9/11/20 - Fridays Are For Closers Season 2, Episode 4 - Made to Match: Adopt & Adapt Your Stories

What do you say, team? Habits of work. Should we get rolling?

Let's do it.

Fantastic. Thank you everyone again for joining us for episode 4 out of 5 episodes of this season of Fridays or foreclosures. For those of you that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, of course, my name is Matt Green. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer with Sales Assembly. But you're not here to listen to me. You're here to listen to our two esteemed presenters, Andrew Sykes and Tia Pappas, with habits at work continuing on this entire theme of storytelling that we've been running with for this entire season. What you've noticed, well, you probably noticed a couple things in all the sessions leading up today. I mean, number one, outside of the fact that they've been awesome, you know, they've been filled with a lot of really tactical and actionable takeaways that each of us have been able to use and and implement in our businesses, specifically as it relates into our storytelling processes from day to day. And one of the cool things that I love about this series and what Andrew and Tia put together is that essentially each event that we've done, each session sort of builds into the next one. So what we're seeing, what we're going to see today and especially during our next session on September 25th, as we finalize everything, is essentially gonna be this culmination of everything that we've been lear throughout this series and how we could leverage what Andrew and Tia brought to the table in order to become more effective and more efficient storytellers. And what we're going to be focusing on today ties in with a lot of what we've been hearing in the sales space over the past year to two years or so, which is this concept of personalization. Right. And adapting our messaging depending on the people that we're talking to. And when we talk about this a lot in the ecosystem these days, usually we're talking about personalization and adaptation as it relates to our prospecting efforts. Right? We want to make sure that we're being hyper personalized in our email outreach and our LinkedIn outreach and our Vidyard outreach, so on and so forth. What Andrew and Tia are going to talk us through today is how we can adopt and adapt and essentially personalize the stories that we are going to tell based on the person that we're interacting with. So I'm going to stop talking. I'm going to turn it over to the experts. But before I do that, I just want to give a quick thanks to our partners that made today in this entire series possible Showpath lessonly and vidyard. With that said, Andrew and Tia, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Matt. Plus one to your appreciation for our wonderful sponsors. Welcome everyone, to the end of what's been a very long, short week. If you're in the US Following Labor Day, we were saying before we started today, it feels like we took five days worth of work and we put them into four. So if you're feeling like I'm feeling, it's time for us to have a little fun as we move into the celebration part of our weekend. And to do that, we're going to be talking about today, as Matt said, how to make our stories match the situation for which they're intended, such that a single story can do a lot more work for us than perhaps we might have been led to believe by the three sessions we've done before. So we'll be exploring this idea of taking stories that you find not only in your own life, but other people's stories and then adopting them as your own, which is one part of it, and then thinking about to whom am I speaking? What do they need to hear, understand or believe such that they take the actions I want them to take and how can I adapt one story to. To speak to multiple different stakeholders who have different and varied objections and objectives in the business cycle, and maybe even to take a story and use it at different stages during the sales process. And we'll look at how this work complements all of what's come before. So the benefit of today is that you'll have two conversations going. Mine, which is yelling at you for 40 or 50 minutes, and Tia, who will be manning the chat along with our colleagues from Sales assembly. And we really encourage you to be as active in the chat as you can be. We consider it to be the second conversation. So if you have questions at any time and you're bursting to ask them and you contact yourself off mute or we don't have the opportunity to interact, ask Tia that question. She'll be putting things in the chat that she thinks are relevant from what I'm sharing, maybe even prompting you with a couple of questions to reflect on. So thank you, Tia, for doing that and joining me as you have for the last three sessions. We're in the middle of the end of season two, so we're at episode four. And during this journey, as Matt said, we started out with the fundamentals, which is how to create and specifically how to write a moving story, a story that touches people emotionally, knowing that emotions precede decisions and actions. And then we got onto the topic of how you actually tell a story. Since it's one art to write a compelling story, it's another art to tell a compelling story. And in sales, we believe it is a conversation act that most of creating a future in which your customers and you share a relationship, buy a product from one to the other happens because of your power in the way you speak. And perhaps there is no more powerful conversation act than the sharing of a story. And we looked at the devices for doing so, the things you could put into your story to bring it to life, to make it easy to remember, and also the way that you deliver those stories. And then last week we looked at what it takes to have the right story ready to deliver at the right time for the right reason. So we looked at this idea of a story libraries, how you collect, categorize, tag and store these stories so that when you're in the moment and it calls for a story, you're not left short. You can reach back into your memory banks, pull out the right story, load it up and shoot it off, as it were. And today we're talking about how to take any of those stories and maybe have it do more work than you thought it could do or that it was intended to do in the first place. As we go into September 25th, we'll be wrapping up everything, and we'll be doing so by almost going right back to the beginning of the sales journey and asking what is the single most