December 16, 2024 • 54 mins
Discover how the power of storytelling can revolutionize your sales performance! Join Bruce Scheer and Kelly Breslin Wright as they delve into the critical role of narratives in aligning company missions, engaging customers, and driving business success.
- Crafting unique value propositions and integrating them into a compelling company narrative.
- Strategic priority of company storytelling with executive and board alignment.
- Importance of conveying the "why" behind a company to emotionally engage customers.
- Consistency and alignment in storytelling across the organization.
- Real-life examples of effective storytelling, including personal anecdotes and the Tableau story.
Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share for more insights on enhancing sales through storytelling!
00:00 Left consulting for sales in tech startups.
07:55 Unified strategy requires clear mission, vision alignment.
10:40 Culture emotionally connects, driving increased sales engagement.
19:21 Storytelling fosters connection, trust, and empathy.
23:55 Tableau started to integrate data with visuals.
30:30 Illustrating company's mission, vision, and unique narrative.
34:06 Focus on individual motivation for customer engagement.
38:15 Personal stories build trust in sales interactions.
47:02 Whole company Tableau training enhanced storytelling impact.
49:35 Customers seek thought leadership, trust, emotional connection.
55:49 Tableau: Empowers all users, frees specialized resources.
01:03:25 Use storytelling to improve communication and engagement.
01:06:20 Kelly's storytelling insights enhance sales and connections.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the value pro show where value pros get value
ready.
Welcome to another episode of the value pro show. I'm your host,
Bruce Shearer. And today, we have an incredible conversation
lined up. Joining me is none other than Kelly Wright, a
powerhouse in sales and go to market leadership with an impressive
(00:23):
career that includes scaling Tableau from its early
days to a $1,000,000,000 IPO, and also leading
strategic initiatives as the immediate past present at
Gong. Today, she's joining us as the founder of culture
driven sales, a firm dedicated to creating alignment between
company missions, cultures, and go to market strategies. Kelly's
(00:45):
here to share her insights on the power of storytelling in
sales and how it can transform the way you connect with
buyers, building trust, and ultimately closing more
deals. So grab your coffee so you can try your best to
match Kelly's incredible energy, get comfortable, and
let's dive in. So here we are today chatting with,
(01:07):
Kelly Breslin Wright about the power of stories.
To help us get in the in the in the mood and talking about
stories, Kelly, would you mind giving us your your story, if
you would, just to kick us off? Bruce, first of all,
just thank you so much for having me today. What a fun
opportunity to chat with you again and to be able to
(01:29):
share stories back and forth. So what
is my story? Well, I I it's hard to know how far back to go,
but I'll just give you kind of my abbreviated life story.
I actually started when we think about
stories, I fell in love with sales and stories when I was
in college. I was looking for a summer
(01:52):
job, and I decided to do this crazy summer job
where I sold educational books door to door, ran my own business
selling educational books door to door. And I did this for 4
summers. And over the 4 summers in college,
I sat down with over 12,000
families in their houses to talk about kids' school and education.
(02:14):
And what I found was, 1, I loved doing
something that was impactful. I loved being able to help
solve people's challenges and problems. But most
importantly, it was just so fun for me to
hear everyone's unique story, and that's when I really fell in love
with sales and entrepreneurship. And so that goes all the
(02:36):
way back to when I was in college. If I walk through my career after
selling books, I worked for Dale Carnegie training, and I
actually sold sales training. I sold public speaking
training. After that, I sold residential
mortgages at Bank of America, so sold all kinds of things. Sold books,
sold training, sold mortgages of financial services, and
(02:59):
then I ended up going back to business school. I went to Wharton for
business school and thought, well, if I wanna be an entrepreneur or a business
leader, I should understand more about all the
different components of business. So I worked for a while in
strategic consulting at McKinsey and then at Bain and Company,
but then I decided sales is really my
(03:22):
jam. Like, I that's what I really love to do. So in
the Internet boom, I left consulting. I
went and worked for this small technology startup called Ad hoc where
I was running sales and client services for a
while. And then I ended up going to this little
known startup right when it was getting started. I
(03:44):
was employee number 10 and the 1st salesperson
1 month before we launched version 1 of this company
called Tableau. And I was at Tableau running
all sales as executive vice president of sales and chief
revenue officer from basically 0 in revenue
till almost a1000000000 through the IPO. And
(04:05):
I'm sure we'll end up talking about some of that time because that was when
we were really using stories in building our sales market,
and sales motion. After Tableau, I did a bunch of board
work, and I one of the boards
actually asked me to come back to be chief operating officer and president.
So that was Gong, so I ended up having some time at Gong. And
(04:27):
now I'm really spending time on my own business
venture, which is called Culture Jibbon Sales, which I founded as,
as a way to help other companies and other individuals really build
their go to market motion. Absolutely. Thanks so much for your
background, and that's personal story, Kelly. Really love it. And
Tableau, I'm so honored, you know, that I had the opportunity to
(04:50):
work with you and and your fantastic team at
Tableau. Not not when you were employee number 10. I don't know when what you
were employee of at that point in time, but we we did, you know gosh.
Dang. I was funny that we're talking
about stories because that's how you and I met because we
brought you and your team in to help us
(05:12):
really finesse and figure out how to tell
our own unique Tableau story in a way where it was captivating.
It was emotionally connecting. It was differentiated.
And so you are a pro at
storytelling, and so I just feel honored to be able to talk about it with
you because you're one of the key masters of it. Yeah. No. Love it. Love
(05:35):
it. So, Kelly, that's a wonderful background of of where how
you got to where you are today, but could you tell us about culture driven
sales? What's the story behind this new firm of yours?
Yeah. Well, Bruce, everything everything starts with
mission and vision of a company. And so product and the service is
important, of course. But how do you engage with
(05:57):
customers, attract your prospects, tell your
unique story? It all comes back to the company's
purpose and the why, and this threads back to stories.
So I'll I'll communicate this with the story as I always talk in stories
myself. So when I was, finished my time at
Tableau and I knew I wanted to do some board work and I wanted to
(06:19):
do some speaking, I decided that I would
meet with a bunch of founders and heads of
sales and CEOs so that I could understand how I could be the
most valuable when people thought about sales and go to market. So in
that first, maybe 18 months after my time at
Tableau, this is back in 2,000 16,
(06:41):
2017, I met with over a
100 founders and CEOs. And most
of these were in hypergrowth tech, but they were in all different sectors and
all different size companies, public companies, private companies.
And I was meeting these CEOs because I would meet them at
a CEO summit, at a go to market, or a sales
(07:03):
seminar. Oftentimes, companies were calling and had
questions if I could help them with consulting or whatever it may be. So I
was asking, well, what what's your biggest challenge in sales and go to
market? And oftentimes, companies would say or the CEO would
say, well, our sales and marketing team is not aligned, or our
sales team is trying to sell something that's different than what our product team is
(07:25):
building, or we're just not on the same page. We just
don't have alignment. And so it gave me this epiphany, and I started
asking these questions of to the CEO. Well, what's your mission?
What's your mission, and what's your company purpose? And it
was very interesting. First of all, not everyone even had a
mission, and not everyone could even tell me what their story
(07:47):
was. But even if they had a mission, oftentimes,
their mission wouldn't match the words of what their mission was on their website.
