Fridays Are For Closers Season 2, Episode 1 - Creating A Moving Story

So thank you everyone. Welcome. My name is Matt Green. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer of Sales assembly here in Chicago. Really excited to kick off season two of Fridays or Foreclosers and we're going to get right into it just after a brief introduction for those of you that might not be too familiar with Sales assembly or a collaborative based learning platform in a community for as of today, over 135 of the country's fastest growing B2B technology companies. We provide a whole host of resources and learning and development opportunities for pretty much everybody up and down the revenue organization. But today we're here to welcome Andrew Sykes who's going to be our host for this entire season of Fridays Are for Closers. And the overarching theme of this season is going to be around storytelling. And we all know that storytelling is sales professionals and is an integral part of our day to day activity. Being able to forge an emotional connection between us and a prospect, someone that we're having a conversation with is critical to making sure that they get some sort of emotional buy in into the solution that we're looking to provide. And something like this is hard enough in normal circumstances, but given today in the virtual environment that we're going to be living in for an extended period of time, having the skills mastered around storytelling is ever more important. And that's why we have Andrew Sykes here leading not only today's session, but as I mentioned, this entire five session series on the topic of storytelling. So I'm going to introduce Andrew really quickly and turn it over to him. For those of you who aren't familiar, Andrew is part of the Kellogg Sales Institute and offers an MBA course on entrepreneurial Selling at the Kellogg School of Management. He grew up in South Africa and later qualified as the youngest actuary at the time and built one of that country's largest healthcare consulting businesses. He's lived, worked and run businesses on six different continents and has been a salesperson for 25 years. And since 2007 he's been based here in Chicago where he founded Habits at Work. He and his team help sales teams to activate the 11 high impact habits to create maximum magnetic world class salespeople. And before I turn it over to him, I do just want to thank our partners that made this series possible. Showpad Vidyard and lessonly. So with that said Andrew, I will turn it over to you.

