In this Revenue Today episode, host Jared Robin introduces the show’s focus on sales, marketing, and RevOps, and acknowledges the sponsor Demandbase. Guest Nick Capozzi, representing RevGenius and DemoStack, shares his storytelling journey—from studying ad‑lib radio at Humber College, to a two‑decade cruise‑ship duty‑free career where he sold high‑end Swiss watches. He explains that selling 60 products in 60 minutes forced him to master descriptive storytelling that differentiates each brand. Nick illustrates the power of vivid, detailed narratives by recounting two versions of a personal road‑trip story, showing how richer language paints a clearer picture. He then shifts to sales tactics: uncovering a prospect’s “why now” to weave their urgency into the story, and positioning the prospect as the hero of the journey rather than the seller. He cites the Epic of Gilgamesh as a classic hero’s journey template, urging GTM teams to move from push‑oriented language (“we can solve”) to pull‑oriented storytelling that makes the buyer the central character. The episode ends with practical advice on using storytelling in discovery calls, emails, and recordings to create compelling, buyer‑centric narratives.
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Sales, marketing, and RevOps. It's sink or swim out there, and yesterday's strategies and tactics won't help you today. This is Revenue Today, and I'm your host, Jared Robin. Join me as we interview revenue leaders in our community to learn what steps we could take right now to help you scale yourself and your company. Revenue Today is sponsored by RevGenius, and we're on a mission to bring in Inspiration and creativity to all revenue professionals in the world. Want to shout out our sponsor Demandbase. Demandbase is smarter GTM for B2B brands. They help marketing and sales teams spot the juiciest opportunities earlier and progress them faster by injecting account intelligence into every step of the buyer journey and orchestrating every action. For more information about Demandbase, visit demandbase.com.
How you doing everyone? Nick Capozzi repping the Rev Genius. Very excited to be here from DemoStack today. And we're gonna talk a little bit about storytelling. So I, and I'm going to like commit a cardinal sin right now and I'm going to actually read off the screen because storytelling is the process of using fact and narrative to communicate something to your audience. It's an art which requires creativity, Vision, skill, and practice. And those are all really important. There is an art to this. But why is that? Let's talk about that. So, I actually began my career in Canada in radio and television. And basically, I went to Humber College for 2 years to learn how to ad-lib and tell stories. And that was really the key thing that they were teaching us there. So, I was in radio for a few years and from there— One day at a party, someone said, hey, can you do that on a stage? And I stepped onto a cruise ship, um, and I spent the better part of 2 decades, uh, in the cruise business. And what we did was we were telling stories from a stage. And what I mean by that is, um, we were talking about a lot of really high-end brands. So what we were doing is we were selling duty-free. And we think duty-free, you think, you know, liquor, perfume, tobacco. It was really high-end luxury brands, uh, watches like Tag Heuer, Breitling, Hublot, Cartier, Chopard. And where I really had to develop my storytelling skills, even though I had that base from college, came when I was pitching like 60 products in 60 minutes, and 20 of those products were all Swiss watches. So how do I tell a different story about one brand of Swiss watch which is built one canton over in Switzerland, in Basel, from the one I'm talking about. Because it was really easy for it to all flow together and become very jumbled and messy. So we really had to be good at descriptive storytelling and really differentiating how things came across. All right. One of the key things is obviously involving your prospect in the story. So when you have a go-to-market strategy, a lot of times we are telling the story one way. We're pushing it out, we're not pulling it in. So we're going to talk about that a little bit as well today. But let's talk about one of the most important things, which is descriptive storytelling. So if you want to tell a great story about your product, and I don't care if it's accounting software or a $50,000 Patek Philippe Swiss watch, you really need to use words to describe your story and what you're talking about. So let me tell you a story. So here's the first version of the story. I was in my early 20s. I was working at a bar in Toronto. I bought a lousy beater car and I went on a road trip and drove across America until I ran out of money. That's one version of the story. Here's the other. I was working at the Elephant and Castle Pub in downtown Toronto at King and Simcoe. It was actually kitty-corner from Roy Thomson Hall. And You know, I was having fun with everyone