Or on their website, they'd have something on their own page and something else on
their hiring page and something else on their about page. And then I'd start
asking, well, can I talk to the different executives on your team? And
maybe the CEO would have a different answer to what
(08:09):
their mission and story was to the cofounder, and that was a
different answer to the head of product and a different answer to the sales team.
And I was just scratching my head of, well, of course, you're not gonna
have alignment if you go to a company and the executive
team is telling different stories about who they are and
why they exist? How in the world are your salespeople
(08:31):
and your marketers, and how are your employee or your
employees gonna understand what you're doing, and how are your customers gonna even understand what
you're about? And so I decided, okay. I
need to actually put together this understanding and framework
that is you have to have an integrated umbrella go to
market strategy, which is tightly coupled with your company
(08:53):
strategy. And what how does this all start? It
starts first way at the top of what is the
company's mission and vision. Why does a company
exist in the first place? 2nd, well, what are your
company core values and your operating principles? Because that
helps to explain how you're going to actually do
(09:16):
business and how you're going to engage with your employees and your
customers and your prospects and your partners. But then once you
understand your mission and your vision and your core values,
then you have to be able to articulate what is
your unique company story. And that company
story is not the what and the how. We it incorporates
(09:38):
that too, but it's your why. It's what is your company's purpose?
What is your why? What is the whole essence of the company and the
reason that you exist? So you have your mission vision. You have your core
value. You have your company story, and then this is how you
start to communicate why you're different. What are your
differentiated value propositions, and how should you engage with
(10:00):
your ideal customer profile who actually cares about that? And then
this flows down to how you're gonna go to market and your sales motion
and all the operational pieces. And so when I realized this and
started talking to companies about this, they they
were, we don't actually have a framework for them. And so
I decided to teach a course on go to market strategy
(10:22):
and sales strategy, And I taught this course at
University of Washington at the Foster School of Business MBAs. And
then I had a number of CEOs and sales leaders
who said, well, why are you only teaching this to MBAs?
We can actually use this help as well. And that was the
impetus of culture driven sales. So culture driven sales, sometimes people
(10:45):
think, what is culture about in the culture driven sales? But the culture is if
you want to actually drive sales, is if you
want to actually drive sales, how are you integrating into your overall narrative and your
sales motion, the mission, the
vision, the why, your company story in a way that it can
the why, your company story in a way that it
(11:06):
connects with other people, that's how do you drive the whole
culture in? Because my belief is if you actually
nail that culture piece that emotionally
connects, that brings people in, you're gonna drive a lot
more sales than if you're just focused on the how and the what, which
is all about data and facts and features and functions
(11:28):
because it's important, but that's not what's gonna drive people to make
decisions, and it's not gonna drive them to engage with you. And so
Yeah. That's the statistical church of the sales. Yeah. Thank
you for describing the mission of your own firm, and, gosh,
that resonates so much with me. I used to have a jokingly
joking phrase, but it actually comes from reality. Adobe acquired
(11:51):
a company, and, I'd spoken to 10 different executives and got 10
different stories before I started working with them. And, you know, it's just
normal, that lack of alignment. And, I love what culture
driven sales can do for a firm to create that type of
alignment. And, especially, when you're involved, the momentum that that's
really gonna, bump performance. So fantastic.
(12:13):
Well, let's, talk a little bit more than about why story.
You know, you know, why is it so critical for go to market
and sales improvement? What do you have to say for us there?
I mean, Bruce, we we just we just talked about this in a way, but
people are just attracted to stories. It's the facts, and it's
the truth. Stories engage people.
(12:36):
They engage other human beings, and they help people
to connect and to emotionally connect. They
also help to convey the real meaning of what people are trying to say,
and you can see this literally for generations.
Think about how families pass down their traditions,
how they pass down their come their family stories, how they
(12:59):
pass down their recipes. They do this with stories.
And this is how lessons are conveyed to children too. I mean, when you're
trying to teach a young child something, rather than
just tell them, do this, do that, do that, you do this with stories.
That's why there's books and there's Aesop's
fables that are actually teaching moral
(13:22):
stories and valuable lessons through
these stories that the kids can relate to and that they can understand.
And so, I mean, you can even think about this. Consider what you remember most.
Take it out of business altogether. We go to a dinner party.
And when you're at a dinner party and people are going around the table
and talking, who is it that people want to listen to? Who
(13:45):
is it that people gravitate to? It's the person that actually
can engage in these stories where people just they want
to listen. They find it interesting and compelling, and they're
drawn in, and then they remember that. And so
people and companies often put tons of words together, but they
don't land. They aren't memorable.
(14:08):
People, though, do remember stories. They land.
They emotionally connect. They are memorable, and this is what people
remember. And this is true with the way that the brain is wired
too. There is tons of research on this that
shows that the brain actually
can process stories. It sets off the brain in a
(14:31):
way that people listen and engage better. And so
if you think about companies throwing all these facts and data,
that's important, but the brain is not necessarily gonna
engage. There's also research that shows that people
make decisions not only with rational thought, but with
emotional thought. And stories are what are tapping
(14:53):
into that emotional side of the brain. And so when
companies are or when people are making decisions about what to buy,
they are making these decisions for emotional
reasons, and this is all critical to sales.
And if you want someone to buy your
product, you need to think about how are you engaging with
(15:17):
them in a way where they can hear you, they can
remember you, they can emotionally connect and understand
what you're doing. And this is all super, super important with
stories. Well, Kelly, let's talk about, just a
maybe set the table with a great story, you know, just as an
example. I think this is something that at
(15:39):
Tableau, we did very well. This was something that our
CEO was absolutely fantastic at. And a lot
of this comes back of I I started as the first salesperson,
employee number 10, 1 month before we launched version 1.
And when I started, the mission of the company at
Tableau was to help people see and understand
(16:01):
data. And that's still the mission now. You know? And I
joined in 2,005. And so that
kinda comes back to how do you have this overarching where
everyone's very clear on the mission and vision and the overarching
purpose. But then we also told the story, and we
told the story in every pitch deck when we met with
(16:23):
investors. We started off when we talked with customers, and
the story was pretty short. It talked about the impetus
and the founding story of Tableau. And what happened
was at the the Department of
Defense had a had approached one of our founders,
Pat Hamrahan, who was the founded one of the founders
(16:45):
of Pixar. He actually created the technology behind
Pixar, and he was, and still is a decorated
computer scientist and professor at Stanford. And he has 3 Academy Awards
for his work in data, and visual graphics and
visualization. And the Department of Defense came to him and said,
hey, Pat. Can you help solve one of the key business problems of the
(17:08):
world today? And that is that the whole
world of databases and rows and columns of text is
totally divorced and separated from the world
of visual graphics and visualization. And
there's all this science that shows that the brain and the
eye actually can process data better, huge
(17:30):
amounts of data when it's represented in pictures. And so is there a way
that you can help tie this together? And that is actually how Tableau got
started. So, Pat ended up joining up with the lead
PhD on the product, which were on the project at
Stanford, who is Chris Stolte, and they developed
this very interesting way to drag and
(17:51):
drop visualization, and then they joined up with
Christian Chabot, who is our CEO. And Stanford's very good at helping companies
spin out, but the whole idea is, hey. People have
tons of questions with their data. Is there a better and simpler way
that we could leverage visualization and visual graphics
to help people have a more interactive
(18:13):
conversation with their data? And we started with the this with
everyone because it brought people in. It was a new approach to business
intelligence. It was a new approach to how people thought about
doing data analytics. Because everyone said, hey. I have
questions. And there's tons of people in my organization who are not
savvy with data, and they have questions too. So if I can
(18:36):
empower more people to be more self-service, to answer their own
questions with data, then I'm very interested. And what this
did is it drew in not only our prospects and
our customers, but it actually attracted tons of employees who
wanted to be part of this mission that we were doing
to help people be able to be empowered
(18:59):
to answer their own questions. And that was
super compelling company story. So that was one
example of a company story. I think a second
story, if we go away from the company side, though,
is over the core this is more of a personal
(19:20):
30 plus years in sales and tech, I've
done a lot of keynotes and a lot of speeches.