Thank you my friend. And what Matt didn't tell you is that as a young actuary I had learned not the first thing about selling. So in A triumph of courage over sense. I began my first business at age 21. I recruited a board of directors. I had a product I was super excited to get out there and sell. And I convinced my chairman at the time, who is one of the most natural salespeople you've ever seen in your life, to allow me to present to his biggest client. And over the course of an hour, I gave them chapter and verse about the product I was trying to sell. I had, and this will date me, a series of overhead slides that you put on an overhead projector. And for an hour, I just enthralled those people. Or at least that's what I thought. Shortly afterwards, when he left the meeting and we got into the car, I asked my chairman and mentor and friend, Ian, how did I do? His response consisted of firstly grabbing the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles went white. And when he found the space and ability to speak, he started to scream at me about my performance. And at the end of it, because I don't remember what he said, it was so intimidating, apart from some new words that I've used from time to time that I won't repeat here, he said, andrew, if you ever show up to a sales meeting like that again, it'll be the last time you accompany me. And I was absolutely distraught. My confidence was shattered. I was crestfallen and wondered whether or not I even ever wanted to learn the art of selling. But I decided that day that there must be something magical about amazing people who can show up and connect with other human beings, convince them to buy their products, and do so in a way that leaves people feeling just wonderful about the experience. And that's been my mission for the last 30 years, is to really study how humans think, feel and act, how to connect and build deep and lasting relationships with people, and perhaps most importantly, how to help somebody change their mind and in the context of sales, change their mind so that they would do a deal with us. And along the way, I've learned from wonderful, inspiring people like my friend and colleague, Craig Wartman, who founded the Kellogg Sales Institute. Like my predecessor in this series, in series one, Todd Capone, and many other wonderful people, I see names on this call who are among that list. And what I now have the privilege of doing is sharing the art, the science, and the research around high performance selling with wonderful people like you. And in particular, the beautiful art of a story told well. Now, today we're in a virtual environment, and having this kind of conversation is a great opportunity, given that we don't have many alternatives, but it's also a difficult medium in which to maintain high engagement. And so I'm pleased to be joined by my friend and colleague and a co founder at Habits at Work, Tia Pappas. Tia is herself a wonderful storyteller. She is also a storytelling coach, including my own coach, and coaches many other professionals in the art, science and craft of storytelling. But she has a particular role to play for us today, which is to keep the chat alive. So as we're going through, I encourage you to ask questions, make comments, have a conversation in the chat. Tia will answer as many, if not all of your questions. She knows this work better than I do. And so there will be two conversations going today, the one between me and you, which will somewhat largely consist of me yelling at my screen and you. In turn, we will have the opportunity a little later today to have some interaction with you. But so that you're brought in and you're part of this conversation, I highly encourage you to be in the chat and if you haven't found it yet, please do so now. Find it at the bottom of your screen, send a little hi, how are you or tell us where you're from or just say a quick hello to Tia so that we can get ready to do the work that we have to do today. So what is that work? Well, today we're going to be focusing on this idea of how to create a moving story. And the origin of our time together today is that this year has introduced a number of challenges for businesses and and Sales assembly is included in one of those organizations that has been facing some really big challenges. They too have had to make some quick decisions, lots of pivots in their business model and some incredibly tough choices. Their vision and their business was built around this idea of community, of the necessary role that that plays in connecting people in tech sales, in in allowing us to share ideas and to collaborate and learn from one another. But in mid March, when the lockdown happened, this big confronting question arose which is how do you continue to build and sustain this tight knit community that we've all come to love, that Sales assembly is for us and that they're known for. And how do you do that? During a global pandemic with social distancing, that difficult question, like so many difficult times, bred and breathes imaginative ideas. And one of those ideas was to create a new series open to all sellers and people in customer success and enablement that focuses on what Sales assembly felt to be the most relevant concepts facing B2B salespeople right now. People need answers today to help them in their role as sellers. And the sales assembly team has always been 100% committed to delivering for all of us as members and the entire B2B community. And this is How Fridays Are Foreclosures was born. Today we get to kick off season two, and I'm honored to be your host for that. On the power of storytelling in sales and leadership. I know that I am filling or attempting to fill the enormous footprint created by Tod Capone, who led series one or season one. In fact, Sales assembly's been extraordinarily nimble in their ability to pivot and react and to come up with these inventive creations inspired by what's been so for all of us during this difficult time. But it's also inspired a much bigger move that many of you are aware of. And it's testament to how many people from around the world we have on this call today. And that is a choice to take Sales assembly national, something that we've been asking Matt and Jeff and the team to do for a while. They saw this amazing opportunity to go big or go home, even when everyone else was trying to contract their business. As the old saying goes, if necessity is the mother of invention, then at least one silver lining from these dark Covid times is that the sales assembly magic is now available to sellers and leaders across the entire nation. Next stop and watch this space world domination. So we at habits at work and the sponsors of today that Nat has already mentioned, we're here today because of the extraordinary effort and the sales assembly team who have taken that effort. And also because each and every one of you is so totally committed to your own personal growth, to developing your success for your customers, for your team and for your company. And so I thought it was important to start with a story of success because what we'll be doing today together is crafting your own story of success. A customer with whom you've worked, who's done amazing things, who's overcome a problem, and whose story you can use to guide other prospects or customers to take similar moves in an attempt to not only change their mind, but to have them enjoy the same success as other successes that you've all had before. So a little warning. The work that we'll be doing today and one of the promises that I give you is by the time we leave today, you should have at least one new customer success story loaded, ready to go to practice on, polish and put into your story library for when we meet next time. So let's be a little bit more specific about exactly what it is that we're doing today and what this whole season looks like. Today is about how to create a moving story. When we meet in two weeks time, we'll take a story that we built and look at the craft of actually delivering a story. The spoken word, the conversation mastery that brings emotion, intrigue and interest to a story. And then we'll move on to this idea of having a story library from which you can pull the right story at the right time for the right reason for the right customer. And if you have that kind of story library as an asset, as a seller, you will be able to go to any sales meeting fully prepared to change some customers mind. It may take a little work and in part four or episode four, we'll be looking at how to take existing stories that you have in your story library or that you've heard from anyone else and make them match the purpose for which you intend them to be used. So we'll look at how to adopt and adapt stories to be purpose fit. And last but not least, we'll bring our first or our last episode of season two to a close. Looking at my favorite story, Our origin stories and I shared with you one version of my origin story as I introduced myself today. But that they are the opportunity to do something more imaginative than simply recite your resume. When someone says why don't we go around the room and all introduce ourselves? Origin stories are an opportunity to own that first impression that people will make of you in somewhere between seven seconds and two minutes. To establish yourself humbly as someone with credibility, passion, who can be trusted to guide your customers on a journey. So specifically, the work of today is intended to achieve three things. Number one is to explore this problem statement that we're focused on today of how might we most effectively change a customer's mind. Recognizing that when we start a conversation with a customer, more often than not they're not saying I've done my research, your product is a match. Where do I sign? If that were so, we