The Sales Transformation Podcast

REVISITED: #73 – Transforming your company with the Strategic Narrative w/ Andy Raskin
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George: Hi everyone. George here, the editor of the Sales Transformation Podcast. This week we're revisiting an episode from the archives, and since we've been running a series on sales and marketing, I've chosen an episode that I think is relevant to both featuring Phil's chat with Andy Raskin. Andy is an expert on strategic narratives and the kind of brand storytelling that's critical to both marketing materials and sales pitch decks. I think this is a really excellent episode of the show. So whether you've heard it before or if this is your first time, I hope you enjoy it.

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Phil: Andy, it's a huge welcome, uh, to you to the Sales Transformation podcast,

Andy: Oh, thanks so much for having me on. It's an honor.

Phil: Well, it's an honor for us, and, and I know that, uh, my head of marketing Eddie is a great fan of yours and has been following your, your, your blogs over the month. So we're delighted that, uh, that we have you here now, now in person.

Um, what we tend to do, uh, with the podcast is we tend to, uh, start with your doing a short introduction of yourself, if that's okay, so that the listeners can get some sort of, uh, picture of who Andy is. And, uh, I wonder if I could ask you to just run through a little bit your background and, and also the journey that you've taken to have got to this point, uh, in time, uh, with a strategic narrative.

Andy: Uh, yeah. So I work with CEOs on what I call a strategic narrative, which, uh, I'll define as this sort of single story, uh, that we use, uh, when pitching the company to, uh, Potential customers, investors, uh, job candidates, media, pretty much everyone. Uh, and this story powers success in in sales, fundraising, marketing.

Recruiting, kind of, kind of everything. Uh, how I got started with this is a little bit of a story. So I started as a computer science major in college. I was a, a coder coming out of school and, uh, A few years after that, a friend and I had an idea for an app, and we coded a prototype thi this was like.com years.

So this was a Windows app. Uh, we coded a prototype and we started getting some users and we thought, okay, maybe this could be a business. So, We decided to pitch VCs and, uh, of the two of us, I spoke English fluently. So we decided I was the, the, the best qualified to, to write the pitch. So, uh, I wrote the pitch and we sent it to a bunch of VCs and the reaction was really bad and one of them wrote back, uh, Andy, listen, I, I rate every plan I get on a scale of one to 10, and yours is a.

And then in parentheses, he wrote, uh, worst in Case we thought maybe one was the top of his scale. Uh, no.

Phil: That's pretty shocking feedback, isn't it? Pretty shocking.

Andy: It was devastating,

Phil: It must have been.

Andy: and, and, and so devastating that I, I, I, I, I, he had, he wrote this little comment. This was, this was back when you would mail it to mail the hard copy plan to the investor, and he wrote, he sent it back and he wrote in the margin, not a compelling story.

And we were so devastated, we didn't really pay much attention to this. But few weeks later, I was walking by this Barnes and Noble, uh, bookstore and there was a sign in the window that said, for anyone who wants to tell a compelling story, so that's me, and there's an arrow to these books. And I go inside and turns out these books are about screenwriting.

And I had no idea about that subject. It was not something I had any experience with. Uh, but so I read these books and. Uh, aside from learning a lot about sort of how a screenplay structured, it was an invitation to think about a pitch as. About a movie as a pitch. Uh, you know, what is Star Wars a pitch for?

It's a, a pitch for, you know, being good to people and, you know, caring about people, trusting the force in, in Star Wars language. Uh, of course, as an entrepreneur or hopeful one, I didn't have. Uh, two hours. And I didn't have actors and, and, and special effects. So what applied to me, what didn't apply to me, w w were the, these were very difficult questions to answer and that I've been thinking about for like the last basically 25 years.

Um, but I did my best and we rewrote the plan and incorporated some of this knowledge and, and we started getting interest and we had a term. A few months later, and I think it was not, uh, not coincidental. And, and so anyway, other CEOs started hearing about this. Eventually, uh, this be, I started a practice around helping others, uh, craft a story like this.

Uh, and I've been doing that, uh, for about 10 years.

Phil: so from 25 years ago to 10 years ago, were you still in the sort of technology sort of coding, app development kind of field?

Andy: Well, Phil, you're, you're asking to get into the, uh, my career path, which is, which is, which is an incredibly difficult, uh, thing for anybody to understand, uh, let alone me. But, uh, I'll, I'll do, I'll do

Phil: Is there a light version?

Andy: It, it's so heavy and, and hard, but, uh, yeah, I'll give you the light version. So, so, I actually took a little detour for about six or seven years and was a journalist, so I got this,

this, I got so interested in this, uh, in this story structure stuff.

I started pitching articles to magazines and I started writing, and I then, I was a full-time journalist, uh, at a magazine called Business 2.0, which was part of Time Inc. It was like a sister publication to Fortune. Uh, I eventually got the bug to kind of get back and I, I worked as a product manager at Skype, uh, and it was at Skype where I started to see that this training I now had as a journalist, uh, Had some real relevance to like the, the kind of messaging of the company and, and how we talked about things.

