit. My standards are not negotiated against my emotions. I’ve spent years conditioning myself to operate this way, to the point where it’s no longer something I have to consciously manufacture. It’s just who I am. And that’s why I’m so convinced about where I’m going. You can compete with somebody’s skill, resources or strategy. It’s a lot harder to compete with somebody whose conviction never fucking moves.

PLAY UNTIL THE FINAL WHISTLE. With 3 days left in the month, you should be throwing absolutely everything you have at it. Wake up earlier, finish later, send that follow up, dial your entire pipeline, reopen conversations you thought were dead and make more space on your calendar. I don’t care if you’ve had the best month of your career or the worst. Neither gives you permission to take your foot off the gas. I’ve seen reps turn an average month into a record month in the final 72 hours. I’ve also seen reps have an incredible first 3 weeks and then spend the last week congratulating themselves whilst leaving thousands on the table. The difference is rarely some extraordinary sales skill. It’s the willingness to do the things everybody else has mentally checked out of doing. Luck is manufactured through small details. The extra call that finally gets answered. The follow up that lands at exactly the right moment. The old opportunity you decide to revisit that suddenly has budget. None of that happens if you’ve already decided the month is over. Over enough time, a good month or a bad month is usually a reflection of the standards you hold yourself to. The scoreboard doesn’t stop moving because you’re happy with the result. PLAY UNTIL THE FUCKING WHISTLE.

My dev team just demoed me the first working version of DealFuel Pay, and it's fucking insane lol. We're building a payments ecosystem built specifically for salespeople. Very soon, companies will be able to hire, onboard and pay their sales reps in under 3 clicks, no matter where they are based. Reps will receive their commissions instantly into their DealFuel Wallet and can then withdraw to their linked bank accounts or crypto wallets. But the payments are only one part of what we're building. Every rep will have a complete financial dashboard showing an itemised breakdown of their commissions by month, quarter and year. Everything is downloadable, including records they can send straight to their accountant for EOY taxes. Reps will have UI dashboard that is similar to stripe for a company so they can actually see there income the same way a business owner does. Now here's the part I'm particularly excited about. Every commission paid through DealFuel Pay will be attached to that rep's profile as verified earnings. Think about how ridiculous the current hiring market is. A sales rep tells a company they collected $2M last year, made $300k in commissions and were the highest performer in their organisation. The company has almost no way of independently verifying any of it. So they take their word for it, ask for references and hope the numbers are genuine. We're building a system where reps can actually PROVE their earnings through verified payment records. Instead of telling an employer you're a $250k per year salesperson, imagine opening your DealFuel profile and showing them $250k in verified commission income. No screenshots of Stripe dashboards. No inflated claims. No bullshit. Actual money received. And as more companies start paying their salespeople through DealFuel Pay, we'll start building something even more interesting. A verified record of the highest earning salespeople inside our ecosystem. For the first time, a rep's commercial track record can become a financial asset that follows them throughout their career. And for employers, it introduces an entirely new layer of diligence when evaluating talent. I started DealFuel because I thought the recruitment industry was antiquated and there was an enormous opportunity to build something fundamentally better. Now we're building recruitment, talent discovery, candidate intelligence, verified earnings and payments into one ecosystem. What other recruitment company is innovating on this level? I genuinely cannot name one. And we're still only getting started. DEALFUEL FOREVER.

I think a lot of people choose careers based on what they think they can get instead of what environment will make them dangerous. Those are not the same thing btw The highest-paying role today is not always the role that creates the highest earning person in five years. Imo, the better move is the company with stronger people, higher standards, better exposure and a harder learning curve. I'm not saying short term money doesn't matter but proximity to excellence makes you more. I'm not just saying this, I did this. For the first 4 years of my career, I had several routes to make more money, and it was easier, but I forced myself to stay in a role where I had to bust my back daily to make a few dollars. The same skills I forged for little pay are the same ones that made me millions.