would all be mere order takers. There is a job to be done in sales which is to change our customers minds such that what they were already planning to do or planning not to do, taking no action at all becomes a powerful choice that they feel was made by themselves to pursue a relationship with us. And in order to do that, we'll be exploring the 4C story structure, especially just one of many, but it's one that we like to use at habits at work. And at Kellogg, because it very simply allows us to take great case studies, great facts and figures about successes we've had and put them into a narrative arc that releases the emotion that does the work for us in stories. And you'll have a little bit of a chance to practice what you do today, or at least to plan your practice between now and the next two weeks. Here's why. Everything we do in the next 40 minutes or so will have absolutely no impact on your life unless you do something with the work we do together today. And specifically, you take whatever you may learn from myself or Tia or from each other in the chat and you put it into practice in some tangible form. You polish the story that you've come up with today. So what I promise that you will learn leave with today is knowledge about how to create a moving story. But much more importantly, with at least one success story in the bag, maybe not perfect, but on the way there. And a plan for how you might practice over the next two weeks to get input from a coach who knows what excellence looks like. And it can give you the right kind of performance feedback so that you can polish your story and be one of those people that just enthralls an audience and specifically a customer. If you're aligned with our purpose and benefit for today, please go to the chat and say yes or give me a thumbs up or 100% so that we can check that we're in the same place ready to do the right thing here. Thank you. Ryan, Jen, Lexine, others okay, the chat is absolutely working, so let's get to work. Here is the question that is the one with which I am obsessed and which is the focus of our time together today. How might we change the customer's mind? But in order to do that, I would like you first to reflect on your experience not as a seller, but those situations when you're a customer or maybe just a human being in life, in conversation with someone else who has very different views from you. So let's start with some of the more triggering ideas. Everyone on this call has some kind of religious belief. You may be a non believer, an atheist or an agnostic. You might be Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or Protestant or any flavor and variety of religious persuasion. And if that's true, imagine yourself in a conversation where someone is trying to convince you that their religion is better or that none is better if you're religious or vice versa. What would they have to do? What would they have to show you? How would they have to go about making the case for you to say, huh, this thing I've believed Since I was 2 or 3 years old, I am suddenly completely changed. I'm going to give up on that, believe something new and act in accordance with that similar scenario. This weekend. You're with family, you are a staunch Republican or Democrat or independent, and, and your family, to your eternal frustration, is on the other side of the political divide. What would they have to do this Sunday over a barbecue or whatever, your family's pleasure is to convince you to give up on your view, change sides. What evidence must they produce? How would they have to do it? And for most of you, you're probably rolling your eyes thinking there is nothing that could persuade me to change my mind around this issue, if not the first one. And yet we expect customers to come to a conversation and in a couple of minutes, maybe a half an hour, maybe two or three meetings, to completely change their mind. As if they arrive at most sales meetings with an open slate or a blank slate with a clean mind that's ready to be filled by the wonderful facts and figures and stories of success that we have to share, or perhaps the motivation and frills and benefits of our product. It's just not reality. Customers are like you, intelligent people who have been grappling with their problems for some time. They have a strongly held view already on how best to solve their problem. They have a view on what kinds of vendors would be a great partner and with whom they should work. So there is a lot of work to be done to think about how might we change a customer's mind, a human being's mind who has strongly held opinions about things. And I think you will have probably come to the conclusion that for me to change a strongly held belief, I'm going to need a lot of evidence. I'm going to have to have someone like the Missourians would say, show me, prove to me convincingly that this new view is the correct view, to prove to me beyond the shadow of a doubt, a greater standard of evidence than we might expect in a court of law that my prior held beliefs are incorrect. And if you are of the view that as a human being you need facts and figures to convince you, you're absolutely right. But here's the problem. Facts and figures that are in opposition to something we already believe land for us as risky, as dangerous because they're a threat to our beliefs. And we value our beliefs. We hold on to them, we love them. And so when someone shares with you facts, we have an incredible art as human Beings an incredible knack of ignoring them, of dismissing them, of saying, yes, but, or I hear your fact, but how I feel is differently. And so we choose our gut over facts and figures all the time. And that, too, is a completely human reaction. So now we have two problem statements. How might we change someone's mind? And we know that facts and figures can do that job. But as soon as we try and share our facts and figures, people put up a wall. They defend themselves. They deflect, they retell, they rationalize why our facts are not really facts. They're fake facts or opinions rather than hard evidence. And in a world of media and this flood of information coming to us, we don't often get the opportunity to spend two or three days with someone giving them all the facts they need to use to change their minds. So how might we successfully help people, people and customers to change their minds, knowing that we need facts and figures in an argument, but that those things will be difficult to penetrate the minds of our customers? And the answer, I believe, lies in telling stories. That's why we're running this series. And that. That much is probably obvious to you, that that would be my answer. But it also lies in a different story from a different time. And that's the story of the Trojan Horse. That comes from ancient Greek history, when the Greeks had held siege to the Trojans for more than a decade, Unable to penetrate the castle walls despite bringing their fiercest soldiers, cutting off supplies, doing all they could for a decade. And eventually, just before giving up, they decided on a new and cunning strategy, which was to build this amazing Trojan horse, to present it a gift at the gates to the castle of the Trojans. And once they did that, they got in their boats and they visibly sailed away. And so it appears the end of the story was reached. But the Trojans, seeing that the Greeks were leaving, assumed that they had given up, assumed that this was a peace offering. And curious about why there was this magnificent horse in front of them, they slowly but cautiously opened the gates, accepted in this wonderful, apparent gift. And you know how the story ends. In the dead of night, the soldiers were released from this horse, including Odysseus. They opened the gates. The Greeks had returned in the dead of night in their ships, and they completed their mission, which was ending the siege of Troy, winning that war in victorious style. What has this got to do with storytelling? Well, the Trojan Horse is the vehicle that carried the soldiers inside of Troy to do their damage. In the same way, a story is a vehicle that carries facts and Figures from one human brain into another, safely penetrating these defenses that humans have to what are otherwise dangerous looking facts and figures. Therefore, a story is like a gift presented at the gates to the castle of your customer's mind. And as such, seeing that wonderful gift, being addicted to stories as we all are from age 4 to age 104, we let those stories in and once inside, they release facts and figures. And that's how we change a human mind. If you too agree that stories are like a vehicle, say so in the chat. Express your agreement or disagreement. Opt in or opt out as we say. Craig's got a raised hand. Thank you for doing that. I'm hoping that Tia is answering all your questions. Tia, at any point, if you want to raise any questions to answer, please just interrupt me. That's what I'd like to. Thank you. What I'd like to now do is talk about, well, if this is true, how do we construct these magical Trojan horses we call stories? And today we're going to look at a structure that will help us to do that. I'm going to ask you to actually do that work with me on one particular story. So as I'm explaining the mechanics, I would like you to have in mind a customer with whom you have worked in the past who had a challenging problem that through the conversation they had with you was able to be solved using your product or your service. And it's one of those customers that you'd love to talk to everyone else about. We are together going to construct what we call a success story. That's a story in which we guide today's customer to take a set of actions inspired by what another customer, at another time, perhaps in another industry, took to get the same results that this customer