And that led me to some marketing roles, uh, first at Skype and then, uh, later at a company called, um, Mashy, which had a, was an early platform for API management. So we were selling APIs before anybody really, you know, knew what they were, uh, was willing to bring them up in polite conversation. Uh, so it was, uh, it was hard to, you know, how, how do you tell that story?

So I started to see that a lot of this stuff. Was relevant and it was actually the c e o of Mashery who, uh, his name is, or Michaels who, who started to make that connection with me and, uh, really helped me get on the path to starting this practice.

Phil: Actually, I think that I'm so glad to ask the question because I, uh, yes. I was trying to sort of link, you know, sort of where you've come from to what you're doing now and, and the journalist. Um, kind of phase that you had, I could see was quite an important part of the journey that you've been on. You know, sort of focusing on the, I guess it, is it mainly the written word that you are, or is it also the spoken narrative?

I mean, uh, I'm not sure now where your practice takes you or, or, or whether there's a link between the.

two

Andy: Well, you know, you bring up a really interesting question, which is like in what form? Should we kind of capture this narrative so that we can tell it, you know, so that it functions across all these ways that I talked about sales, of course, marketing, uh, product, and, and then sometimes it's just gonna be someone talking and sometimes we might be able to show slides or have to tell it in paragraphs on a website And, you know, the traditional answer to this question is, let's write down some sort of like boiler plate thing that's internal in the company that no one outside ever sees. So it's some sort of internal thing. Uh, often in marketers call it like a messaging house or something where. There's like fragments of messages, like, here's our top message, here's our supporting messages here, blah, blah.

And the idea of this thing is everybody, whether they're gonna talk or write or whatever, they're gonna come back to this thing and pull messages from it. And I found that that would break down in my career in, in, in two big ways. One A lot of people didn't come back to it, especially outside of marketing, where it was often kept.

And the second thing was that often, uh, even if they did, it was hard for a lot of people to take these fragments of messages and weave them into whatever, uh, you know, talk or, or writing they were trying to do. So I thought really hard about this and experimented a lot, and I came to. the, asset that I came to that worked the best as the kind of unifying thing for the narrative was the sales deck, the sales deck, the sales pitch as the unifying thing.

Like if we can write it down, uh, in this sort of simple way that works in a sales goal, that is the thing that everybody can. use To talk to everybody, and this is a, a controversial position. I mean, most people think of the sales deck as an output of some more fundamental, I don't know, strategic thing. And I started to say, Hmm, no, the sales deck is the fundamental strategic thing.

Phil: So I, I really, um, uh, just enjoying the way this conversation is going. And I, I, there's a couple of things that, that you've prompted, sort of distant memories, actually, Andy, but there's, uh, I remember coming across, uh, a program that was quite successful in the 1980s, which, um, It was around an organization called, I think the Science of Selling.

Um, and it was, uh, really, you know, starting with product and it was sort of working at product marketing and marketing communications. And I then looked at features of the product and the advantages of the product, and then it would look at the silver bullets and, you know, what were the killer aspects of this product that.

Uh, perhaps be sold. It involved competitive analysis, all sorts of quite, you know, it's quite a big machine to run this because you were engaging sort of product marketing and eventually you were, you come up with this sort of playbook, I suppose, you know, for sales. And, uh, it was pretty impressive. It was, um, In the sense that it was highly engineered, it was very process orientated, and of course very few people got to use it properly.

You know, they got, you know, it did, it didn't get used. So the comment that you made earlier about how often these messages, um, sit somewhere in an organization and they're not used, I, I, I, I think could, could, you know, I sort of can resonate.

Andy: I think that story brings up not only, it's not only a, what I find interesting about that story, it's, it's not only a process that I find doesn't work, which is, hey, we're gonna, basically, we're gonna build this story in marketing and push it on sales. But also you said, like you said, you know, the starting point of this is like, what's our features or our magic bullet or something?

Our silver bullet, I think you called it, and. What I learned from the screenwriting books was to that, to flip it completely on its head, and the starting point is not the product. The starting point in every strategic narrative, uh, that I build with, with teams is what I call the shift in the world. So, You know, every movie starts with some big event.

So sometimes it's, you know, in, the, you know, uh, epic movies, there's often some, uh, big challenge or, something evil often shows up,

Phil: Yeah.

Andy: uh, Darth Vader or something. Uh, but it doesn't have to be an evil. So, In like a love story. It's, you know, the meet cute happens, like this big event happens and it just changes the game for the main character.

Like whatever they were doing before, like suddenly all these new, uh, it's like a new world now. And I started to see, uh, you know, starting with. Uh, Benioff at Salesforce, and I think you and I might be, uh, old enough to remember when this was, you know, when he actually came up with this. Uh, maybe a lot of listeners don't, but you know, he starts, he doesn't pitch like, Hey, you have a problem, or, you know that classic structure of you have a problem, I have a solution, and here's why it's the best.