effective way to create connection with another human being such that they feel about you that you're credible, passionate, trustworthy and likable and therefore want to take the buying journey with you. And to do that, we'll be bringing to life our personal origin stories. And I'm thrilled to tell you like we had Craig Wortman join us last week as a guest, we'll be having a very special guest in the form of Mickey Williams. She is a speaking coach, a professional speaker, a Hall of Fame speaker, and much else besides. If you've never heard her speaking, I strongly recommend you show up next time just to hear her deliver one of her most impressive stories. So I'm very excited about the journey and where we are. I'm a little sad that we're going into the last session next time, but let's dig into what we're here for today. The purpose of our time together today is to examine how might we adopt stories from our story library or from other people. As we go through life, as we read books, as we interact with customers, what are the stories that are emerging and then how can we use them in different situations? And my first challenge to you as sellers is to consider that every single time you win or lose a deal, no matter whether you win it at the prospect stage or at the final gate, whether you win it by a nose hair or you win it in a landslide, there is a story behind what happened and why you won or lost it. And that story is much richer than we certainly can see from our side as the seller. There are many people involved, lots of stakeholders, lots of influences to the decision, and the story could be told through the lens of any of those people. And that's the first clue that stories can be adapted by simply asking the question, whom would we like to make the hero of any given story? Because in most sales situations, we're sharing a story about a customer that had success or perhaps failure, or a person inside of our customers who overcame some obstacles, that there's always a hero, and the only person it should probably never be, except in your origin story, is you. So if it's true that there are multiple stakeholders and there is usually one or maybe two heroes in a story, you can already see that we could tell the story through the lens of any of those heroes or stakeholders, depending on who we now talking to in the next deal. And as we get through the mechanics of this, then we'll take a little bit of time to plan some of your practice. I will tell you that the material of today is perhaps the most challenging of what we've done so far, because it requires you to stretch your imagination more than perhaps the work we've done to date. And so I'll be calling on one of you to volunteer and play along with me and just think out loud how we might adopt and adapt a particular story as an access to everyone. Seeing how this works and maybe the work that's to be done. What I'm hoping you'll leave with today is that you're very clear about how you might take a limited stock of stories and frame them or tell them from a different point of view so that they can serve multiple different purposes. And if you're aligned with that, I will jump straight in. So the place to start this journey is, is to think about what it means to make a story match a situation. And before I do that, let's just think about the journey that we go on with a customer from the very first time we pick up the Phone. Or maybe our BDR picks up the phone and reaches out to someone. We've never met them before. We're trying to establish a connection in the two or five minutes that we have. And if we're successful, perhaps they'll grant us the honor of having a 30 minute follow up or discovery call with them. And if that goes well, we have more and more meetings and at some point we get to present and there are objections that come up. You're all more than familiar with the sales journey and the steps we take in our process. Along that journey, there are two fundamental jobs that have to be done that you might say entirely define what it means to sell. You've heard me before say that from our point of view, to sell is to help someone make progress in their lives, but they have to want to allow you to do that. So at the base of everything that's involved in selling exists two fundamental problem statements. Number one is how do we change somebody's mind from the plans they already have to solve the problems they have, perhaps with their own resources or another vendor. And how do we have them consider and then decide that they want to work with us, with our company and with our products? Changing human minds is the art of selling. Yes, in the mindset of serving others. And yes, we should only do that if we feel like we are a great match for them. But before that mind change happens, there is no deal to be done after it happens. It's mechanics, it's signing the statement of work. The second fundamental problem in sales, particularly in the virtual world, is building a strong connection with another human being. Why? We believe, and much of the research supports this, that buyers decide that they want to buy from you before they decide what they want to buy from your company. And so, particularly in a zoom and meet world, how do we reach across this technological divide? Connect with another human being, have them engage with us such that we have the opportunity to change their mind and close a deal. I saw this morning some beautiful research from Gong IO about how the very act of customers and sellers having a video on practically doubles your chances of closing a deal. Why? Because when we get to look someone in the eye and they're doing the same to us, that common humanity emerges, that trust can be built and so those minds can be changed. So if we think about the problem we're trying to solve today, it is the problem of getting a deal unstuck at any stage during the process. So if you're on a cold call trying to get someone just to give you five minutes and you're feeling like they're stuck and there's resistance, that might be a time to tell a story. If they said yes to a demo and you're halfway through the demo and you can see they're falling asleep and they're not engaged and you want to bring them back, that might be a time to stop and tell them a story. If they love the demo and they're all excited about it, but you know, there's just not enough money or we're not quite ready to move, or any of the classic objections, that might be a time to tell them a story. And the first thing I would like you to entertain today is what would it look