we're talking today is hoping to achieve. And in that way give the man at a distance Trojan horse story to consider that will safely be consumed by them in their in our attempt to change their mind versus beating them over the head with facts and figures and our product features and benefits. And to do that, we're going to use what I promised at the beginning is a structure for telling stories. Because although you may be familiar with Joseph Campbell's multiple step heroes, journey, structure or others, all of which are perfectly valid, what we found is business stories need to be pretty concise. And to do that they have at least four essential elements that we call context, conflict, climax and closure. So let's look at what these things are, how we put them together, and how they allow us to create moving story context is setting the scene. It's what gets someone into a story in record time. It's designed to pull someone in right away. You might say, in the Trojan horse story, I could have opened with there was a horse standing outside the castle of the Trojans. And immediately you would have a picture of the scene. Context should be brief, but clarifying. And if you've ever experienced someone whose stories just ramble on, it's usually because they spend a lot of time in context. It's a very brief scene setting, such that you can get to the piece of a story that makes a story a story. Rather than just mere conversation. Consider that when you're at a restaurant, if you remember those days when we were out and about with human beings and there's lots of noise because people are talking at the top of their voices, and at some point you hear just a tiny little fragment of your favorite song, and it penetrates. That noise goes through your ear, right into your brain, and you suddenly have a memory of spring break 19 something or 2000 and something. What makes music penetrate through noise in such a powerful way? The answer is music has structure that has it stand out from mere noise. And the same is true of stories. They stand out from conversation, from dialogue, because they have structure. And if there is one defining part of that structure, it is that there is no story unless there is a conflict. A conflict is that part of a story where you leaning in and you're wondering what's going to happen next, what might go wrong here, what might go right? And you're intrigued, you're fascinated. When we construct stories, we start there because without a conflict moment, there is no story. And the emotion around that might be thrilling, it might be anticipatory, it might be fear, or it might be joy. The way that that conflict is resolved is a mirror for a change in emotion that will happen in the listener of your stories. And this is why stories move people into action. Because we know human beings. Although we say we make decisions by weighing the pros and cons, by looking at facts and figures, in reality, all decisions are made emotionally, rationalized to ourselves after the fact. With facts and figures, does that mean that you're just going to be completely swayed by someone's stories? And you'll never consider facts and figures? No, of course not. See, stories carry both emotion and facts and figures, the two things we need as human beings to change our mind. So with a conflict in place, we can then do the fun part of a story, which is the clear high point, the climax, the Resolution to the story in which we answer the question, what will happen next? By telling our customers, this is what happened, this is how it was done. And most importantly, here's why you should care in the end. Because there was some big impact or result that was generated. And that's what the closure of a story is all about. It points the way to future action. And inside, the closure is usually where we include our call to action. The so what? Why did we tell you the story? Because as obvious as it may be to you why you're telling a story, you'll remember when we were kids, hearing the stories from our parents or teachers, there was always that moral of the story at the end. Customers sometimes need you to put that little connective tissue in there. The so what? Of why you've told a story? So this story arc gives you the pieces, but if you think about, we're here to tell stories that are not fables for kids or stories on Netflix, but business stories. And so we need to think about the four pieces and how they might show up in a business context. So in the example of the Trojan horse, context might be the horses in front of the gate. The conflict might be the curiosity. The Trojans wondering, is it a gift? Is it a ploy? Why is it there? They were so intrigued, they couldn't resist that curiosity. Just like listeners to a story that they accepted it in. That's the emotional change in the story. Because we know what acceptance led to was the soldiers doing their work and ending the ten year siege. The same elements are true in a business story. But we need to look now at the business arc that may make this up. So again, a reminder, I hope you have customer in mind whose story you would like to capture, polish and have ready to share elsewhere. So as you're doing so, and as I'm going through the business arc, I'd like you to think of your own words, your own answers to the questions I'll be raising. See, the business arc really talks about the mechanics of the story, the facts and figures that you want to be in there that are really relevant. They don't make the story, but they are the Lego blocks from which a story can be constructed, told as we'll look at next time in a way that brings the emotion to life. So context is the point where we give a little bit of relevant background that sets the scene. So I may say if I was talking to a competitor, anyone was bold enough to try and compete with sales assembly, and I wanted to guide them about how to deal With Covid's reaction, I may say this reminds me of sales assembly in March 15. They were totally confronted by how to create community during a pandemic. And that gets you straight into the story. The point of context is to help people understand why they should care about the story you're about to tell. So the context we want to tell to customer A about or by using a story from customer B should be a context that's very familiar to them, that they recognize that maybe even hints at a problem they're trying to solve that Customer B also was facing. And then we really need to bring that problem to life. So with setting the scene, you have 15 seconds to maybe two minutes to set context before people will start to get bored. And unless and until you can give them that what happened next feeling. And that's what the point of conflict is all about. This is when we talk about the business problem. Customer B was facing this challenge. And you tell it in a way that brings to life the tension or the missed or potential opportunities, maybe the mission they were trying to accomplish. And it's this part of the story where we want to usually shorten our sentences to create, dare I say, a little bit of drama or at least a little bit of tension. But of course, the purpose of a success story is to change a customer's mind about what they were planning to do or how they were planning to do it, ideally in a way that has them conclude that the best way to solve their problem is, is to work with us. So how do we illustrate that without becoming or sounding arrogant and pushy? One way we can do is to say, you know, you too have the same problem. And boy, do we have a product to help. Let me show you. I'll give you a demo. Here are our features and benefits. And today we have a discount because we're three days away from the end of quarter. And that will create a hands up positioning by customers, a resistance because they feel like they're about to be sold. What can we do instead? Carry on with the story. And what I mean by that is now lead them to this aha moment that customer B had the ideas or the concepts that they came up with, maybe the business model adaption they had, maybe even to demonstrate lightly what customer B did, the insight they had, the evidence that you have that they took a certain number of steps to achieve their mission. This might be a story in which you talk about how we helped a customer to succeed, bringing to life what's unique and different about your product, not better than anyone else but the uniqueness of your product. We call this the part of the story when we talk about action. What did Customer B specifically do? How did they specifically do it? And we're doing this in a very safe way because for customer A, the customer in front of us right now, we don't want to say, you should do this. We recommend this. Here's what will work for you. Because as human beings, we hate being told what to do by telling them. What Customer B did is a safe way of them watching someone else in action, choosing for themselves whether they think those actions might be a fit for them. Again, like the Trojan horse, a safe gift that they can accept into their brain filled with facts and figures, or in this case, actions that you might want them to take. It's at this point, though, that you need to be very, very careful about your wording. Why? Because the hero of a success story is your customer B. It's not you. It's not your product. Your role in that story might be like Yoda in Star Wars. You were the guide. You were the facilitator, you were the mentor. But you're not the hero of these stories because you're wanting to send the message to your new customer, your prospect, that you too can be the legend, the hero, the owner of this success, with my tiny little part being your guide, your product provider, your trusted advisor. And the last part of the story is, of course, then why you should even care to follow Customer B's lead?