He starts with this completely other thing, which is, Hey, software is. over Uh, and of course he software in the way he means in, in software that we're gonna own and, and operate ourselves. And there's this new world called the cloud. This is the structure I call old game, new game. So he's, defining the, world as a, shift from an old game of software to a new game of cloud.

Uh, same thing with Zuora, which is a company I've written a lot about. Uh, they say, Hey, Used to be, we'd sell things to people. Now people want to subscribe to things and get the, benefits of, of the assets without actually owning them. And these pitches are not starting out with like, Hey, you have a problem, here's our silver bullets.

They're starting out with, Hey, here's how your world has just totally changed. And, and of course now that's gonna lead into how you're gonna have to.

adapt

Phil: That's it. I mean, in both the, um, examples you've given the, the sort of, um, you know, the shift is to the sort of digital sort of cloud world. Um, but is it possible if you're not in that sort of software environment to be able to, to, uh, to create a narrative around a shift?

Andy: So far, every time I've worked with a team, we've been able to come

Phil: You've been able to do it,

Andy: good. I'll give you some other examples that are, that are different. Um, so I recently worked with a team called 360 Learning. They're, I think their headquarters are officially in France, but, uh, in New York, but they're, I think, founded in France.

And so 360 Learning tells a story about how, so they make training software, but their focus of the training software is, is all about. The company creating their, getting, getting people in the company to create their own courses and become kind of teachers. And so they talk about the shift from like top down learning where some, you know, l and d leader decides what everyone's gonna learn and like hires some outside person to create the courses to what 360 learning calls, collaborative learning and where they define it. Upskill from within, where we're gonna create where, and, and they're showing that, Hey, look, all the best organizations, if you look at like, uh, Tesla, Google, uh, you know, they're all like sort of turning their internal people into trainers and kind of expert stars and you know, that's the new way to win, uh, this kind of upskill from within.

So, you know, you can do this. It doesn't have to be about a technical shift. In fact, I think in a way. It's better if it's not. And, and, you know, transactions to subscriptions, yes, it's enabled by technical shifts, but it's not about a technical shift, uh, on the face of it.

Phil: I mean, uh, it's, it is interesting. Uh, we will go into sort of more detail. I, I, I think the sort of, um, steps of the process perhaps you might sort of look at, but so many organizations are kind of structured around, uh, product. Kind of silos where the, the p and l is driven by the, the head of that product division.

And, um, and that influences so much of, of what they do from a marketing point of view. And, and from a sales point of view, you, I would imagine that sort of con, you know, challenged, you know, with perhaps there's a, a different way, you know, to, to, to go out and sell that may not be quite so product specific, but.

Around a strategic narrative that, um, yeah, it's not, not so much about feeds and speeds and, and all of those things.

Andy: well, I wouldn't say it's not about feeds and speeds, cuz feeds and speeds are very, very important. Uh, or, you know, of course, whatever the, you know, your version of that is what I'm saying is this narrative is how we set up why these feeds and speeds matter.

Phil: Okay.

Andy: you know, the typical approach is th this, you know, Hey, you have a problem.

I have the solution. Let me tell you why it's the best solution. Uh, this is what I call the arrogant doctor. Uh, you know, you have a, you have a pain, I have a treatment. Let me tell you why it's the best treatment. Um, this, this is fine if the buyer totally understands. Sort of what's at stake here, um, which is typically like very early adopters, they kind of understand, they already know the narrative pretty much, right?

Um, the where, where it, where it, I think falls or for short, is where the significance of your advantage in speeds and feeds or features, whatever you want to call it. Is, it's not immediately obvious to everybody why that matters. And this is especially important when we're selling to large, big organizations where a lot of the people involved in the purchase are, you know, not the person who's the user.

They might be a C-level person or whatever. And we need to arm the, the, the, the, the buyer team, the, the actual user who's needing, you know, Uh, support within their company to do, to do the purchase needs champion championing to, to, to be that champion and arm them with the narrative to do that.

Phil: Yeah. So, uh, yeah, so, so interesting. So, uh, the, so you're leveraging your sort of journalistic, um, skills copied, uh, coupled with your personal experience of pictures that haven't worked but then have worked, um, in helping organizations create. Strategic narrative, which is in the form of a sales deck as you've described earlier, which will help position the organization to sort of customers that they're selling to.

Uh, have I simplified it too much or is that kind of roughly where we're at?

Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I would say not just customers though, but people we're recruiting, uh, investors that

everybody,

Phil: of, yeah, absolutely. So, um, in terms of the journey that you take people on, in terms of defining what that strategic narrative is, could you, could you talk us through what you would typically do and how, how do you get to those, I guess, few words that that describes? Everything about that company that you want to communicate.