like if one story could be a match for every one of those cases and many more along the sales journey, speaking to each of the influences, the buyers, the decision makers, and their bosses and their other committee members. If it's a consensus decision, wouldn't it be amazing if one story could do all of that job for us? Now, you should be healthily skeptical of that view right away. And so for a moment, I just want to invite you to consider some of the classic stories from literature. And since I'm Busy Reading Book 4 of Harry Potter to my little boy, Lexington, and I'm hoping most of you at least know about Harry Potter, if not have read it and love it, I would ask you this question. Question number one, and if you can put it in the chat or the Q and A, answer this question. Who is the hero of, of the story called Harry Potter? Please put it in the chat now, Harry. Methinks, great guess. Absolutely. JK Ron Weasley, Cedric Diggory, Neville Longbottom. Love your answers. And the truth is, it's all of them, perhaps with the exception of he whose name should not be mentioned. Because the only choice that was made by J.K. rowling was who to tell the story through. You could imagine her having written those books where Dumbledore is the hero or where Hermione or Neville or any of these key characters, because they all played heroic roles. And the same is true when we tell our business stories, we can decide who the main player is, who the supporting actors and actresses are, and therefore to whom it speaks. Most relevantly, how do we do that? Well, the first thing to ask is the person that I'm speaking to, who are they and what actions do I want them to take? So if I'm speaking to the CEO, I might want her to take a very different set of actions when I'm talking To the cfo, I might want the CFO to say, yes, I will sign and endorse that if we have budget. But I need the CEO to get everyone on board with this new project and lead from the front. And the same is true when I'm speaking to an influencer or any other stakeholder in this now very complex world of selling. So the first question to get crystal clear on is, what are the actions specifically that I want this person to take? If I'm clear about that, I can then ask. The second question is, how do I draw them in and get them to care about or pay attention to what I'm about to tell them, such that I can inspire them to take the actions that I want them to take through the story that I share with them? And we think that as human beings, we spend most of our lives focused on me here now, and my mundane reality, which happens to be, for me, fascinating and interesting, but for the rest of the world, perhaps not so much. Therefore, when I'm setting the context for my story, I would like to do it so that it fits right into that narrowish focus that most human beings have, because actually, it's a wonderful thing to be focused. But if I can't insert my story under the microscope through which they look at life, their business, and their problems, I won't catch their attention. Therefore, they won't be open to listening to the message in my story, which includes the action that I'd like them to take. How do we do that? How do we get people to care about it? By translating the context part of our story, the opening of our story, into either language that they're familiar with, or locating the problem as similar or adjacent to the one that they're dealing with. And the best way to illustrate that is that there is never such a thing as a problem statement. There is a problem statement as viewed by different stakeholders. So if the CEO says the problem I'd like to solve is how to raise $50 million to invest in a new company, the CFO might be tasked with the problem of managing debtors and cash flow and maybe selling some assets in order to release that, and she in turn may go to the accounts receivable department and ask them to hurry up and collect some money. And all of these people have a different lens on the same problem. So depending on who you're talking to, the problem will sound very different. I love this example. It came from my friend Declan in Dublin, and he shares how, as a buyer, he had the same conversation all down the line with these different people. And it sounded like eight different problems to solve. As sellers, our job is to put these pieces together so that the picture emerges from the puzzle pieces. And when we're telling stories, to be able to level up or level down in the problem, to be able to take it into the context of the lives of the people to whom we're speaking. So if we're speaking to the cto, it's a conversation in which the context is about whether or not the technology works. If we're speaking to the cmo, it's a conversation about what their technology might do for their ability to market and sell. And so you get the point here that what's important is figuring out what it's going to take to have people care. Now, quick aside, have you ever been sitting on your couch after a long day of selling and you're flipping three channels and then something catches your attention? It's about 8pm and the next time you look up it's 2am and you've binge watched nine series, nine episodes in a given series. That's what happens when someone lands a story in front of our attention that grabs us. We get sucked in. Absolutely. Isaac and others, we get sucked in and we are happy to give away enormous amounts of our attention, time and you might say energy to a story that catches us. That's the power of opening with something that someone really cares about. And that's what's happening when you're flipping three channels. All those other stories don't speak to something you care about. The one that had you lock in clearly had a context in that moment that connected with you as a human being. So with these two things clear, we can ask our final question, which is if we can grab someone, make them care in that opening sentence of a story, and then tell a story which brings to life the actions we'd like them to take by pointing to perhaps the actions that another customer took, we want to leave them then motivated to take those actions. And so the question we now have to answer is, what are the results that this person is trying to achieve? What's the impact that I think we or my company or our service can have for them? And if you have a powerful answer to these three questions, action. What people will care about, this person will care about, and what impact we can have for them if we deliver on what they care about or we solve their problem? You