Why?

Well, because they got a result. They had some amazing impact. They had an amazing roi, or they changed their business model, or they suddenly cut massive expenses. You know what your product is intended to do. You know there are some promises behind your product. This is the part of the story when you bring those promises to life. Not as a, I promise you we can do this, but as a, this is what my customer enjoyed. This is what they got. This is what they saw. And inside that, if it's not explicitly obvious, you might have to actually call them into action by saying something like, just like, customer B got this amazing role, this amazing result. I'm confident you too could do that. If we explore together how to use my SaaS product, our approach, this great insight, to achieve a similar impact for you. So I hope you've now seen the elements that make up a good story, and you may recognize these from the wonderful case studies you get from marketing. But a written story, and that's what I'm going to ask you to do in a moment, is write down these pieces doesn't necessarily make a story a moving story. For that, we need to think about the layer on top of the words that brings musicality to a story, that brings emotion to a story, such that we can literally move someone's emotions in order to spur their new actions. And to do that, we need to think about the emotional arc of a story still in these boxes of context, conflicts, climax, and closure. So in the context part, the emotion you're going for is curiosity or engagement or interest or intrigue. Just enough to have someone say, huh, I think I'm going to stay on this channel a lot. Rather than flick channels when you're surfing at night. Just notice, at the beginning of almost every miniseries, they do something that grabs you right away. In a James Bond movie, it's that amazing chase scene. In others, it's a little bit more subtle. What defines excellence in context setting is brevity, slowness, often a pause. Because nothing makes people lean in more than those quiet moments where we lower our voices, slow things down, perhaps,