Andy: Yeah. Well the first thing, one, one of the, my biggest learnings was that, uh, even though we're talking about the sales pitch as this kind of core narrative asset that we're gonna build, It has to be the c e o who is leading this work. And by leading I don't mean just like they signed off on the budget or, or they're gonna, you know, sign off on some result.

Literally, they are the person who is in the room with me for hours and hours. Well, these days it's on a Zoom call, uh, with me for hours and hours and hours. Uh, crafting this story, this pitch, refining it. Uh, of course, We also want though, a, a, a strong leadership team buy-in. So I always ask the CEO e to name a small team of leaders, typically from marketing, sales, obviously, uh, product.

Uh, sometimes there's like a co-founder or COO kind of person. Basically have them create a small team that is going to guide the work. So it's. It's a back and forth of the c e o and I building, uh, like drafts, bringing it to the team. They tell us they hate it, usually the first time that we bring it to the team.

So, so I actually do a, a kickoff session where I, I, I go through the pieces of the strategic narrative and I can go through them with you if you want. Um, we go through sort of these like five pieces roughly, and uh, and I ask for

Phil: you, could you talk us through the

Andy: I, I will, I

Phil: five Oh, you will do.

Andy: but I, I ask the, the team for like, okay, can you give me, uh, you know, your, what do you think we should say for these different various pieces?

And you can imagine we come out of this session with like boards and boards of notes and ideas. Um, and so then the CEO e o and I go off and we start building, uh, this, you know, thing based on the field and, and in order to come up with something, you know, kind of, you know, short enough and powerful enough, the c e o is gonna basically have to throw out almost everything that the team has, has given.

By the way, we're also doing, I also have them do customer interviews that become inputs to this.

Phil: Okay.

Andy: and, and, but the CEO's gonna have to throw out even almost most of that. Um, and, and just pick out these big kind of nuggets. And, uh, and so when we present it to the team, there's always that first presentation.

I always, always, uh, warn them, uh, this is gonna be the low point of our work together, because the team is sort of given their gold ideas and now they're seeing it come back. And there's the, the where, where's my gold? Um, the good news is, uh, the team gets to weigh in on what's working and not working. And, uh, that f feedback loop then creates something where we usually, after about one more session of me and the CEO o about one more week of me and the CEO working on it, we can bring it back and there's, there's enough alignment to, to move on.

Um, you asked about the five pieces. Uh, well, I mentioned them and then you, asked to

Phil: Yeah.

Andy: elaborate on them. Well, the first one really is this, this change in the world, this shift in the world that I talked about, that old game, new game, uh, setup. So I literally, I just asked the team, okay. You know, I, show them some examples, like some of the ones I, talked about with you just earlier.

And I say, Hey, what is that for us? And, um, you know, there are some, there are some. Kind of guidelines or, principles I've learned that sort of help us get to a good one? Uh, so for instance, um, it's usually good if the old game was not like on the face of it, really dumb, like, you know, transactions, let's take the Zuora one, you know, transactions.

You, weren't dumb to be doing transactions, right? That was the way that you won. That used to be the winning game. Sometimes people say things like, Hey, the old game was, uh, you were, you never had any data and you made bad decisions. And the new game is you are, you're gonna make great decisions. You know, nobody ever set out to play an old game called, I don't have any data and I make bad decisions, you know?

Um, You know, an example that's kind of like that, that, that goes to a better place is, is one that gong, uh, that came outta my work with Gong, which they talk about goodbye opinions. Hello. Reality, you know, used to be, we kind of ran sales on, opinions. I think a lot of people will say, yeah, yeah, I, used to do that.

Uh, and then now you know, we're gonna run it based on this reality view. Um, The next piece is, okay, we've talked about this shift in the world. How does this creating life and death stakes for the buyer? So again, this, draws on the movie, you know, the. Often the, main character is kind of called to action and refuses.

Uh, it's what the Joseph Campbell, the great narrative, theorist called Refusal of the Call. So, you know when, in Star Wars, when Obiwan shows up, sorry if the spoilers anyone, obiwan shows, shows up and Luke, he asks Luke, Hey, you know, you want to go out into space and have adventures and all this, be a pilot, and, and Luke has been belly aching about this the whole time.

Uh, what does Luke say? He actually says, you know, mm, i kind of gotta get home. That sounds a little, you know, a little dangerous. So, what makes Luke go? Oh, it's when the empire, you know, kills his aunt and uncle. And now that it's kind of implied they're kind of coming for him or, for his droids. And so the stakes are now life and death for So Zuora, when they talk about this shift from, uh, you know, transaction to subscriptions, they're, not only saying, Hey, that's happening. They're saying, Hey, look, what's happening. All the, new winning companies like, like Airbnb, and you know, this, this was back in 2015 when, when these companies this was a new story, but.