who worked there, but I needed to get out. I was tired of working in this bar, and I just needed to hit the road and move. And I was living in this lousy apartment in Toronto, and I just wanted to get out. Now, what was happening was all my friends were going out and partying that I worked with, but I wanted to save every cent I had to grind, save up $2,500 to buy a beater car. It was amazing because when I went shopping, $2,500, even like 20 years ago, 20 23, 24 years ago didn't go a long way when it came to beater cars, right? Um, but I had a $2,500 budget with all the money I'd saved for 2 months, and I went and I found this lousy car and I hit the road. And my goal was how many state parks could I see in the United States before I ran out of money and had to call my dad and beg for a ticket to fly me back home. And let me tell you, I went to a lot of state parks. I went to Arches, I went to the Grand Tetons, I went to Yosemite. I went to Yellowstone. It was amazing. By the way, Arches in Moab in Utah, unbelievable. So I hit 23 state parks over that trip. This was my favorite, Yosemite. Isn't that beautiful? Like, look at the light. Look at the light play on that rock. Isn't that amazing? You've ever seen anything like that? Then the car broke down as I was pulling into San Francisco, and that was pretty much the end of the trip. So I had to go call my dad from San Francisco and say, hey, Dad, I need to take it back to Canada. So it was the same story. Obviously, one was a lot longer for— we were emphasizing here, but it's the same story. It's just one, you're painting a vivid, detailed picture of what you're doing and what you're trying to achieve. Another key thing when it comes to telling your story is involving your prospect in the story. So finding Their why now allows them to tell their story. And if you're a seller, you've probably heard this before, you know, what's your why now? And people get stuck there. They're afraid to kind of push and prod into it if they don't, if they meet resistance at the beginning. But really, if you figure out what their why now is, you can craft your story specifically to that prospect. So what's your prospect's story? And if they don't have one, lob them a softball. So, why are you doing this right now, prospect? Uh, just, you know, we've been talking about it for a couple months. We're, you know, investigating, you know, we're looking for something in this space. But why today? Well, like I said, a couple months. But why now? Why are we having this conversation today? Well, actually, because what happens is like once a quarter, the boss comes in and he's angry because we didn't do this. And that's just— Okay, that— now I have their why now. Now I have a guitar string that I can pluck anytime I need to make my point. I can revert back to that. Right? So what this allows you to do, if you involve your prospect in the story, it allows them to become part of the journey of the story itself. So my buddy Charles Mulbauer here had a post a couple days ago, you know, AE, when did you realize that that's been an issue? Don't forget, this question is a— this question, if a problem is shared, a story will be shared and emotions will be expressed. So storytelling is such a key part of the discovery process. So make your prospect the hero of the story. And this is really important. And this is something I learned from Bilal Bathari last year. If you look at your conversations, if you listen to your call recordings, if you look at your emails, very often it's, I and we and we can do this and we can solve this problem for you. But the reality is, is that's just pushing. If you want to pull and tell a great story, you need to make your, your prospect the hero of this story. It needs to be about their pain. It needs to be about their epic voyage of before they had this accounting software to where they are now with this accounting software, right? So a great example, this is the Epic of Gilgamesh. If you haven't read it, it's a historic poem, thousands of years old, and it's the hero's journey. And it's the story of overcoming the adversity to get to where they needed to be so that they could win. And that's what we're trying to do here is paint the picture for your prospect that if they do what it is that you are selling, what you are promoting, what you are trying to do, Um, it's going to allow you to really involve them and make them feel part of the journey, and that's what you want. You have to shine the light on them.
Whoa, another great episode of Revenue Today. For show notes, links, and mentions, visit revenue today dot live. For all my friends in the Rev Genius community, thank you. It's been awesome to spend this time with you. Please DM me any feedback and ideas in our Slack channel or on LinkedIn. If you're not in RevGenius, join us at revgenius.com. It's free and it only takes like 2 seconds and you'll be joining a group of 27,000 revenue professionals strong. We've got it all. Looking forward to seeing you there. Catch you on the flip side.