And so when you're doing a keynote, it might be at a customer
conference. It might be at some kind of a partner event. It could be
a company kickoff or a sales kickoff. I kinda took an
approach very early days. This this will illustrate that I'm,
(19:42):
like, hugely a story person, but
I thought, okay. I'm gonna be giving a whole bunch of data and
facts and talking about our results and talking about what our
goals and priorities are. But I want people to actually listen
and be engaged, so I try to always weave in
some kind of a personal story. And what I decided to do
(20:05):
in these talks is weave in something with my kids of some
kind of a lesson about leadership with my
kids. And this was a very short bit. It would be 3
or 5 minutes in each hour long talk. So I'd talk
about when my son came to the office and he wanted to learn about
sales. I would talk about some trip of some
(20:27):
lesson that we had based on my my kids. I would
talk about taking my my children to a
movie and something that happened that we engage with how people
were interacting within the theater. And I'd tell these
stories. And the interesting thing is still today,
like, over a decade later, when I run into someone
(20:49):
who is in that room, they often will say to
me like, it happened to me just recently. I ran into someone.
This speech was, like, 15 years ago. And that person didn't
remember what sales goals we were talking about or
or, like, what were the numbers on the screen, but they said, oh, your
son that came to office that you told that story about
(21:11):
wanting to do sales, like, he's probably in college
now. What is he doing? Is that what he wants to do? Does he wanna
go into business or do something else? And so it lands. People
remember it. They retain it, and that's how they
connect with you even a long time later. So the power of
stories, I think, is just evident in everything
(21:32):
we do, and it's just human nature. Yeah. I I love
what you just framed. Those those are two beautiful examples of how
you're connecting with with with your buyers and in in a way that
is extremely memorable, especially the tableau of, you know,
y story, if you would, the the mission and the origin.
So powerful for people wanting to be behind that and understanding, you know, the
(21:54):
rationale and the differentiation from that. I just wanted to give you
props for that because you were helpful in
helping us to frame and articulate that story in a simple
way where everyone could explain it, where we
were aligned on it and it emotionally connected. So thank
you to you years later for helping us to articulate that story.
(22:16):
Of course. Yeah. No. It's such a wonderful story, and, you know,
so grateful to be part of that. Well, let's, Kelly, let's
talk about, how to improve sales
performance with stories. And we already you already did illustrate with a
couple of examples, but I'd love for you to help the audience kinda
frame this, you know, the different types of
(22:38):
stories. The first is the company story. So what
is very interesting is oftentimes, company
will bring me in and say, can you help us with our company story? And
they'll show me their narrative, and they'll show me their customer pitch deck. And
it's all about the what and the how. We've talked about that a lot. It's
not very much about the why. It's all very tactical.
(23:00):
And they'll have the salespeople go, and they're leading with that. And
they're saying, well, it's not as effective. And then I'll say, well, if
you bring the CEO to the meeting, how does the CEO tell that story?
And then I'll go have a meeting with the CEO or I'll listen to one
of the CEO's pitches, and it's totally different.
The CEO has this story that ties back to the company
(23:22):
why and why they exist and why the why the founder started the
company in the first place, and that is that emotionally
connected story. So how are companies making sure
not only everyone's aligned and not only that it's emotionally connected,
but how are they communicating the
story in a way where it actually draws in and helps
(23:44):
people to understand that essence in the why? And that comes back to
the company because people care. They wanna do business with
people that they're aligned with what your
purpose and mission is and why what you're all about. So that's the
first, the company story. The second is customer stories.
And this, again, most companies do have customer
(24:07):
stories. But if you go and you look at customer stories, much
of customer stories are again about the what and the
how. They're here's the customer's ROI.
Here's how they're using the product. This is how they got much
more efficiency and effectiveness. And that's all
really important, but it's not gonna be compelling enough
(24:29):
that your other customers and prospects are gonna necessarily
want to listen to all of that. And so if you think about the
customer and I have, you know, in training, we
used my my late very good friend, unfortunately passed away,
Skip Miller, always talked about the 3 the 3
levels of why. And most companies, when they go to the customer, they get
(24:53):
to the 1st level of why. Why is this prospect calling you in
the first place? Maybe they get to the 2nd level of why, which
is what is a meaningful difference that this is going to
have on the company or the company's
strategic goals. But what really matters if you can get to that 3rd
level of why, which is the individual
(25:14):
motivation for that person. So for that customer as a human being, not that customer
as a customer as a human being,
not that customer as a company because it's people that buy companies,
not I mean, people that buy products, not companies that buy product, but
we're always trying to sell company to company.
And if you think about these customer stories and here's another example of
(25:36):
a story of what we did at Tableau is we went
to all of our customers and asked them why did they buy
Tableau, and how did Tableau have an impact. And, initially,
they wanna talk about ROI, and they saved money, and they worked
faster. But we tried to get to that 3rd level of why,
and we had our customers saying, like, I remember stories
(25:59):
of one person said, I I have
my son is on a little league team, and I work so hard, and I
have so much work that I can never go to the
games. And then I started using Tableau, and Tableau helped me
to do everything so much faster and so much more effectively.
I was able to do what was taking me till 10 PM.
(26:21):
I was able to leave at, you know, 3
o'clock on those game days and still get my work done
and go to those little league games. So I feel like Tableau
has helped me to have a better relationship with my son. Or
another example where the customer said, I've been
trying to get a promotion, and I've been saying we should do these things with
(26:43):
data for so long, and no one really,
like, listened. And then I started using Tableau, and
Tableau has helped to drive our decision making in our
company so much that I've actually had 3 promotions
in just a short period of time that I've used Tableau. And so people
got very emotionally engaged, and this is what we
(27:06):
did with our customer stories. Of course, we talked about the ROI and how they
were using it, but we got into the actual human
essence of why that person cared, that bought
them level of why, the individual motivations of the
customer. And so I would ask for in your go to
market team and in your marketing and your sales, are you
(27:28):
actually using customer stories that they emotionally
connect, and they're driving a level of engagement and empathy
that people are gonna care, and it's not just about the data and
facts. So that's the second level, which is the customer level.
Excellent. Now, perfectly stated, how can you really resonate,
connect, and engage emotionally at that, you know, individual
(27:50):
buyer level. That that's really powerful. Well, let's,
talk about the 3rd. It's good for
individuals when they're first interacting with the
prospect or customer to actually tell their own personal
story as to why they're working for this company
in the first place, why they're passionate about this company's mission.
(28:13):
And that is like for instance, if you think about podcast, all
podcast, what they're doing is they're trying to get people's personal stories.
Right? What is the story? And so the whole world operates in
stories, but companies end up spending a lot of time and
energy on their company story, maybe some on
their customer story, but they don't actually invest
(28:36):
in having their sales and marketers and the rest of
their executive team understand understand how to
actually tell their own personal story in a way where it
fits in to the whole broader equation.