Airbnb and box.com and, Uber. These are all subscription or subscription like companies. You know, the person's not buying the thing, they're, they're renting it in some way. Look at all the, you know, the losers, they're, all out of business. Anyone who is selling something you know, the blockbusters, whatever.

Anyway, so they're, showing that there's this life and death thing and there's many ways to do that. Um, but anyway, we try to, try to see if we can, uh, come up with one. Um, The next piece is what I call the buyer mission statement. So we're, we're presenting this new game to the buyer saying, Hey, the world has changed.

you know in the movie the, it's usually very clear, very quickly like what the main character has to do to win. So in Star Wars, within like the first 15 minutes, we know, okay, you gotta destroy this death star thing. Uh, and that's gonna. be it And same with Zuora. They say, Hey, you're basically gonna have to deliver what we call the subscription experience.

And they, define this in different ways and it's gonna, you know, I don't wanna get into it, but Okay. that's the goal state. Um, and so, you know, what is this goal state? So I meant, I mentioned with, uh, 360 Learning, we're having this shift from, uh, top-down learning to collaborative learning.

The goal state upskill from within. So can we come up with this phrase and, you can imagine this phrase often does work very well, like at the top of a website or, you know, we have to sum it all up. The last two pieces then are. Um, okay. So what are the, um, what are the obstacles to getting to that goal state?

Uh, you know, so again, in the movies, there's, he can't just go destroy the death star. There's lots of, you know, obstacles along the way. It's gonna be the same thing, obviously, if, you could, if the buyer could just get to that end point. Easily no need for you and your, great product. And its silver bullets.

So what are the, big challenges? And of course these are challenges that, that existing solutions are not going to, handle. Uh, and then of course we're, then gonna come and talk about. The, capabilities we have now, we can talk about silver bullets cuz becauses really clear now why they matter.

Uh, and we can talk about, you know, what we do. And, and of course along with that, you know, proof like, uh, success stories and things like that.

Phil: Yeah. So I would say that, um, that one of the skills you must have is to be able to. Synthesize lots of conversation and, you know, data, I suppose, uh, may not be data, but conversations into finding out against these five different stages, or perhaps it's just the first few, uh, tho those, um, those very short statements that somehow describe, uh, you know, describe what the future is going to look like.

I just think that's, you know, not everyone could do that kind of stuff.

Andy: You know, I actually don't try to sell that ability because sometimes I get it, sometimes it comes from someone else. Um, someone's someone else on the team. And one of the things I learned. When I was, uh, uh, A C E O. So I, we, we got the money from that company, from that, that pitch. And we, uh, and, and I, I led a small startup for a while, was how to run a me, how to run an a meeting and, and get feedback from people, which.

Um, it was one of the most valuable things I ever learned that I, I wish I had learned in, in business school. The other thing was sales, uh, that I didn't learn in business school. Uh, but, uh, but, and very related of course. Uh, but, uh, I had a mentor who taught me, uh, how to run a meeting. And when I work with teams, one of the, one of the big feedback I get is, it's not so much, the feedback I get is like, wow, Andy, you, you were, you, you came up with such a, such a great line.

Uh, it was. Uh, you facilitated us in a great way that helped us get to that thing. And, um, and that, I mean, I really think this, the work that I do, it's less about me being the smarty pants who comes up with, you know, the great line. And really it's really more about, um, aligning, working to align the team around something that they come up.

Phil: Yeah. There's, um, a couple of, uh, sort of, I suppose, stories to share, but, um, what I, what I found quite interesting when I, when I did my doctorate in sales, um, was of course you, you, you have a huge amount of research data and, um, uh, the, the first couple of years of doing my research looking. A data set and the data was really conversations, and in those days I used to have these, uh, a wall covered.

It would cut out. I used to cut out all of the conversations and put them on the wall and

Andy: These are conversations with

Phil: With buyers.

buyers. yeah. So, so this is, uh, clients of ours inviting us to go and research how customers want to be sold to, you know, by sellers. And then, and then, um, you know, recording those conversations.

And then, and then, um, Or videoing them as we did as well. And they would use them for kickoff meetings, you know, and stuff like that. But I was using it, uh, with their permission, of course, to, to actually do a more, a deeper study of what it is that customers look for in salespeople. Anyway, the, the process of going through what eventually was four years of research, I ended up.

Four things, you know, four things that customers seem to want from, and four things they really didn't like. And, uh, and so you take out of all the complexity of all of the conversations, that process of, of getting down to the essence of what you think you can hear. Um, it was something I, you know, I, I got a huge amount of enjoyment from, but at the time, Have I just done a four year research ate and I've come up with four things that I think salespeople, you know, could do.

It was just,

Andy: Well, I relate to this in that, uh, you know, I had been at companies where, you know, we do some sort of like six month long messaging project

Phil: yeah.

Andy: we'd be doing, you know, tons of interviews and we'd, you know, tons of, of re research and, and it, you'd get this huge, huge stack of stuff and, you know, in the end, You're, you're, it's still someone going through and sort of picking out stuff based on kind of what they think it should be.