or

even take a pause that has you wondering what's going on there. And we double down on that emotion as we get into the conflict part, where we're wanting to bring to life some kind of emotion that will be resolved later on. Is it always a negative emotion like anxiety, frustration, maybe even sadness or impatience? No. The conflict point can be exhilaration, especially when we're telling failure stories, a story type we'll talk about in a later session. But whatever that emotion is, think about how that needs to be contrasted against the emotion you're driving for in the next section. Climax. Again, the conflict. A time to use short sentences to introduce pauses, to put some of that emotion in your voice so that when we come to the climax, we can raise our energy levels if it's a success story, leave people feeling excited and engaged and energized. And we really bring that to life on our faces and in our voices, talking about this amazing success we had at Customer B. Our energy is infectious, as is our excitement. And that's our gift to Customer A in the story, is letting them feel like what Customer A felt when they nailed this thing, and bask in the glory of what was available. As we close the story, the impact that we have, leaving people feeling hopeful and inspired, motivated to take action, perhaps even compelled to. What a wonderful sign it would be if they said, andrew, shut up already. I need to go and take some action. That's what we're looking for out of these stories, this readiness to act so they're recruited and enrolled into your mission. So we now have two things going on. The business arc and the emotional arc. You can think about the business arc as the left to right of a story, and you can think about the emotional arc as the vertical axis. Because we really are taking emotions up and down or heightened compared to how we normally speak. Stories are an opportunity for being more self expressed than we ordinarily are in our plain business speak. So you now have a structure for constructing any story, and I'd like to go to work on that with you in constructing a specific story type. The success story. Let's have a quick pause. Tia, did anything come up in the chat that we should talk about? Any amazing insights or questions?

Scott Cohen asked if you could please repeat something, but I don't know what Scott wanted you to repeat.