Absolutely. Yeah. So so many things, to say about this one.
I used to do a presentation, Kelly, called connect before you
(28:59):
sell, which is a little bit of a misnomer because, you know, you don't sell
anything if you don't connect, and, you know, it it goes hand in hand.
But first, connect, you know, at a personal level. You know, make
make sure there's some sort of a trust bond so you can move
forward into some of the bigger dialogues that you're gonna have together as part of
that whole buying experience. But, you know, the personal
(29:21):
story really does help in creating that bond. As you
say, even, you know, with people coming back to you 15 years later
remembering your personal story about your kids at that point in time and
checking in because because they care, because you created that bond from the
stage or or even from the one to one dialogue that you're having. But, you
know, the personal stories are are the best at that, you know, where you
(29:44):
can tell common stories and figure out what what your buyer
believes in, what's important to them, what are they passionate about, and you're sharing
yours, and you're looking for those points of connection through those personal
stories. Absolutely. Laid out. Well laid
out. Well, why do so we've got our 3 types of
stories. Why don't we talk a little bit more, Kelly, next about just how do
(30:05):
you create these stories and integrate these stories into your go
to market or sales motion?
Yes. Well, Bruce, as as we've talked about,
companies spend a lot of time and energy developing playbooks
and stories, but there could be a lot
more training and learning of how to be effective storytellers.
(30:29):
So if you think about how companies engage their go to market
teams, I mean, there's a whole bunch of trainings around it. You have,
you know, solution selling, spin selling, customer centric
selling, and then all these other sales
philosophies and methodologies, Medpick, all these different things.
But are people and companies actually spending enough time
(30:52):
teaching storytelling? And so this goes
back to one of the things that we had done when I was a
leader is realized, well, maybe we should
actually invest in storytelling. And so and this goes
back to time at Tableau, which is my longest tenure. I was there for 12
years as sales leader, and we went and told all of
(31:13):
our sales leaders, all of our go to market leaders, a 100%
of our enterprise sellers that we were putting them through a storytelling workshop.
And people thought this was crazy. Like, why are you spending money
on storytelling? Can't you tell like, we're trying to get into enterprise
selling more. Can you teach us more
about this customer centric selling or whatever was the latest enterprise
(31:36):
selling fad? We said, no. We're we're gonna take a different approach, and we're gonna
teach the storytelling. And so we brought everyone in the room,
and a lot of that was, well, can you start off with a
personal story? Tell us who you're about, how like, why
why are you here? How do you tick? Tell us something about
customer stories. We help to get everyone to understand how to tell company
(31:58):
story. And an interesting thing happened with this because if you're telling
stories, you have to get personal. People were able to show much more
vulnerability. But 2 interesting takeaways came from this.
One is at the end of this whole
session, we had a bunch of our
salespeople that said, wow. This was super powerful. This
(32:21):
is not only helping me to connect with my
customers and prospects. This is helping me to
better connect with my coworkers and my direct reports.
It's helping me on a family level to connect better with my
significant other and with my kids and my family
members. Like, this has been profound in life changing.
(32:43):
That was the first interesting takeaway, which was unexpected.
The second was oftentimes when I, as the sales leader
in the the chief revenue officer type, was brought in
to talk to our customers and our customer execs. It
happened very frequently that these executives who are our
key buyers said to me, hey, Kelly. I just have
(33:05):
a question for you. Try to understand, like, why is
it that your salespeople seem to
understand our our what we're doing so much
better? Like, we're dealing with tons of other of your competitors
and other vendors, and they're trying to sell us all these different things. And I
know you're trying to sell, but it seems like your
(33:27):
team is understanding us on a different level.
And I realize it's all coming back to the storytelling. People are
starting with stories, and they're developing a
sense of trust, of openness, of vulnerability
where the prospects able to open up in a way where maybe they
weren't if we were just going back to the beginning, peppering them with questions. And
(33:49):
so I think that companies should be thinking,
like, are they actually intentionally
training how people can tell
stories instead of just walking through a pitch deck.
So that's number 1 of a really important
how to. Yeah. If I could anchor on that just for a little bit, what
(34:12):
what you're saying there, in my experience with Tableau and you,
Kelly, is, we were able to train everybody in
in the Tableau story from chairman, you know, to to
frontline, to to even product development, etcetera.
So it became whole company training, which was so
impressive for people to be able to embrace that.
(34:34):
And then, the way we crafted that story as, you know,
it was being delivered to 2 potential buyers.
You know, we were in inside their mind, Kelly. I don't know if I mentioned
to you, but when I was doing a bunch of testing of the story
with Tableau customers, you know, they they I would share some of
the visuals, and that's also what made, the Tableau story so
(34:56):
powerful. There are visuals to back it up and and to help with that, you
know, the memory forming on behalf of the buyer. But when I chose
some of those visuals, they would just go, oh my gosh. That's us.
You know? We we really got inside of their world in their
mind showing that current state visual
around that. And if you can remember, it was around, you know, the people dimension,
(35:18):
the experience dimension, the time dimension, but especially as it went to
the experience, and we talked about the report factory. And I I
just, you know, remember testing that, and then subsequently where customers, like,
just gonna, oh my god. That's us. You know? It's almost like, how did you
know? And they they would laugh a little bit sheepishly, but talk about
a connection point, just really meeting them where they're at.
(35:40):
Yeah. Well, Bruce, I think this brings up another point too. Like, the
whole world of sales and how companies
buy is evolving in a very big way. We're seeing a
massive, massive transformation. So I think that let's talk about
that just for a moment. It used to be when companies were
selling, they needed their marketing team and their salespeople
(36:02):
to give the large volume of information
about whatever that product was, but the world has changed.
There's so much information out there on the web.
And there's now you have AI that is giving all kinds
of information. There's tons of competitors. There's lots of
data that's available. And so your prospects and your customers
(36:25):
are very well versed probably when they come to you.
They already know 70 or 80% of what you
historically would have taught them along the way. They've already
done the research themselves. And so they're coming
to you to say, hey. I'm trying to decide
which which company I'm gonna go to, which solution I'm going to
(36:48):
use, and they're already very knowledgeable and well
versed in whatever it is that you're selling. And so what they're looking
for is they're looking for not only someone that they can trust
and someone that's gonna help them to achieve their ROI, but they're also looking
for a vendor that's gonna help teach them and provide some thought
leadership so that they can be challenged and listen and
(37:10):
learn along the way. And so this is a whole different
element of stories because companies often were all talking
about this is what we do and very vendor centric.
And that's not effective anyway because people don't wanna hear, like, all about the
vendor. But it's changed and become even more important that thought leadership
is very, very critical. And so if you think about
(37:33):
a customer saying, well, what is the state of the status quo?
What's the problem and the challenge to the status quo? And where
what is it that would help them to break out of the status quo in
a way where they could actually be better? Think about it of going to the
desired state or to the promised state. And then they're looking
for companies to help lead and guide to paint
(37:56):
a narrative of not only what their company is about, but how you're
going to help teach and bring and lead that company
to this promised desired state. And that is
all about framing this narrative and in a
storytelling in this thought leadership way. So I think
what companies can think about when they're thinking about
(38:18):
their narrative, their go to market approach stories,
it's not only, well, what are our company story and
our customer story and the personal story? What are the stories in a way that
can emotionally connect? That's number 1. Number 2 is,
how do we actually train our team to be
more skilled in storytelling?