You know, of course they're getting signals and maybe being guided. Um, and I was very influenced by, so when I was at Skype, I mentioned earlier as a product manager at Skype. Uh, we. They, they kind of got the agile religion. So I got really trained as an agile product manager, and I really carried that over into the work that I do with, uh, strategic narrative with teams.

Uh, in the pro, in the, the work that I do, we, we, the whole engagement is about six to eight weeks, but half of that is. You know, after about three, four weeks, we're starting to take it out into sales calls. We're not like, you know, rolling it out to the whole sales team. We're starting to take it on sales calls and get a sense like, well, how is this playing?

And, and of course we always learn something like, oh, some, some whatever phrase or whatever we thought was brilliant somehow fell flat or, Uh, or made somebody think of something we didn't want them to think of, or there was some objection. We hear a lot and we realize, oh, we, we should address that upfront so we, we don't get it.

Um, you know, we learn a lot, but I, I just think like getting it out there, uh, and starting to learn as quickly as we can is really, really important.

Phil: Yeah, it sounds as though you've got a, a very sort of, well, well-defined process and, uh, process. I'm not sure if that's the right word. Um,

Andy: I'll take the word process. That's

Phil: Is that, is that, is that okay? I, I hate the word process, to be honest. I'm not too much of a process person, but I've, I've grown to love it. Well, I started off hating it and I've grown to love it, the, the bigger the organization has become.

But, um, um, knowing that, that we were gonna have this conversation, it also prompted me to go back to one of our master students. Um, who is a senior vice president of sap, you know, the technology company, and, uh, he's worked in their communications department and he did his final dissertation on, um, storytelling.

And communication. and, um, I was listening to, his podcast his podcast number 39, by the way, on the sales transformation podcast series. And, uh, one of the, uh, quotes that he came up with was The challenge with communication is the illusion that it's taken place. I just love that, that quote, because as, you know, it is not exactly what you know.

It's not looking at communication in the way that you are with strategic narrative, but I just found it quite an interesting. Um, kind of quote, but he also was inspired by someone that gave a talk at one of the big Gartner conferences. I think it was, I may have got this chap surname wrong, um, but he introduced himself to the big audience and said, you guys would never have heard of me, but I'm the guy that writes all the stories for, uh, toy.

Story and you know, the Pixar, you

Andy: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Phil: a kind of big movies. And my job is to make people cry, you know, the emotion through the way the story is actually told. And, um, and so this master student, a bit like you, was kind of influenced by, um, his research into how narratives Written narratives He was just looking at the written word, how, um, sort of create emotion.

And I wonder whether, whether that's any, you know, whether partly what you get to with the steps that you go through is to try and find a way of creating a narrative that customers would have some sort of emotional. Affinity too. And I, I said my question is, is that, is that correct? is

Andy: it is correct and it is correct. And, but, it you get to a, challenge that I came to early on. Well, there's a few things I'll, address here, but one is, you know, what do we even mean by it's emotional? Like how, do we define, like, obviously I don't think we're looking to make the buyer cry in the sales situation, right?

Uh, so it's a different kind of emotion. So what do we even mean by that? And. I think what we mean by that is what I talked about around the stakes, around the winning and losing, which is does the buyer, because when we come to most buyers, we come to. You know, as, I think a lot of people, I'm guessing you or others have said this on this podcast in one of the previous episodes, the, the biggest competition is the status quo. And what that means is in the person's head, kind of like Luke in Star Wars, when Obiwan first asked him, They're basically, you know, we, we say we, we wanna sell to the buyer, to the pain, but actually this buyer, most of the buyers, they're not literally in pain. Like they have their ups and downs, but they're basically gonna assume they're basically okay.

And they're gonna assume they're always gonna be okay. This to me, is the definition of the unemotionally engaged buyer. This is what I came to, um, that's Luke at the beginning of Star, Wars you know, he's, He's willing, he's just gonna keep going. If we can tell this story about this shift to an, like this shift in the world and we can tie it to life and death as close as we can to life and death stakes, it might, it might be life and death of your company or, you know, in, in this case.

Um, then, and we get that buyer to see that to, to really see. that to feel that way to view their future, not as kind of, Hey, it's gonna be, it's gonna be more of the same, but. hey Um, I'm either gonna be dead or I'm gonna be like, thriving. I'm gonna see it in this split. That is the definition of emotionally engaged.

And so that's always what we're going for. Um, the other part, you know, you mentioned that the, this first comment, you know, the challenge with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. I learned a lot about this from Chris Voss, you know, this, uh, negotiation guy, and he talks a lot about labeling, uh, in your response.