Three years ago, I had the idea for DealFuel. I was in Dubai on my first real holiday after working relentlessly for 365 days straight, with my calendar open for 15 hours per day. I was sitting on the beach, shisha pipe in hand, with my notebook. I started fleshing out some concepts and almost immediately knew I had something. The name. The concept. .mEven the outreach copy. I had almost everything mapped out before I returned home. But I sat on it. Not because I lacked conviction, but because I understood that having a great idea and being the person capable of executing it are two completely different things. I knew I had more to learn and more to become before I could give that idea what it deserved. There’s a concept from Ancient Greek thought that I’ve become increasingly fascinated with. Chronos and Kairos. Chronos represents sequential, measurable time. The hours, days, months and years passing. Kairos represents the opportune moment. The critical point where taking action has disproportionate significance. I’ve come to realise how relevant this distinction is to almost everything I do in business, particularly sales. Most salespeople operate almost exclusively in Chronos. E.g : 60 calls per day. Follow up every 3 days. Send the proposal on Tuesday. Check in again next Friday. All very important, but fundamentally mechanical. The best salespeople I’ve worked with understand Kairos too. They recognise that certain moments inside a sales conversation carry considerably more weight than others. E.g : A prospect casually mentions their existing vendor has been letting them down A hiring manager tells you their top salesperson just resigned and the founder is personally covering their pipeline. These are not just interesting pieces of information to note down. They’re windows of opportunity where the conditions for a decision have fundamentally changed. And the mistake most reps make is treating those moments like ordinary information. They continue with the demo as it was planned without knowing any of that. They allow the prospect to return to their normal routine, where the urgency gradually disappears. When I hear something like this, I want to understand it immediately. “What has happened that’s made this such a priority now?” “What happens if this isn’t resolved in the next 30 days?” “Assuming we could solve that specific problem, what would actually prevent you from getting started immediately?” Sometimes the right move is to completely abandon the rest of your presentation and focus on that one thing. Some of my biggest deals I’ve closed follow ZERO sales framework. IMO the opportunity to influence a decision is not distributed evenly across a 60 minute call. There might be 90 seconds in that entire conversation where the prospect is more receptive to change than at any other point. Recognising those moments and knowing what to do with them is a skill I’ve spent years developing. But there’s another side to Kairos that I think is equally important. Not every opportunity should be acted on the moment it appears. When I sat on that beach in Dubai, I had the idea for DealFuel. I could have launched it immediately. Instead, I continued developing myself, accumulating capital, learning more about recruitment, building relationships with key people and building so much good will with the right people . The idea didn’t disappear, but my ability to execute it improved. Eventually the moment arrived where the opportunity and my preparation met. And when it did, I moved. A few years later , I’m building the very company I once scribbled into a notebook on a beach. I think a lot of success comes down to understanding these two dimensions of time. Chronos is where you accumulate the experience, relationships, skills and resources. Kairos is where you recognise the moment to deploy them. You need the patience to prepare for years and the conviction to act in seconds.

In the middle of brokering one of the largest deals of DealFuel history. A deal that could change the trajectory of the company. My vision from the start was working with clients upmarket and it’s finally happening.

I pay in full to get paid in full. Whether this particular call closes or not makes genuinely ZERO difference to my life. But the act of waking up for it does. Because every time I do something like this, I’m reinforcing the standard that got me here in the first place. I’ve made enough money to give myself a thousand excuses to take my foot off the gas. I could justify working less, turning down inconvenient meetings, leaving things until tomorrow and nobody would question me. BUT I WOULD KNOW. And that’s the part I can’t get comfortable with. I refuse to become somebody who only works hard when he needs the money. That would mean the very thing that made me successful was conditional on being broke. I was telling some of our new recruits this morning that they all want to make $50k+ per month and operate at the highest level. Now you have to accept the standards that come with it. You cannot want an extraordinary outcome and then negotiate with the ordinary sacrifices required to get there. I’ve always believed the universe keeps a ledger. Every time you turn up when you could have stayed in bed, every time you honour a commitment when there’s no immediate reward, every time you do what you said you would do when nobody is watching, you’re making another deposit. And I genuinely believe those deposits come back around. I pay in full to get paid in full.I don’t intend to ever owe the universe a fucking penny.