(38:41):
Because storytelling I mean, if you think about it, you go look at
your best salespeople. Almost always, your best
salespeople are your best communicators, and your best communicators
are fantastic storytellers. So communication and
storytelling and emotionally connecting is all that. So the second is, how do you
train them? But then you also have this 3rd piece when you think about the
(39:03):
how is how are you creating
thought leadership and a narrative of telling a
story of how you wanna guide and lead and
bring your customers to this new desired state.
And that is a company story that is related to your
company story, but it sounds slightly different. And so you should
(39:27):
be asking how skilled is your team on thought leadership and
telling those thought leadership stories. So those are the 3 how to that I
think are really important. Yeah. Absolutely. And should we talk
about, you know, where that comes from a little bit in terms of how to
how to craft the the story? I thought that could
be interesting. Well, you know, where does the thought
(39:49):
leadership and where where where does that narrative come from?
I think a lot of that, Bruce, goes back to this
whole thought the thought leadership is tied to the narrative. So you have
your mission, vision, differentiated value proposition,
and this is a lot I mean, this is a whole impetus of what I
teach in culture driven sales. This is basically, like, what my
(40:12):
course is and what the framework is and the thought leadership of
this. It is you want to understand from your
prospects what is the current state of
affairs? Like, what it where are they in right now,
and what is frustrating and challenging to them in that
current state? And if they were to look at this current
(40:34):
state, then where is it that they want to go? So this is what I
was talking about. What is the desired state? What is the place
they want to be? And then there's a gap. There's a gap
between the current status quo and the desired state.
This is why they're talking to you
you in the 1st place. If they didn't care and they didn't have this challenge,
(40:54):
they wouldn't even be engaged in your company to solve a problem. But
rather than just talk about, here's all these features and functions and
ROI and data to get you from here to there.
What you actually want to do is you wanna understand,
well, what are the biggest challenges with
the current state? And then you know what your
(41:17):
company is super good at, And then you need
to figure out what are your unique
differentiated value propositions. So companies
should have maybe 3 to 5. Some companies have 25
value propositions. It's way too many. And oftentimes, people will have
value propositions that all of their other competitors have, so they're not
(41:39):
differentiated at all. So you wanna think in a unique and differentiated
way. What are the 3 to 5 most important
differentiated values you have? And then you do this in a thought leadership
way where you're marrying it together. So you say, what are the
challenges with the current state? And you wanna get out of the current state and
get to the desired state. Well, your biggest challenges
(42:02):
are these four things, and then
those four things exactly map with our
value propositions. So to give you an example of that, and since
we've been talking about Tableau, go back to Tableau. Like, the
biggest challenge that people had was time. It
took people way, way, way too long. And if you
(42:24):
look at the other things that they had, it took too long. It was too
complicated, so you had to have a very, very skilled
computer scientist or data scientist to do it. And it
took took way too many resources for them. So you had to have
a whole teams taking huge amount of time, but it
actually drew them away from other important stuff. So there were
(42:46):
some other things, but when you think about that,
if you said, well, people doing data analytics
is taking too much time. It's taking way too highly
specialized people. And of those people, it's
taking way too much of those people's resources.
Well, what Tableau did is it created this self-service
(43:09):
where people could do what was taking weeks months in
literally minutes and hours. It was a self-service, so when it
empowered everyone to be a data worker where you didn't have to be
a specialized data scientist
to do it. You could have anyone who is in recruiting or sales
or marketing or product be able to answer their own own
(43:32):
questions. And 3, it freed up these really complex
resources that you wanted them to be able to be doing more
complicated tasks that you freed up all their time, so
it freed up all these resources. A
thought leadership around where we told our company story.
(43:53):
We were able to tell a picture of the status quo. We were able to
explain this what the desired state was, and then we were able to
come up with very
differentiated unique value propositions where we could make
this claim knowing that our competitors couldn't
touch us with the 10 foot pole on that. And so that's the kind
(44:15):
of thought leadership you wanna be thinking. How can you teach them and guide them
in the future and then tie that back to your
company story and narrative that makes you very differentiated?
Oh, per perfect. Perfect. Well, let's talk about some of the,
traps and pitfalls to avoid when when
crafting these amazing stories. Do you wanna go first? Or
(44:40):
Well, do you have anything that you wanna start with? Well, yeah, I'll
I would. Typically, you know, we we did talk
about either delegating it down or delegating it
out, you know, to try to work on a story. And with
the tableau story, you know, I can remember it like it was
yesterday. But, you know, we all got into a, you know,
(45:02):
wonderful hotel room at the time and just batted ideas
around. Kelly, I don't know if you were there
personally. There there's probably about 25 people there. And,
from product development, from sales, from marketing, you know, and
we were just getting ideas on the table, which was
fantastic for a few different reasons. A lot of those ideas were
(45:25):
excellent. But, b, you know, the the revenue
team effectively was uniting and working
towards this common goal of having a really compelling
story. So that level of involvement, I,
is is unlike things I I typically see where
it gets delegated down or out, and then and then it sometimes it
(45:47):
comes back really good. Oftentimes, it doesn't. Or most
often, it doesn't. But sometimes it comes back really good, but then it goes
onto the shelf or the digital shelf, if you would, and
nobody uses it. But in in Tableau's instance,
everybody effectively had a hand in creating
the narrative and owning it over time, which
(46:10):
was really special. Yeah. Bruce, I
I completely agree with you. I think if let let's go over some
of the traps and pitfalls. The first, I would a
100% agree with you that be careful
about not delegating down or out because when
you think about a company story remember, a company story is not
(46:31):
just a messaging playbook. It is
your company story is tightly integrated with your go to market
strategy, and this all threads back to your mission, your
vision, your purpose, the why, which is your company
story. And you need to make sure everyone on
your executive team, everyone on your board is completely
(46:53):
aligned by that. Otherwise, you might have a story that sounds really good,
but it's not gonna land. It's not gonna drive alignment, and
it's not gonna be used. So you need to make sure
that you have, it's it's an
having a company story is an executive level
top priority. So that's the first. I thinks too
(47:16):
is companies don't focus enough on the
why. And a lot of that is because it's much easier to
do the what and the how. It's easy to say, this is what we
do. Here are our features. Here are our functions. Here are
our benefits. This is how we implement,
and it's actually really hard to put
(47:39):
everyone in a room to figure out how are you gonna
tell a story, how are you gonna convey a mission where it's
short, it's succinct, it's powerful, it's engaging,
it emotionally connects? It's it's very
hard. It's one of the hardest parts about coming up with the
whole go to market and marketing and sales strategy. And
(48:01):
so because it's hard and it requires people sitting in a
room for a long period of time talking about what
words evoke the right emotions, what what,
what are the feelings you want people to think? How are you gonna
actually engage in, like, in a
connected type of way? It's not the way people usually
(48:24):
think when we're working so fast on an operational tactical
way. And so many companies just bypass it. I mean, I've been at
companies. I've done a lot of advising, and oftentimes, they'll say, hey,
Kelly. I understand that you think mission and vision and company story
is all important. We are moving so fast. We
literally don't have time. So we're gonna bypass that, and we'll
(48:46):
come back at some point in the future. And I'm like, but you brought me
in to help drive alignment on your executive
team to help you figure out how you're gonna grow faster
and increase sales. And you're saying it's not important
to have a company, a holistic company story. Like, what else
could be more important? And and so I think they're just
(49:08):
kinda missing the So that is a huge other
tactical pitfall. So the first is don't delegate
it. 2, you have to make time to understand and communicate the
why instead of the what and the how. And I think the third,
and we've talked about this before, is you
actually have to invest in how people tell the story. You
(49:30):
can't just say, hey. We just developed this story, and now I have a pitch
deck, and everyone just go to it. That that's the 3rd.