The left to right. Scott, I'm looking at the chat, so as you go, feel free to add it in. What I mean by the left to right is if you look on the screen, as we read a story, we go from left to right on the page. The business arc is, you know, the statements that follow one after the other in a logical narrative structure as we go from context to conflict to climax and closure. And so just like you read a story from left to right, the business arc captures the facts and figures and sentences and statements that make up that story. But if I were to read that story to you by saying, once upon a time there was an organization called Sales assembly and they really faced a challenge when lockdown came. We don't have a story, so we need this verticality by which we mean the musicality, the melody, the emotions that make up the emotional arc, because that's what makes a story stand out. Scott, did we answer that question? The thumbs up if we did. If not, ask it again and either Tia will clarify. Thank you, Scott. So, team, time for you to do some work. And I want to just quickly recall for you the story I told as we begin today to show you what the story structure looks like. I told a story about our amazing partner, Sales Assembly. The context was what happened to them like has happened to everyone as Covid hit, and the fact that they needed to think about pivots. So we got you right into the story there. Then we spoke about the conflict, the difficult decisions that Nat and Jeff and the team were facing and this dream that they have of community looking like it was under threat, wondering, might we even survive? If so, what are the difficult decisions we have to make? How do we recreate community in this strange new world. And that's why we wanted to hear more. The climaxes, the decisions they made, the things they did, including inventing Fridays are forecloses and the way that that addressed our need. The amazing response they've had to this session and others where, dare I say, sometimes in the chat or in the community when we do breakout groups, we've gotten to know each other perhaps even better than we might have in a live face to face setting. And last but not least in my story was bringing a conclusion the so what? Why should we care what's been available for us, for you, for other customers, other businesses who might have a community challenge, what could they learn from sales assembly? So that's how you take a story and deconstruct it into these parts. But now we're going to build one from scratch. And so here's an exercise I would like you to spend the next seven or eight minutes on before we start to bring today to a close. I would like you to go to work on building your own customer success story using this 4C structure. So if you have a customer success story in mind, that's wonderful. If you have to think of one right now, that's okay too. If one's not coming to mind, play along anyway. And the way I'd recommend you doing it is to borrow someone else's story. We'll be talking in two weeks time about how to create or choose the right story at the right time for the right customer. And during that episode four, we'll be talking about the idea of a story library. Not all stories in a story library are your own personal experience. Our job is to see other stories, hear other stories, to collect them and make them our own. And so this is your opportunity to do exactly that. So although it starts with context, I would actually like you to start your story in the conflict part. So right now, write down or type onto your computers a short answer to the question what was the problem? The conflict, the tension that this customer was dealing with. I'll give you 30 seconds to a minute to do that. And if you'd like to share these snippets in the chat rather than on a pen and paper that you're using at home, feel free to do that so we can see your story being built as we go. Thank you, Ryan. Firefighters were being diagnosed with cancer caused from work exposure at a rate of one in a hundred, which is devastating considering that they work so hard. Awesome, Ryan. What a conflict moment. There's clearly something that's going to follow that, I'm intrigued, Ryan, we might have to chat offline so I get to see the end of that story. Now that you have a conflict, a problem statement, it's a lot easier to set the context. So now would like you to imagine to whom are you telling the story? Another customer, another human being whose mind you would like to change and pick a difficult customer or someone who you think you could never change their mind. Why should they care? Is the second question. And the way to do this is to ask what is the briefest possible thing I can say to set the scene? So if we're talking about Ryan's example of firefighters being diagnosed with cancer, what happened just before that, in time or in the narrative structure? This discipline of answering question number two, why should this customer care? Second allows you to create context that's really, really short. Here's why. When you listen to other people telling stories, what you'll likely find is that they are not that great at it. And the piece that makes them not great is these long, boring, context setting things. So the question I always ask is, when does the story actually start? And it's that moment just before conflict was created. So write down now a sentence or one or two that set the context, set the scene, and that would make this new customer care to listen. Alexei and I love your conflict. It could absolutely be used. Now, I hope you all have that problem point the conflict. You've set the scene in the context very, very briefly. And now the third question I'd like you to answer is, how did this customer solve their problem? And beware here you could have a 10 minute answer to this question. For the sake of our exercise, I would like you to write down one sentence only and one action only that they took. In real life, there might be five or six sentences or maybe a bunch of steps, but just for practice today, what's one thing they did to solve their problem? And please resist the temptation to say, and they bought our product. Put it in their language, in the way that they solved it, so that they sound like the hero. Viraj repeating how. The second question can be answered, why this customer should care? It's just, why do you care to watch a particular Netflix series when you're flipping through channels? Because something grabbed your attention that made you think, this might be my kind of show or my kind of episode, and you're doing the same thing for your customer, putting them literally into the story in a way that feels to them like this is familiar. This is what I would like to talk about this is a similar situation than I've been in before. Not yet talking about the problem, just placing them prior to the problem. So the next part of this is looking at what the impact is. So you've got now one sentence of how your customer solved the problem. What did they get as a result of this? What a magnificent change in their world was available. Again, for the sake of discipline, just keep that to one sentence. What was the roi? Did they get promoted? Did they land new customers? Did they build better relationships with their CEO? And with that sentence completed, it gives you now the chance to make an ask. And that ask might be made lightly, which is, do you think that a similar set of actions might serve you in the problems that you're facing? Or it may be more directly, which is, do you think you're ready to take similar steps to customer B? You'll find that language that is comfortable for you, and sometimes the best way to do it is rather than call to action, is simply to wrap the story in a bow. That moral of the story I was talking about earlier, and you might say, so what I learned from this is that when customers are facing this problem and they take those actions, what's very likely to result is this impact. Do you think the same might be available for you, or do you think that would work for your organization? And it's a chance for your customer to react to the story, to safely share with you whether they think this was a gift after all, or it hasn't yet done the job of changing their minds. Okay, team, we have got about six minutes before we close. I'm hoping that one of you might like to very quickly be brave enough, put up your hand, share your story. We've just got two or three minutes for you to do that before we need to plan our practice and close for the day. So let's see. Tia, are there any brave volunteers who might like to briefly share their story?

Anyone feel free to raise their hand in the chat. Otherwise, I will just choose someone randomly. How about Brett Young?

Oh, we've got a raised hand.