have the three ingredients you need to adopt and adapt almost any story to do almost any job for you. Now, is it true that one story can do everything. Not so true. The reality is, as we discussed last week, is you should have a matrix of stories, so you can pick the right story for the right person at the right time. But it's also true that a single story, told differently through the lens of Hermione versus Harry, or through Dumbledore, or even through Voldemort, if it's a failure story because he always loses, is an opportunity to use the same story in multiple contexts. So let's put that in the framing of how we started our journey, which is this approach to telling stories. If you were with us in week one, we said one way of constructing stories, and there are many, is to think about it in four parts. What's the context? So we lay the groundwork. We just make it clear, like, we situate people, and the story is not a story until there is some kind of conflict, some moment where we're asking what's going to happen next? What will happen to the villain or the hero? And I always like to construct stories by starting with conflict, going back just a little bit in time and setting the context so that we don't have these stories that drag on and that are too boring to listen to. They don't get to the point. The climax is the point of the story, when the issue, the challenge, the conflict is resolved. And then finally there's the closure to the story, the so what? That's often where in fables, the moral of the story emerges, or in sales conversations, the call to action emerges. Here's what I'd like you to do based on the lessons of the story that I've just shared. So now we have a story structure, and we also have an answer to those three questions. How do the three connect? And where would we bring the answers to those questions and into our stories? Well, the action is the point, that we have a hero who did some things and got a certain result, and the part of the story it usually fits into is the climax. So we have a customer. Here's who they were. They've got a particular problem. Really? Tell me more. Well, what they did is X. And what they achieved is. Yes. And so we'd like you to do the same. So the action steps that you want your CEO to take should be brought to life in the story. When you're telling the story of how in my last deal, when I was talking to the cto, she brought in the CEO and these were his or her concerns, and these are the actions that they took, and as a result, they Got these outcomes. So what you're wanting to do in your story is not make it up, but rather pick which facts and which parts of the plot to share so that they are as closely analogous to, dare I say, almost an exact match for the steps and actions you would like your current stakeholder, current person you're talking to to take. What about where the care fits in? Well, that's how we grab people and draw them in right at the beginning. Think of it as the equivalent to flipping channels, the thing you have to do to have the person to whom you're speaking in this moment stop on your channel, get fully engaged and listen to what comes next. I said earlier that stories have two fundamental jobs to do in selling. The one is changing somebody's mind at some point from not taking action to taking action, from not working with you to working with you. But the other job stories do for us so powerfully in a virtual world is draw people in. And the best way to draw them in is with a context setting statement that immediately speaks to what your customer cares about. Not as an employer, not as a company, not as a prospect, but as a human being. And if you do those two things right, the last piece to consider is, where do I bring the impact to life? What I know we can do for a customer, it's in that closure part of a story. So if I were retelling Harry Potter and I had a particular impact that I wanted to bring to life, I would change the ending of the story. The takeaway. And there is always a moral of a story and a bunch of takeaways. Professional storytellers realize that although to us as the storytellers, the takeaway, the conclusion is obvious, it's not always that obvious to the people to whom we're speaking. So just like closing a deal is often, as my friend Craig Wortman says, the natural outcome of a sales process run well. The moral of a story emerges naturally from a story done or told well. But it is also true that to close a deal, sometimes we actually have to ask, so are you ready to move to the next steps? How do we go through contracting and in the same way with a story, at some point, we may have to ask a call to action. Are you ready to act on this? Do you see what we see as what's available to you based on this story we've shared? So we now have two sets of ingredients. We have stories that are structured along these four elements or any other way you care to structure them. And we have three things we Know that will pull in, keep our customers engaged, and then motivate them to act, which is the set of actions we want them to take, the things we know they care about, and the results that they're after or the impact that we can have. And if you blend those two together, you have achieved what we set out to do today, which is adopt a story and adapt it for a specific use at a point in time for a given stakeholder in the sales journey. Now, that's easier said than done. So let's explore a little bit what that might look like. And one lens on that is to write down for yourself an objections matrix or a concerns matrix. And I know as sellers, you all have a version of this. You might say, well, in our business, we typically talk to four types of people. There's the financial buyer in the CFO's office. There's an influencer who we usually get put into contact with first. There's the technical buyer who's always hating our product because there's 17 reasons why they don't like our technology. And then there's the executive buyer who really cares about the outcome in the end. And since I've been paying attention for the last year or two, I've noticed that for the financial buyer, pricing is always sensitive and there's always an issue about our renewal fee if I'm having an upsell. Whereas when I'm talking to the technical buyer, they always have complaints or concerns about how difficult it is to implement and the needs that they have to integrate this with other technologies. So it's not just another piece of the tech stack that is causing more problems than it's solving. If you think about your Personas and