And, actually, I'll add a 4th. The 4th is you have
to do periodic checking of asking all of
your salespeople, asking your marketing, asking your executive
team what is your story. And if you
(49:53):
ask 10 people and you get 10 different stories, then
you have work to do. And I'll tell you work.
It, like, it's more than 50% of the time. It could
be 70, 80, even more percent of the time that you
asked 10 different people. And you might not get 10
different answers, but you get more than 5 different answers, and then it's just not
(50:14):
gonna work. So that's another. Yep. No. I love it. No. I
think we did that really well, and then I think we just
need to move towards final thoughts. This has been so rich.
Any other thing that you'd love the audience to walk away with, Kelly?
I think, I would
(50:36):
I would challenge each of you whether it is
how you're engaging with your prospects and customers, how
you're talking to your peers at
work in your direct reports, or even think
about how you're engaging with people and communicating your personal
life. Just track yourself
(50:58):
for the day or for the week. Are you using
stories? And if you're not, try to integrate
them and see if you notice a difference. Like, are people
engaging better when you use stories? And, of course, the answer is going
to be yes. So are you peppering with questions
instead of stories? If if so, tweak it. And
(51:21):
just see how you can whether you're doing an
intro, you're doing a speech, you're doing a 1 on
1, Try to thread in those stories because,
remember, the best salespeople and
the best communicators, and I would say the best
leaders and the best employees, they're the ones
(51:44):
that know how to have empathetic two way communication,
and they are going to be fantastic storytellers.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's, talk
about just, you know, you did lay out stories should
be a top priority for for any executive team, and you gotta get
that right that drives alignment and go to market success.
(52:07):
How can people reach out to you for that type of support, Kelly?
Oh, perfect. Well, I would love to connect with as many of you as possible.
You can find me on LinkedIn. Just go search for
Kelly Breslin Wright and Culture Driven Sales. You can also find
me on my website, which is www.culturedrivensales.com.
(52:28):
On that site, there's a bunch of articles. There's a series of
different podcasts. I also do
executive seminars that help companies to
understand who are we and why do we exist, walking through how to
have an effective integrated go to market strategy. So if your
company is interested in that, whether it is for your company
(52:50):
internally or for venture capital funds or PE
firms if they wanna bring a collection of different executives from
different companies together. I offer seminars on all of
that. But most importantly, just use your stories, and I'd
love to hear from you. So reach out on LinkedIn or on my site.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you, Kelly. Thanks for all this wisdom, all
(53:13):
this practical wisdom on just embracing the
power of stories. Really appreciate it. And thank you,
Bruce, to one of the main pros in the worlds of storytelling.
So thanks for having me today. Awesome. Thank you.
What an insightful conversation with Kelly. She gave us a
master class in the art of storytelling and sales. She covered the
(53:36):
importance of anchoring your company's mission and vision within your company
story, how to craft compelling customer stories
that emotionally connect and engage, and last but not
least, she taught us how to harness the power of our own
personal narratives. Her experiences from selling
books door to door to scaling some of the most successful SaaS companies
(53:58):
are a testament to the transformative power of stories in
connecting with buyers and driving improved sales
performance. Remember, your stories aren't just about
products or services. They're about building trust, creating emotional
connections, and aligning on shared values. If you're
looking to elevate your sales game or transform your team's
(54:19):
approach to storytelling, be sure to check out culture driven sales for
more insights from Kelly. And thanks for tuning in to the ValuePro
Show. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this
episode with anyone who needs a little storytelling inspiration.
And until next next time, keep delivering the value your buyers
love.
Welcome to the value pro show where value pros get value
ready.
Welcome to another episode of the value pro show. I'm your host,
Bruce Shearer. And today, we have an incredible conversation
lined up. Joining me is none other than Kelly Wright, a
powerhouse in sales and go to market leadership with an impressive
(00:23):
career that includes scaling Tableau from its early
days to a $1,000,000,000 IPO, and also leading
strategic initiatives as the immediate past present at
Gong. Today, she's joining us as the founder of culture
driven sales, a firm dedicated to creating alignment between
company missions, cultures, and go to market strategies. Kelly's
(00:45):
here to share her insights on the power of storytelling in
sales and how it can transform the way you connect with
buyers, building trust, and ultimately closing more
deals. So grab your coffee so you can try your best to
match Kelly's incredible energy, get comfortable, and
let's dive in. So here we are today chatting with,
(01:07):
Kelly Breslin Wright about the power of stories.
To help us get in the in the in the mood and talking about
stories, Kelly, would you mind giving us your your story, if
you would, just to kick us off? Bruce, first of all,
just thank you so much for having me today. What a fun
opportunity to chat with you again and to be able to
(01:29):
share stories back and forth. So what
is my story? Well, I I it's hard to know how far back to go,
but I'll just give you kind of my abbreviated life story.
I actually started when we think about
stories, I fell in love with sales and stories when I was
in college. I was looking for a summer
(01:52):
job, and I decided to do this crazy summer job
where I sold educational books door to door, ran my own business
selling educational books door to door. And I did this for 4
summers. And over the 4 summers in college,
I sat down with over 12,000
families in their houses to talk about kids' school and education.
(02:14):
And what I found was, 1, I loved doing
something that was impactful. I loved being able to help
solve people's challenges and problems. But most
importantly, it was just so fun for me to
hear everyone's unique story, and that's when I really fell in love
with sales and entrepreneurship. And so that goes all the
(02:36):
way back to when I was in college. If I walk through my career after
selling books, I worked for Dale Carnegie training, and I
actually sold sales training. I sold public speaking
training. After that, I sold residential
mortgages at Bank of America, so sold all kinds of things. Sold books,
sold training, sold mortgages of financial services, and
(02:59):
then I ended up going back to business school. I went to Wharton for
business school and thought, well, if I wanna be an entrepreneur or a business
leader, I should understand more about all the
different components of business. So I worked for a while in
strategic consulting at McKinsey and then at Bain and Company,
but then I decided sales is really my
(03:22):
jam. Like, I that's what I really love to do. So in
the Internet boom, I left consulting. I
went and worked for this small technology startup called Ad hoc where
I was running sales and client services for a
while. And then I ended up going to this little
known startup right when it was getting started. I
(03:44):
was employee number 10 and the 1st salesperson
1 month before we launched version 1 of this company
called Tableau. And I was at Tableau running
all sales as executive vice president of sales and chief
revenue officer from basically 0 in revenue
till almost a1000000000 through the IPO. And
(04:05):
I'm sure we'll end up talking about some of that time because that was when
we were really using stories in building our sales market,
and sales motion. After Tableau, I did a bunch of board
work, and I one of the boards
actually asked me to come back to be chief operating officer and president.