FACTSSSSS

I came to Dubai for the first time 4 years ago after hitting my first $25,000 month in commissions as a sales rep. At the time, that number felt fucking enormous. I remember being here thinking I had finally started to crack the code. Years of making fuck all, years of cold calling, years of wondering when the sacrifice would eventually start paying me back. $25k in a month was the first real proof. I had a little cash in my pocket, and I was able to have a little nibble of what a good life looks like. I loved every second of that holiday, and it's why I always have fond memories and a soft spot for Dubai. Today I’m flying home from Dubai under completely different circumstances. DealFuel has now crossed $800,000 in sales this month, and I think we can finish on $900,000. When I land, one of the things waiting for me is signing the lease on a new office built to house around 40 people. That sentence feels ridiculous compared to where I was 4 years ago, and even writing it feels strange. And that’s probably the bit people don’t talk about enough. Sometimes your life moves faster than your identity does. You remember when $25k felt like the ceiling. Then one day you’re discussing $800k months, 40 person offices, payroll, acquisitions and hiring plans like they’re normal operational conversations. The numbers change before your brain fully catches up. That is why I’m careful with what I allow myself to call “big”. Every number that once intimidated me eventually became familiar. Every milestone I thought would change everything eventually became another line item in a much bigger plan. Reality has spent the last few years repeatedly proving to me that my imagination was actually too conservative. I MUST THINK BIGGER. I wont celebrate this month by putting my feet up, instead I WILL REWARD MYSELF WITH AN UPDATED TARGET. THE BIGGEST ONE YET! Four years ago $25k changed the way I saw my future. Today $800k has done the exact same thing. I WANT THE LARGEST RECRUITMENT COMPANY FOR SALES REPS IN THE WORLD. I WANT TO OPEN AN OFFICE IN NYC. I WANT THE BEST SALES REPS IN THE WORLD USING DEALFUEL TO SECURE ROLES. I WANT A 50 PERSON SALES FLOOR IN PERSON. I WANT $100M IN REVENUE.

I’ve been staying at a Ritz-Carlton Reserve deep in the desert in the UAE. Incredible experience. Native wild animals roaming around, Falcons flying overhead and nothing but natural sand for miles. The tent villa is probably one of the coolest places I’ve stayed too. What made it even better was the timing. The last 10 days have been intense. Some of the biggest deals in DealFuel history have been in play with a lot moving at once and very little time to properly think. So a few days out here has been useful. Not to switch off completely but to re centre. I usually like to end a quarter and start a new one like this. You need to consume what has happened and then clearly envision the upcoming stretch. I spent hours on hours just thinking about my exact steps in detail and I know exactly what I need to do every single day for the next 90 days to achieve it. We are in Business end of Q4 now. $1M month is closer than ever.

A few years ago, I scaled an offer from $200,000 to $4.5M per month. It’s well documented and was for one of the biggest names in the info space. Looking back, I did a lot right. I also did one thing that 100% stifled the company’s growth going from the first $200k to $1.5M month. I made the team too dependent on me. I had never managed a large sales team before, so honestly I was learning on the job. The numbers kept getting bigger and bigger, which looked great from the outside, but behind the curtain I was on Slack for 15 hours a day lol. Hundreds of questions. Objections happening live on calls I would jump in and fix. Reps messaging me mid-conversation asking what to say. Sometimes I’d literally jump on the call myself to close the deal. At the time, I thought that was leadership. I was being available, I was helping and I was protecting revenue. But over time I realised the team should need me less, not more. If every problem still requires you after a year, you have not developed people. You’ve developed dependence. I remember travelling a few times and noticing something that really bothered me. Whenever I was in the air and unreachable, revenue would genuinely tank by around 50%. That's when it became obvious. The business was not scaling. I was, and there’s a massive difference. On one of those flights, I opened a notebook and started writing out how to build what I called a “self-policing” sales team. My focus became to build a team that could identify its own mistakes, correct them and keep moving without waiting for me to appear. That completely changed how I thought about leadership. Your job is not to become the person everyone needs. Your job is to build people who increasingly need you less. Leadership should create more leaders. Not more people waiting for answers.