the issues that they have, last time we said, go and find a story that speaks to the specific concern of this particular Persona. So that when you're faced in a new deal speaking to the executive buyer about reprioritizing your solution, over everything else, you can pull out a story of another executive buyer and tell the right story at the right time to the right person. What I'm going to challenge you to now consider is that that one story that you have about the influencer who was really worried about how the CRO might react or the fact that she's just settling into her role is the same story that can do the work for the executive buyer, provided we change lens from the story told through Harry's eyes to the story told through Hermione's eyes. Change who's the hero changes the story, might change the Ending it might change the moral of the story. We might point to different actions. We might start the story at a different time. And that's, I think, the biggest takeaway I'd like to leave you with today is that there is no such thing as. As a simple, tiny little story. All the business stories that we tell are more like a chapter than a book, because in the buying process, it's months and months of story unfolding with so many people involved. If someone were to write the novel of your last deal, it would be a novel. It wouldn't be one page. But as we take our successes or our failures into marketing, sometimes where we create case studies or we put them into our matrix of stories, we tend to just take a little snippet. And so I invite you to look at the bigger picture, the larger story, such that when you're in front of a particular buyer with a particular problem, you can choose which part of the story to tell so that it speaks to what they care about. It illustrates the actions you want to take. It brings to life the impact that you can have so that it feels to them like this is exactly the story I needed at this moment to help me make this decision, to help me be in action towards this outcome. Again, this may still land for you as a little bit theoretical, so I would like you now to try your hand at this. And it's a very easy point in this conversation for you to say, I'm going to watch this, and I'll invite you to watch it as I do it with a volunteer. But I'm not actually going to do the work. I just want to see how it's done. And you'll get something from today, I hope. But my challenge is that you will get so much more out of today if you actually do the work with us. What's predictable is you won't. Therefore, my challenge is don't be predictable. So here's the scenario. Your scenario is unique to you. And I'm going to ask you to start thinking about a particular meeting that you have with a particular person from a particular company in the coming week. So if you need to open up your calendar, look at the meeting that you're most concerned about or where the stakes are the highest, and write down who that person is, what their role is, what their title is, when you're clear about that. Now, we're going to have to slow down a little bit, think about what exactly is the situation in which they find themselves, and be careful here putting ourselves in other people's Shoes not only requires some empathy, it's actually a hard job to do to think about what's actually going on with them right now. What's so in their world? What constraints might they have? Who else are they considering as potential partners? What's their prior experience been? Have they had great buying experiences or bad buying experiences in this domain? Are they firing someone in order to hire us or is this a new purchase? So I'm going to give you now just two minutes to really get clear about and write down as much as you can about the situation. It'll serve you as we go into the next part of the exercise. Please do that now. Some of you will be faster than others. So as you're writing that down and thinking about it, for those of you who are quick studies or you have the answer right on the tip of your fingers, the question I now want you to answer. The questions are the ones I raised earlier for this particular stakeholder in this meeting next Tuesday at 10am in the situation they find themselves at the part of the sales journey where we are located that day. In that moment, what action do I want them to take? Do I want them to get other stakeholders into the next meeting so that we can give them a demo? Do I want them to go and talk to their CEO to unlock budget? Do I want them to enroll the CTO so that we fend off an objection we know we always have coming down the line? And this might appear obvious to you, but the discipline of actually writing down in one or maybe a couple of bullet points, these are the exact actions I want is not only useful for adopting and adapting our story, it's also critically useful for designing the agenda so you can set up, as we do every time we meet with you, the purpose and the benefit of the time you'll spend with your customers so they're clear by the end of today there is a next step that I'm aiming for and you not necessarily lead with that, but you lead them to that action and stories will be our mechanism. The next question of course is how do we get them to really care about these actions or say differently? What do we know from our know your customer research? This person cares about and explore here things beyond business results. What do they care about in their career? Is this the kind of person who is doing this job because they have an undying life purpose to educate kids if you're selling into a school district? Or is this someone who is hell bent on getting a promotion by next year? What's the inner motivation that will have them stop flipping channels and choose you. And last but not least, what impact can you help them achieve based on what they care about? Now, they may care about looking good to their boss. Awesome. How can we deliver on that? Your product isn't necessarily designed to do that, but your product might enable that outcome. If they really care about improving the communication between their teams through your wonderful technology, or allowing you to reach out to your own customers with great videos, or empowering the learning and development of your team, as some of our wonderful partners do, is that what someone cares about? And what impact can we have in that domain? So, hoping everyone has had some time and done this work, I'm now going to call on one of my favorite volunteers, Alexi, to take herself off mute and maybe off video, if that's possible.