So, so the, the, the other person in, you know, his case, he's, he, this is, he's the F B I hostage negotiator. So he is talking to the, you know, the, the captor. But we could be, we could just call it, you know, the buyer, uh, you know, the buyer is saying things and you wanna say things back to them. Like, Hey, so I, you know, I think what you're saying is, is this, and, and, and then you want to get a, that's right from them in the same way when, uh, and by the way, I dunno if, you know, um, uh, Chris Orla, uh, from Gong and other places

Phil: Hi, do.

Andy: So Chris writes a lot about this. He, he recently wrote about this, using this shift in the world that I talk about in discovery. Um, so after I present the shift in the world, and, and I think Chris does this too, um, have the team say, Hey, Am I off base that this is showing up in your world? So we wanna get them to talk about Yeah.

Like, wow. Um, yeah. Our, I'm at Ford, let's say, and, and Zuora is selling me, uh, on this and they're telling me about this subscription economy. I want to hear that person from Ford say, yeah, you know, Our, our head of product now is talking about a, a subscription offering for our cars and it's, you know, it's gonna be different from leases in this way and, and, and, and it, it bring, and we don't know how we're gonna do it cuz how are we gonna do, you know, we wanna hear stuff like that.

And this is gonna give us a sense that we have gotten that emotional engagement. You know, usually, I think a lot of salespeople know it intuitively. Like we see the, we see the nod. We get the person talking, all those things. We don't have to see tears.

Phil: Yeah. Yes. I've always been slightly concerned about the word pain because I'm not sure that, um, that necessarily that's a, a positive way to necessarily describe a purchasing, you know, the reason why someone might want to purchase something. Um,

Andy: Again, I, I talk about it in terms of we've, we don't define pain or whatever in, in any kind of, um, w in without context. The context is shift in the world goal state in that new game. And then what are the obstacles to getting to that goal state, though the, that's how I talk about it. And, and then how are we gonna overcome them?

Phil: Do, do you, I mean, You know, the tools are only as good as the people that are using them. Right. So, you know, you've created the crafted this amazing sort of strategic narrative, but you've got other people now sort of using it. You know, it's a bit like, Giving someone a tennis racket, you know, if someone is, um, Djokovic, they're probably gonna use that tennis racket really well, but, you know, give it to me and I don't think I'd use it quite as well.

Um, so to what extent do you find you know, that, that the. Yeah, the strategic narrative gets lost in translation. How about that? Yeah. Could it be lost in translation? Meaning that, you know, the people using it, there's salespeople or the leaders that are communicating, you know, internally, you know, with this tool deck.

To what extent do you address the kind of user,

Andy: Well, this come, this question I think has a bunch of aspects. You know, it's, it's. know, you, one way to look at it is teams I've worked with where I've worked with the CEO and leadership team, and then how does it get propelled into the rest of the organization. And the other is the teams I've never worked with.

You know, um, maybe I'll start with the, that, that ladder first is, you know, I get emails every day from someone somewhere in the world. Who has used that, that structure that I laid out. So I wrote this post called The Greatest Sales Deck I've ever Seen, and it go, it, it really is a breakdown of those five pieces.

Phil: is that the 1.5 million downloads you

Andy: actually I think that's just, that might just be medium. LinkedIn has like another million or, uh, so it's, it's somewhere around

Phil: that's amazing. I know, I, I want our listeners to know this. This is something that so many people have downloaded, so you've got to take a look at it.

Andy: So, yeah, so every day someone tells me that they've used this thing, uh, in, and sometimes I'll work with CEOs or I, I just got a call from a ceo, uh, the other day. He's like, Hey, um, we're, we're at the stage now where I think we're ready to engage you. Uh, and I'll say like, Hey, you know, I want you to read my post to the, that explains.

Uh, my thing and he said, oh, no, no, I read that a long time. But we've been, we've been building our decks and everything based on that for years. So, so I, I hear a lot of people using

it. Um, there definitely are a few, um, A few sort of common pitfalls I see people fall into sometimes when it, you know, sometimes they'll say, I tried it didn't work, and then

Phil: Oh,

Andy: I'll ask them.

Cause sometimes I'll ask them to send it to me and I'll, I'll see sort of like what, what they did. One thing, well, one common thing early on especially was they would just kind of, The, this war deck is available online. They, they would kind of like just take this war deck and put their own logo on it. So they wouldn't

really sort of, they, and then they sort of change whatever words sort of whatever to their industry.

And the, the, I mean, I don't put it out there as a template, like a sales deck template. It's really principles I, I like to u call it for, for building something. Um, but one thing, one thing that'll happen often is people, they'll talk about this shift in the world and they'll. The world has changed. And then they'll, they'll say, Hey, used to be, and they'll say old, old way.

And then they'll list like five or six different qualities of the old way and then the new way. And they'll list like five or 10 different things of the new way. And I think it's really critical that we name the old and new way in the way that I've, I've given you before so that we have something to talk about, you know?

There's a whole booming around category creation, uh, and the way I, you know, this strategic narrative, this old game, new game, the new game, very, you could really call this a kind of category definition because, you know, whatever this solution is for this new game, that's the category. Um, But the way I like to think about it instead is, is as the movement that we're creating, we're, we're, we're, we're championing a movement toward this new game.