We have a raised hand in the chat. Brett, would you like to take me up on this or would you like to pass?

Brett, we're going to take you off mute so that we can hear you in a moment. We're struggling to get Brett off mute. Okay, I know time is short, so what I'm going to suggest instead of is that we just focus on how you will practice this with someone else. So in a moment, I'm going to challenge you to actually practice the story. And I know on a session like this where we've got literally hundreds of people on, it's difficult to do that. But when you share your story with someone else, please coach them in how to be a great coach for you. And what I mean by that is teach them how to give you the right kind of performance feedback. Some of you have heard me speak before. Now we use what's called a two by two feedback model, which is a way of getting input on your story. So if you have a coach, a peer, a family member, your five year old kid or your manager, share the story, tell them what you're going to do and then have them give you this kind of feedback. Feedback in which they ask you what's one thing you did well and you'll look at your story, reflect on what you think you did well and share that. And once you have evaluated yourself, you're ready to share that. Their job is simply to acknowledge your self reflection and then to share their own did well. And because feedback is a gift, your job is to say thank you. This is how you build your confidence in telling stories. But we don't only want to be confident and useless, we want to be confident and great. So how do we get good? By asking for feedback on how we can improve our stories. And the way to do that is to have your coach ask you what's one thing you think you could do differently next time to self reflect and start to build awareness of your own storytelling ability. Share that one thing, they will acknowledge it and then being a good coach, they will share their one do differently for you. And remember to say thank you. Because feedback is a gift and because that's how you will build your competence. Just one thing to do well or do to do well again or to do differently. Why not six or seven? Because human beings really struggle to go to work on more than one thing at a time. And my challenge is for you to not to practice your story once, but to practice it many times. Getting a little bit of feedback each time so you can get incrementally better as you go. So to that challenge, we've had some questions which I know Tia has debriefed or answered in the chat. I'm happy to take a few more in the minutes we'll have left over. But before I do that, here is my challenge to you is to plan your practice. So a few questions I'd like you to ask and answer and we'll put them in your chat for you. What will I Do differently as a result of what I've learned today. One thing and feel free to share in the chat as we go. How, when and with whom, I will practice. Because what's predictable is no one will do anything after today unless you make a plan in your calendar with someone else to show up and do that practice. So send your boss or a peer or your spouse or your partner or your kid a message today and set up that time. And then, last question. How might I share what I've learned with my team? Why? Because sales assembly is about growth, community, sharing what we learn so that we all rise together. And I strongly encourage you not only to create stories, to practice them, but to share the love with your team. How do you do that? I'd love you to find someone, a peer, a manager, a partner to practice telling the customer success story you've come up with today three times in the next two weeks. If you accept this challenge, please say yes in the chat in order to deliver on that challenge, teach someone how to give you two by two feedback. And Matt and the team will be sharing the presentation from today. So you've got that model there to use and to share with other people. And last but not least, I strongly recommend that you video your final story. Share it with someone on your team, share it with your manager. Why? Because stories are institutional intellectual property that walk out the door every time someone leaves or every time you win or lose a new piece of business, you don't capture that story. Imagine what would be available for your entire team if every time we won or every time we lost a new deal, we captured that story, we polished it and we shared it. So before we end, I would like you to use the last minute to give us a little bit of feedback on how we did for you today so you can practice for yourself that feedback formula. And in the chat, please share with us one thing you think we did well for you today and one thing that I can go to work on improving for when I see you back here in two weeks time. Please put that in the chat so we'll capture it all. Count on Tia, myself and the sales assembly to go to work on that feedback. It is for us an extraordinary gift. Back to you, Matt, to close our day.

Thank you Andrew. And far be it for me for to try to even follow what we just heard. So what I will do is by way of wrapping up is, you know, to Andrew's point, we are going to be meeting back here on August 7th, two weeks from today and the topic of course is how to be a great storyteller. And I'm sure that we all learned a whole host of things today. I'm sure many of us are walking away just by seeing the amount of interaction in the chat. I know many of us are walking away with a whole laundry list of learnings. I will just stress that if you've learned nothing today, it's probably that if you want to learn how to become a great storyteller, there's probably no better person to teach you than this gentleman here, Andrew Sykes. So with that said, I wanted to thank Andrew and Tia and our great partners at Habits at Work. I want to thank Showpad Vidyard and Lessonly course for making this entire series possible. And just as importantly, I want to thank all of you, the attendees, for joining us today. We look forward to having you join us throughout the entire series and as I mentioned before, we'll see you back here in two weeks. But with that said, have a fantastic rest of your Friday and a fantastic weekend. And Andrew and Tia, thank you again for everything.

Goodbye. Have a wonderful weekend.

Thanks everybody.

Bye.