Hi.

Hi, Alexine. Thank you for agreeing to do this with me.

Of course.

That was the easy part. Here comes the difficult part. So the first thing I'd like you to do, Alexin, is just recreate for everyone on the call your answers to questions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 to the extent that you need to make them anonymous. Please do that.

Okay, here we go. So I'm going to start at the top. So this was actually a. The timeliness is good. So we had a recent conversation within the last week. The person's role was the director of analytics for their organization. The situation was interesting. So they really loved our software. No issues whatsoever as far as the functionality of our tool. But he had concerns surrounding the fact that they'd been burned by a previous vendor. So that came up a lot in our conversation was, although you guys have a really good solution and we feel like you could be great, by the way, this was a really negative experience. We moved forward with another vendor. We thought they were going to be great. It damaged my internal professional reputation. My team was at risk. We ended up having to even cut people from the team because this became such a costly investment. So very, very negative situation in terms of his past experience with the vendor.

Wow. Wonderful. Awesome.

Yeah.

So in that context, for this situation, Alexine, what action do you want this specific person to take?

Yeah, so I think for this specific situation, the action that I would want him to take is to really gain trust and faith in us and decide that we are a vendor worth partnering with, that we're someone that he would feel comfortable moving forward with and recommending internally. And, I mean, the very specific action, though, that we want to take from here is getting more of his leadership team involved in a Secondary demo. So more of a. A secondary demo that's not more of a deep dive, like maybe more surface level, but more eyeballs on the solution, if that makes sense.

Okay, it does make sense. And I'll have you consider that gaining trust is an outcome from actions you take. But you pointed to the actions you want that person to take, which is you want them to get six people in a room in front of you and to be confident in doing so.

Yeah.

Is that fair to say?

Yes, very fair to say.

And it's clear to me for them to do that, you're going to have to address the fact that they showing up not trusting you or anyone because boy, have I been burnt. So what do they care about? I think you've already pointed to that, but anything else you want to say about that?

Yeah, I think for this person, what they care about most is their professional reputation and making the right business decision decisions for their organization so that they can be seen as really this trusted advisor internally. So I think it's almost what they care about most is maybe like, I don't know the correct terminology for this, but like reputational realignment. I don't know, there's probably a better term there.

They care about preserving their hard earned reputation capital and not having you burn it down in flames in a single meeting.

Yes.

Great. Given that. So they care about preserving reputational capital. You want them to keep that, in fact perhaps enhance it through the act of getting six or seven people in the room. What impact do you have to speak to? Do you have to show that you can deliver for this person? And now, Alexei, I'm going to challenge you, say nothing about your product.

So I might have. So when I wrote this down for my impact, I did it more along the lines of wanting to again realign his professional reputation internally and reset him as more of a trusted advisor role within the company. So I'm not sure if that's kind of the correct impact, but I guess trying to think something more direct. I think we can't talk about solutions, so.

Yeah, and I think you've got it. And it's not unusual that the care part and the impact part are very much aligned. Of course they are. And I think you've hit the nail on the head. If someone cares about protecting their reputation capital, the impact that you should be thinking about is how might I not only protect, but enhance it. Oh, by the way, we have a product and it might do some of that for you, but this is more about what one human can do for Another. So now you've got all these building blocks. Let's go to the hard part. From what you know about the story types that are available. Success stories or failure stories, or legends stories, or other types of stories, Fun and origin stories. What type of story do you think you want here?

I guess if it was me, I would go with a failure story just to kind of level set and say, you know, hey, we have clients that have gone through a similar instance. They were burned by other vendors in our space. We understand, here's a scenario that we went through with them and here's the impact that their team took in that way. If we do have a broader audience on that next call, we're kind of level setting like, hey, this is not like we're kind of taking the heat off of this person who's probably been intaking that for so long. And then we're transforming that failure story and bringing it into something more forward thinking. Like here's what this organization did in order to take this failure and make it into a success. They took their learnings, you know, whatever. So I guess for me, I would go the failure route.