You know, cuz category, it's like, okay, does Gartner recognize your category? I don't know. And, and, and a lot of companies, even like Salesforce, like they di they were c r m, they didn't create that category, but they created this movement to the cloud. Um, and so I, I think you can do a, you, you can have this movement be very successful without actually it being category.

Sometimes it is bonus. Great. Um, so anyway, naming that new game in the old game, not just saying, Hey, Things have changed, uh, which I, I started to see a lot. Um, you also asked then, then the other half of that question was, when I work with a team, you know, I work with the c e O and these leaders, like I talked about, how does it spread?

And that's one reason I really, I picked the sales deck is because, you know, especially the teams I work with are all enterprise sales, you know, companies with, with big sales teams and. You know, this, I think, is the primary channel that everybody's gonna be talking through. So that's a big reason I, I chose it because, Uh, if, if, if it's just marketing that's building some story and telling it at conferences and sales is building their own thing, it's never gonna go that way.

But I think it's much more, uh, likely that if we're telling this story in sales and it's working. Marketing can then say, okay, I'm gonna tell that story everywhere. Uh, and that has seemed to work. Some CEOs actually do certifications. This is a big Benioff thing. Uh, he's, I think he, I think everybody at the company.

Not even just people in sales has to be able to present the sales deck. Uh, and, and I've seen a team, I'm, I just, I just worked with recently, uh, this team is in Ireland, uh, that, uh, big company, but they're, they're doing that same thing with the new narrative.

Phil: Yeah. Uh, what, what I find, um, uh, encouraging also about what you've just said is, is the fact that you sort of focused at the sales side of things and, and then maybe marketing plays a role after that, does it? Or

Andy: Oh yeah. And I think marketing, well, always, as I said, like the marketing leader is, is usually a very crucial person in crafting this story. So we're not crafting this sales deck. You know, apart from marketing.

Um, so marketing is playing a role in that. But, uh, but yes, once it's, once it's baked, now marketing can start telling that story everywhere and, and probably, maybe has the bigger role in, in disseminating it.

Phil: Yeah. So interesting. Um, that's, uh, that's, uh, that's fantastic. So is there anything that we haven't, you know, sort of shared or talked about, Andy, that you feel like, or any question I haven't asked you that you think will be a good question to ask you to kind of, um, articulate even more? I mean, you've done a very good job so far, but is there anything I've missed?

Andy: Um, Not that I can think of. Um, do you wanna ask why? Well, some people ask why I have my mother on my podcast, uh, when I interview CEOs. Uh, so I have my own podcast. It's called The Bigger Narrative. Uh, would you like to hear about my mother and why

she introduces the, my, uh,

episodes?

Phil: Well, your mother actually does the introduction.

Andy: She does. So what happens is, uh, I, I, uh, interview the c e o that I've worked with. So for instance, I mentioned, uh, Nick Hernandez, uh, from 360 Learning. I interview him, uh, about our work together, and he talks about this upskill with, and all the, the na the new narrative we got to, and, and all the, the work.

And then I send the conversa, I edit the conversation, I send it to my mother, uh, she listens to it, and then I call. And ask her to, to just tell me what, what she thinks people are gonna get out of it. Like what, what she got out of it or whatever. And then that conversation becomes the intro to the episode.

Uh, and I found that it was a good way for people to get into it. Cuz she, she'll just sort of, you know, summarize it in a way that I, you know, I wouldn't, I might make it sound, you know, uh, you know, highfalutin or

Phil: it down to earth.

Andy: She very much gets down to.

Phil: That's interesting. I'm just wondering whether your mother would like to do the introduction to, to, um, to this podcast. Do you think she would be interested?

Andy: I don't wanna, I don't wanna, you know, tout her too much. She's, she's, uh, a minor celebrity on LinkedIn, I would say.

Uh,

she has a little bit of a following, so she might, there might be other, it might be a waiting list, but,

Phil: Oh, okay.

Andy: she, uh, she very well could be available.

Phil: Oh, golly. Well, I'll, I'll let Eddie, uh, uh, cross that,

Andy: out.

Phil: bridge. Yeah. Or to reach out. How, how fun. Yeah. So, uh, that is amazing. How nice do you involve your mother in it as well? I think that gives a very sort of personal

Andy: It's really nice. I mean, um, my folks are definitely getting up there in, in years and, and to have them sort of connected to my work in that way is really, really fun.

Phil: Yeah. That's fantastic. I love it. Love it. What a great idea. Brilliant. Well, Andy, thanks so much, you know, for taking part in our sales transformation podcast. Um, I know that Eddie is going to provide details to your. You know, website and links and things like that. But I found it really, really interesting.

Andy: Yeah, me too. Thanks. It was a great, I, I really enjoyed talking with you.

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