So that was Gong, so I ended up having some time at Gong. And
(04:27):
now I'm really spending time on my own business
venture, which is called Culture Jibbon Sales, which I founded as,
as a way to help other companies and other individuals really build
their go to market motion. Absolutely. Thanks so much for your
background, and that's personal story, Kelly. Really love it. And
Tableau, I'm so honored, you know, that I had the opportunity to
(04:50):
work with you and and your fantastic team at
Tableau. Not not when you were employee number 10. I don't know when what you
were employee of at that point in time, but we we did, you know gosh.
Dang. I was funny that we're talking
about stories because that's how you and I met because we
brought you and your team in to help us
(05:12):
really finesse and figure out how to tell
our own unique Tableau story in a way where it was captivating.
It was emotionally connecting. It was differentiated.
And so you are a pro at
storytelling, and so I just feel honored to be able to talk about it with
you because you're one of the key masters of it. Yeah. No. Love it. Love
(05:35):
it. So, Kelly, that's a wonderful background of of where how
you got to where you are today, but could you tell us about culture driven
sales? What's the story behind this new firm of yours?
Yeah. Well, Bruce, everything everything starts with
mission and vision of a company. And so product and the service is
important, of course. But how do you engage with
(05:57):
customers, attract your prospects, tell your
unique story? It all comes back to the company's
purpose and the why, and this threads back to stories.
So I'll I'll communicate this with the story as I always talk in stories
myself. So when I was, finished my time at
Tableau and I knew I wanted to do some board work and I wanted to
(06:19):
do some speaking, I decided that I would
meet with a bunch of founders and heads of
sales and CEOs so that I could understand how I could be the
most valuable when people thought about sales and go to market. So in
that first, maybe 18 months after my time at
Tableau, this is back in 2,000 16,
(06:41):
2017, I met with over a
100 founders and CEOs. And most
of these were in hypergrowth tech, but they were in all different sectors and
all different size companies, public companies, private companies.
And I was meeting these CEOs because I would meet them at
a CEO summit, at a go to market, or a sales
(07:03):
seminar. Oftentimes, companies were calling and had
questions if I could help them with consulting or whatever it may be. So I
was asking, well, what what's your biggest challenge in sales and go to
market? And oftentimes, companies would say or the CEO would
say, well, our sales and marketing team is not aligned, or our
sales team is trying to sell something that's different than what our product team is
(07:25):
building, or we're just not on the same page. We just
don't have alignment. And so it gave me this epiphany, and I started
asking these questions of to the CEO. Well, what's your mission?
What's your mission, and what's your company purpose? And it
was very interesting. First of all, not everyone even had a
mission, and not everyone could even tell me what their story
(07:47):
was. But even if they had a mission, oftentimes,
their mission wouldn't match the words of what their mission was on their website.
Or on their website, they'd have something on their own page and something else on
their hiring page and something else on their about page. And then I'd start
asking, well, can I talk to the different executives on your team? And
maybe the CEO would have a different answer to what
(08:09):
their mission and story was to the cofounder, and that was a
different answer to the head of product and a different answer to the sales team.
And I was just scratching my head of, well, of course, you're not gonna
have alignment if you go to a company and the executive
team is telling different stories about who they are and
why they exist? How in the world are your salespeople
(08:31):
and your marketers, and how are your employee or your
employees gonna understand what you're doing, and how are your customers gonna even understand what
you're about? And so I decided, okay. I
need to actually put together this understanding and framework
that is you have to have an integrated umbrella go to
market strategy, which is tightly coupled with your company
(08:53):
strategy. And what how does this all start? It
starts first way at the top of what is the
company's mission and vision. Why does a company
exist in the first place? 2nd, well, what are your
company core values and your operating principles? Because that
helps to explain how you're going to actually do
(09:16):
business and how you're going to engage with your employees and your
customers and your prospects and your partners. But then once you
understand your mission and your vision and your core values,
then you have to be able to articulate what is
your unique company story. And that company
story is not the what and the how. We it incorporates
(09:38):
that too, but it's your why. It's what is your company's purpose?
What is your why? What is the whole essence of the company and the
reason that you exist? So you have your mission vision. You have your core
value. You have your company story, and then this is how you
start to communicate why you're different. What are your
differentiated value propositions, and how should you engage with
(10:00):
your ideal customer profile who actually cares about that? And then
this flows down to how you're gonna go to market and your sales motion
and all the operational pieces. And so when I realized this and
started talking to companies about this, they they
were, we don't actually have a framework for them. And so
I decided to teach a course on go to market strategy
(10:22):
and sales strategy, And I taught this course at
University of Washington at the Foster School of Business MBAs. And
then I had a number of CEOs and sales leaders
who said, well, why are you only teaching this to MBAs?
We can actually use this help as well. And that was the
impetus of culture driven sales. So culture driven sales, sometimes people
(10:45):
think, what is culture about in the culture driven sales? But the culture is if
you want to actually drive sales, is if you
want to actually drive sales, how are you integrating into your overall narrative and your
sales motion, the mission, the
vision, the why, your company story in a way that it can
the why, your company story in a way that it
(11:06):
connects with other people, that's how do you drive the whole
culture in? Because my belief is if you actually
nail that culture piece that emotionally
connects, that brings people in, you're gonna drive a lot
more sales than if you're just focused on the how and the what, which
is all about data and facts and features and functions
(11:28):
because it's important, but that's not what's gonna drive people to make
decisions, and it's not gonna drive them to engage with you. And so
Yeah. That's the statistical church of the sales. Yeah. Thank
you for describing the mission of your own firm, and, gosh,
that resonates so much with me. I used to have a jokingly
joking phrase, but it actually comes from reality. Adobe acquired
(11:51):
a company, and, I'd spoken to 10 different executives and got 10
different stories before I started working with them. And, you know, it's just
normal, that lack of alignment. And, I love what culture
driven sales can do for a firm to create that type of
alignment. And, especially, when you're involved, the momentum that that's
really gonna, bump performance. So fantastic.
(12:13):
Well, let's, talk a little bit more than about why story.
You know, you know, why is it so critical for go to market
and sales improvement? What do you have to say for us there?
I mean, Bruce, we we just we just talked about this in a way, but
people are just attracted to stories. It's the facts, and it's
the truth. Stories engage people.
(12:36):
They engage other human beings, and they help people
to connect and to emotionally connect. They
also help to convey the real meaning of what people are trying to say,
and you can see this literally for generations.
Think about how families pass down their traditions,
how they pass down their come their family stories, how they
(12:59):
pass down their recipes. They do this with stories.
And this is how lessons are conveyed to children too. I mean, when you're
trying to teach a young child something, rather than
just tell them, do this, do that, do that, you do this with stories.
That's why there's books and there's Aesop's
fables that are actually teaching moral
(13:22):
stories and valuable lessons through
these stories that the kids can relate to and that they can understand.
And so, I mean, you can even think about this. Consider what you remember most.
Take it out of business altogether. We go to a dinner party.
And when you're at a dinner party and people are going around the table
and talking, who is it that people want to listen to? Who
(13:45):
is it that people gravitate to? It's the person that actually
can engage in these stories where people just they want
to listen. They find it interesting and compelling, and they're
drawn in, and then they remember that. And so
people and companies often put tons of words together, but they
don't land. They aren't memorable.
(14:08):
People, though, do remember stories. They land.