Yeah, that's an option. I think there are two good options for the scenario you're talking about. One is a failure story. And if you choose that, I would have you consider that the failure is owned by you rather than the other customer. Because if you say, boy, you know, I feel you, Eric. I've got another customer who was in a very similar situation and they failed too, just like you're worried about. And then we fixed up the mess. If I'm Eric, I'm thinking, oh boy, this is not the partnership for me. I want to avoid that failure. So if I chose failure, I might say Eric. And I hope that's not his real name. I would say Eric. You know, two years ago I had a very similar situation to this and my customer was concerned about issue X, Y and Z and asked me this request. They asked me to do X and I said yes. And the consequence of that was a spectacular failure. And you add in some details about that. Who failed me. And Eric, what I learned is I should never again take that action or do that thing. Or Eric, what I learned is if at any point my behavior or my choices put my customers reputation at risk, it'll be the last day I ever speak to them. And what you can count on me for is. And you just surface your intense commitment to avoid failure for him. So I love your choice of a failure story. And another option you might Consider is a legend story where I had another customer. Now, the hero is the person in this customer. The care part is they had similar concerns. Oh, I'm interested. Tell me more. The action part is what you want Eric to do, which is they went and got other people in the room, and then what they found was they were the living legend. As a result, because everyone loved it, we implemented the software. There were bubbles and stars and fireworks, and it was great. But again, you're not the hero. Someone else is the hero so that Eric can see themselves in that light. So both are great choices. So let's go with your failure story. Do you have Alexine, a story that comes to mind that's somewhat similar to the situation that your customer or prospect is facing right now?

Yeah. Yes, we have. So, you know, mind you, I'm like a month in here, so I'm still gathering some cuts.

Right.

Stories. But we definitely have clients to date who have left other technologies that they signed on with because they weren't efficient enough. There were issues. It caused more headaches than good for the team. So there's certainly examples to pull from. So I think I don't have, like, a specific client off the top of my head, but I. For his specific scenario. But, yeah, there's definitely clients that we could choose from that would have similar instances.

Yeah. And this is the point in the sales cycle when you do exactly what you just pointed to. You say, hang on, I don't quite have the right story here. Perhaps maybe let me go and look in my story library. Or if that fails, I'm a month in here. Let me go and talk to Elizabeth down the hall or on the other side of a zoom. I wonder if she's had a story similar to this that can be useful. So you pick a story and it has. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be close enough to adapt. And then you ask yourself, given that Harry Potter is seven volumes deep and thousands of pages, and there's lots of story within story within story and lots of heroes to choose and angles to take, how do I choose the one part of that whole long story that can get this customer to care right away? And so I might choose Acme Company, who had a very similar person to Eric as one of the stakeholders. And I'll situate Eric in that story by putting him right into how that stakeholder was fearful about what might come as they change from one piece of tech to another. And you do the same with the action and the impact. This is not Lying. I want to make that very clear because some people have heard me say this, and they're like, hang on, Andrew, you're just making up stories. And my response is, please never, ever lie to a customer. However, stories have many, many bits and pieces. No one has enough time for you to tell the whole thing. The art of storytelling is to choose the pieces that speak to your customer. So this is more about choosing what to say and what not to say. You might respond, in turn, you're lying by omission. And if you feel like there's any of that, like there's something that my customer really should know, put that back in. Because the worst thing you want to do, Alexin, is damage your wonderful reputation capital. But I hope you can see that there is our choices we can make about what we say, how we say it, and the context in which we put it. So my challenge to you would be before the end of the day or before your next meeting is go and find the story and see how you might retell it. And questions to ask yourself. Is, the story that I just got from Elizabeth on this last zoom was about Michelle, who is the cfo, But I wonder if there was a character similar to Eric in there. Let me dig a little bit more deeply until you find that similar context and keep exploring the story. And what you will find over time is in almost every story, there's a character, there's a situation, there's a set of challenges, there's a moral that's a match for what your customers care about, the actions you want them to take, and the impact that it'll have if they do. So, lexing, thanks for being a sport in doing this. I think what you've shown everyone so well is it takes some discipline to get really crisp about these answers, and then you have the material with which to do it. And the truth is, the work is still ahead of you. We didn't get quite there today because we only have a couple of minutes, but I hope you have now enough to go and find that other story and adopt it and adapt it to the specific purpose to which you need it to apply.

Thank you so much. This is great. I have a meeting next week, so I am excited to use this.

Awesome.

Please come back on the 25th of September and tell us how it went.

Deal.