I think people massively underestimate the commercial value of being likeable. I dont mean fake charisma either. Actually being someone people enjoy speaking to. People give more information to people they like. They take more calls. They forgive small mistakes. They introduce you to other people. They stay in conversations longer. Being intelligent matters, and so does being competent. But if people genuinely enjoy having you around, life gets noticeably easier. It's helped me my entire life. I'd argue it made me richer than any one skill ever has.

One of the easiest ways to lose a good B2B deal is letting your entire opportunity depend on one person. I’ve seen this happen constantly. You have a great call, and your contact is brought in, but they have to take it internally for sign-off. You send over a proposal and maybe even contract to get reviewed but then the deal just slows down. You assume the problem is follow up, so you send generic follow up slow and every few days you send more of the same. The problem is that you sold one person inside a company and expected them to go and resell the entire deal for you. The person you spoke to might understand your offer perfectly, but now they need to explain it to multiple other people. Maybe another department entirely. And they are almost definitely not going to articulate it as well as you did. This is why I try to work out very early who else touches the decision. I’ll ask something like : “Assuming you personally wanted to move forward after today, who else would need to be comfortable before we could actually get this signed?” Then: “What does each of those people care about specifically?” Then : "Is there anybody that you think is going to pose a pushback?" The second question is key because the CEO might care about revenue impact, Finance might care about cost and risk, legal might care about liability, and the hiring manager might care about speed. The third question will help you work out who your advocates are and who gains the least from using your service internally. You can then assess who they are, how useful that advocate is, and how dangerous the person against it can be and act accordingly. If you sell only one generic value proposition, somebody in that chain will probably remain unconvinced. Then I ask: “When this goes internal, are you comfortable representing this yourself or does it make more sense for me to join that conversation?” That question is so fire af. I've closed so many deals simply because I asked that. It makes a huge difference. You’re no longer relying on your champion to become your salesperson, you take over yourself which is the best case scenario. For larger deals I like mapping the buying group directly inside CRM: - Champion: - Economic buyer: - Final signer: - Legal/procurement: - Potential blocker: - What each person cares about: - Next interaction with each: If I have a $50k-$100k+ deal and the only person we have spoken to is one manager, I don’t consider that a strong opportunity, no matter how enthusiastic they sound. That’s a single point of failure. The other thing I’ll do is give the champion something they can actually use internally. Thats not some 20 page proposal you made on GPT either lol Instead a short internal summary: - Here’s the problem we’re solving. - Here’s the commercial impact. - Here’s why us. - Here’s the cost. - Here’s the risk protection. - Here’s the next step. (If you're an OG newsletter subscriber you will remember this email template I gave you guys ages ago on this). If they have to reconstruct your entire pitch from memory in front of their boss three days later, you’re gambling the deal on recall. I've also sat on buyer side and when someone senior challenges that person they just back away as they dont want to look stupid. You need to create a usecase document that enables that rep to respond back with conviction. Nobody will look stupid infront of there boss to sell your product / service for you. Remember that. Map how the decision actually moves through the business and make sure your value survives every hand it passes through.

I’ve never taken any stimulants and I don’t drink coffee. I don’t need either. I just close deals every single day and I’m full of energy!

Same thing applies for sales teams. Last month I fired 2 top performers who repeatedly started shifts late, disregarded mandatory weekend coverage that all reps must comply with. I do not believe in the thought process top performers can do what they want. Instead top performers get privileges through being associated to me long term, not through low standards. If your top performer decides to go AWOL dismiss them and do it fast. A mentor once said to me anytime after the first time you considered firing someone is already too late. Anytime I avoided that advice it ended up worse for me.

Today's edition of my newsletter is probably the most counterintuitive sales advice you've ever heard from me. ​ Midway through reading this, you're probably going to think, "WTF IS THIS GUY SMOKING?" but if you're smart enough to stick with it, by the end you will realise my genius when it comes to sales is truly on another dimension. What inspired this edition was the WORST question in sales... “Do you have any concerns?” It sounds sensible, consultative, and exactly the sort of question a good salesperson should ask before closing. The problem is most prospects will say “No, not really.” 99% of the time, and then 24 hours later, the deal disappears. I will show you one question to replace it with that will take your sales calls to another dimension. If you’re on the list you’ll have this in your inbox now.