Okay, team. For everyone else, what you've now seen so ably demonstrated is the thought process behind this, not the actual work that's to come. So here's the exercise we'd like you to take on for yourselves is uncover a customer story from someone else. Be deliberate about this. Don't use your own one, because what you'll be flexing here is the muscle of going and taking a story that's that big and discovering all of what surrounds it. So you now have more choices, more material with which to craft your particular story. So adopt that story as if it's your own. How do you do that? We're of the view that a story you hear once remains someone else's story. A story you retell 10 times is your story. A story that you practice 10 times with feedback from a coach who knows what excellence looks like. A story that you completely own and no one will recognize it as anything but your authentic story. Even if you're saying my colleague Alexei had a customer, even if you are telling it from a third person point of view, it will feel like to your customer, your own story. I have evidence every movie you ever watched was someone else telling someone else's story and it sucked you right into that plot. You were right in the story along with the characters. So take that story. Adopt it as if it's your own. How? Practice. Tell it typically 10 times, typically with feedback from a coach. And then think about a particular customer you've got coming up, the situation they're in and those three questions. What do they care about? What action do I want them to take and what impact will it have for them? And what they care about if they do so. With those three answers, you can adopt the story to fit a particular customer, a particular problem, even though the story might not sound even recognizable compared to the original. If you do that, what I'd like you to then do is take it out for a spin and see what that feels like. What do I mean by that? Deliver this adopted and adapted story to a manager in your company, or if you're a manager, to appear, or if you're a seller or an AE or a bdr. Get on a zoom with a couple of your colleagues and have a story jam. It's a lot of fun doing exactly that. My video stopped for a moment. I'm back. And then I hope you're all familiar. If you've been with us before about how to get, listen to and put into practice two by two feedback. A quick reminder for you. If Alexine and I were practicing this on Sunday in advance of her Monday meeting and she landed the story on me afterwards, I would say to her, alexine, what's one thing you did well? And she would reflect and give me an answer. I'd say yes, because I'm helping her flex the muscle of self reflection. And then I'd share my one did well with her. And because she knows that feedback is a gift, should say thank you. And in so doing she would build her confidence such that when she walks into that next meeting, she's ready to roll. And then we had changed gears and I would say, Alexine, what's one thing you think you could do differently next time? She'd self reflect and say, you know, next time I tell the story, maybe I'll slow down a bit and put a bit of a pause in there for dramatic impact. Yes, Alexi, and exactly. And here's one thing I think you should do. Maybe retell that story not as a failure story, but as a legend story because it is quite easy to switch the one to the other. And if she likes that feedback, well either way she should say thank you because feedback is a gift. If she takes that feedback, it may build her competence and she's ready to roll. Full of both confidence and competence. Why does that matter? Because although experience is necessary and useful, mere experience is the enemy of mastery. Whereas telling the right story adopted and adapted for this customer so that they feel like we care about what they care about so that they can see what actions to take to get the impact that they really care about. That, my friends, is the genesis of genius. Thank you for joining us today. We have but a couple of minutes before we end. Matt, I would love to hand it back to you so that we can either close it up or take ta. If there are maybe just one question before we end.

I do I have a question in the chat if that's all right, or the Q and A.

Sure, let's do one question, then we'll give it back to our fearless leader.

Perfect. What are some of your favorite storytelling books, either that tell an incredible story or help with building your own?

Well, I love Craig Waltman's book what's yous Story? I'm also a big fan of all of the work by Duarte, Nancy Duarte, on her methods for telling stories and constructing them. Beautiful books, well illustrated, easy to follow along and perhaps tia, one of the things we can do next time is put a reading list into the chat for those who come back.

Great idea. I will make a note of that right now.

The other thing I recommend is not only read books on stories, but watch fantastic storytellers. And again, I'll say if you ever want to see someone who in my opinion is perhaps the Best storyteller I've ever seen in action. Come back and witness the phenomenal and outrageous Mickey Williams next time.

Yeah, she's not one to be missed. She's absolutely incredible.

Matt, back to you.

Perfect. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Tia. And just putting a, I guess sort of an exclamation point on, on your, on your guidance about practice. You know, one of the things that I remember, anybody that was here during the last session and heard Craig Wortman's fantastic story or the session before that and heard Tia tell her story about her sister's wedding, one of the things that if you were here, you probably in retrospect is that each time after telling their specific stories, you heard Andrew chime in with something to the effect of I've heard you tell this story 10 times, 12 times, 15 times. So again, just furthering Andrew's point, practice does make perfect. It's a cliche for a reason, because it's true. But you did set a really high bar for the next session. I mean, after coming off of Tia's story and Craig's story, I'm confident that the next storyteller is not going to be one that anybody wants to miss. So that's.

Bring tissues.

Okay, well, I just went to Costco, so I mean I'm going to be all stocked up. That's fantastic. We're right of time right now. Thank you again everyone for joining us today. Thank you to our partners, Showpad, Vidyard and Lessonly. And of course as a reminder, everyone's going to receive a follow up email from me with a recording of this session along with some materials. And because we can't help ourselves, another brief video from Andrew talking about what we learned today and just as importantly, how we could prepare for our next and final session on September 25th. So thank you everyone again. Thank you Andrew and Tia and have a fantastic weekend.

Thanks everyone.