They emotionally connect. They are memorable, and this is what people
remember. And this is true with the way that the brain is wired
too. There is tons of research on this that
shows that the brain actually
can process stories. It sets off the brain in a
(14:31):
way that people listen and engage better. And so
if you think about companies throwing all these facts and data,
that's important, but the brain is not necessarily gonna
engage. There's also research that shows that people
make decisions not only with rational thought, but with
emotional thought. And stories are what are tapping
(14:53):
into that emotional side of the brain. And so when
companies are or when people are making decisions about what to buy,
they are making these decisions for emotional
reasons, and this is all critical to sales.
And if you want someone to buy your
product, you need to think about how are you engaging with
(15:17):
them in a way where they can hear you, they can
remember you, they can emotionally connect and understand
what you're doing. And this is all super, super important with
stories. Well, Kelly, let's talk about, just a
maybe set the table with a great story, you know, just as an
example. I think this is something that at
(15:39):
Tableau, we did very well. This was something that our
CEO was absolutely fantastic at. And a lot
of this comes back of I I started as the first salesperson,
employee number 10, 1 month before we launched version 1.
And when I started, the mission of the company at
Tableau was to help people see and understand
(16:01):
data. And that's still the mission now. You know? And I
joined in 2,005. And so that
kinda comes back to how do you have this overarching where
everyone's very clear on the mission and vision and the overarching
purpose. But then we also told the story, and we
told the story in every pitch deck when we met with
(16:23):
investors. We started off when we talked with customers, and
the story was pretty short. It talked about the impetus
and the founding story of Tableau. And what happened
was at the the Department of
Defense had a had approached one of our founders,
Pat Hamrahan, who was the founded one of the founders
(16:45):
of Pixar. He actually created the technology behind
Pixar, and he was, and still is a decorated
computer scientist and professor at Stanford. And he has 3 Academy Awards
for his work in data, and visual graphics and
visualization. And the Department of Defense came to him and said,
hey, Pat. Can you help solve one of the key business problems of the
(17:08):
world today? And that is that the whole
world of databases and rows and columns of text is
totally divorced and separated from the world
of visual graphics and visualization. And
there's all this science that shows that the brain and the
eye actually can process data better, huge
(17:30):
amounts of data when it's represented in pictures. And so is there a way
that you can help tie this together? And that is actually how Tableau got
started. So, Pat ended up joining up with the lead
PhD on the product, which were on the project at
Stanford, who is Chris Stolte, and they developed
this very interesting way to drag and
(17:51):
drop visualization, and then they joined up with
Christian Chabot, who is our CEO. And Stanford's very good at helping companies
spin out, but the whole idea is, hey. People have
tons of questions with their data. Is there a better and simpler way
that we could leverage visualization and visual graphics
to help people have a more interactive
(18:13):
conversation with their data? And we started with the this with
everyone because it brought people in. It was a new approach to business
intelligence. It was a new approach to how people thought about
doing data analytics. Because everyone said, hey. I have
questions. And there's tons of people in my organization who are not
savvy with data, and they have questions too. So if I can
(18:36):
empower more people to be more self-service, to answer their own
questions with data, then I'm very interested. And what this
did is it drew in not only our prospects and
our customers, but it actually attracted tons of employees who
wanted to be part of this mission that we were doing
to help people be able to be empowered
(18:59):
to answer their own questions. And that was
super compelling company story. So that was one
example of a company story. I think a second
story, if we go away from the company side, though,
is over the core this is more of a personal
(19:20):
30 plus years in sales and tech, I've
done a lot of keynotes and a lot of speeches.
And so when you're doing a keynote, it might be at a customer
conference. It might be at some kind of a partner event. It could be
a company kickoff or a sales kickoff. I kinda took an
approach very early days. This this will illustrate that I'm,
(19:42):
like, hugely a story person, but
I thought, okay. I'm gonna be giving a whole bunch of data and
facts and talking about our results and talking about what our
goals and priorities are. But I want people to actually listen
and be engaged, so I try to always weave in
some kind of a personal story. And what I decided to do
(20:05):
in these talks is weave in something with my kids of some
kind of a lesson about leadership with my
kids. And this was a very short bit. It would be 3
or 5 minutes in each hour long talk. So I'd talk
about when my son came to the office and he wanted to learn about
sales. I would talk about some trip of some
(20:27):
lesson that we had based on my my kids. I would
talk about taking my my children to a
movie and something that happened that we engage with how people
were interacting within the theater. And I'd tell these
stories. And the interesting thing is still today,
like, over a decade later, when I run into someone
(20:49):
who is in that room, they often will say to
me like, it happened to me just recently. I ran into someone.
This speech was, like, 15 years ago. And that person didn't
remember what sales goals we were talking about or
or, like, what were the numbers on the screen, but they said, oh, your
son that came to office that you told that story about
(21:11):
wanting to do sales, like, he's probably in college
now. What is he doing? Is that what he wants to do? Does he wanna
go into business or do something else? And so it lands. People
remember it. They retain it, and that's how they
connect with you even a long time later. So the power of
stories, I think, is just evident in everything
(21:32):
we do, and it's just human nature. Yeah. I I love
what you just framed. Those those are two beautiful examples of how
you're connecting with with with your buyers and in in a way that
is extremely memorable, especially the tableau of, you know,
y story, if you would, the the mission and the origin.
So powerful for people wanting to be behind that and understanding, you know, the
(21:54):
rationale and the differentiation from that. I just wanted to give you
props for that because you were helpful in
helping us to frame and articulate that story in a simple
way where everyone could explain it, where we
were aligned on it and it emotionally connected. So thank
you to you years later for helping us to articulate that story.
(22:16):
Of course. Yeah. No. It's such a wonderful story, and, you know,
so grateful to be part of that. Well, let's, Kelly, let's
talk about, how to improve sales
performance with stories. And we already you already did illustrate with a
couple of examples, but I'd love for you to help the audience kinda
frame this, you know, the different types of
(22:38):
stories. The first is the company story. So what
is very interesting is oftentimes, company
will bring me in and say, can you help us with our company story? And
they'll show me their narrative, and they'll show me their customer pitch deck. And
it's all about the what and the how. We've talked about that a lot. It's
not very much about the why. It's all very tactical.
(23:00):
And they'll have the salespeople go, and they're leading with that. And
they're saying, well, it's not as effective. And then I'll say, well, if
you bring the CEO to the meeting, how does the CEO tell that story?
And then I'll go have a meeting with the CEO or I'll listen to one
of the CEO's pitches, and it's totally different.
The CEO has this story that ties back to the company
(23:22):
why and why they exist and why the why the founder started the
company in the first place, and that is that emotionally
connected story. So how are companies making sure
not only everyone's aligned and not only that it's emotionally connected,
but how are they communicating the
story in a way where it actually draws in and helps
(23:44):
people to understand that essence in the why? And that comes back to
the company because people care. They wanna do business with
people that they're aligned with what your
purpose and mission is and why what you're all about. So that's the
first, the company story. The second is customer stories.
And this, again, most companies do have customer
(24:07):
stories. But if you go and you look at customer stories, much
of customer stories are again about the what and the
how. They're here's the customer's ROI.
Here's how they're using the product. This is how they got much
more efficiency and effectiveness. And that's all
really important, but it's not gonna be compelling enough
(24:29):
that your other customers and prospects are gonna necessarily
want to listen to all of that. And so if you think about the
customer and I have, you know, in training, we
used my my late very good friend, unfortunately passed away,
Skip Miller, always talked about the 3 the 3
levels of why. And most companies, when they go to the customer, they get
(24:53):
to the 1st level of why. Why is this prospect calling you in
the first place? Maybe they get to the 2nd level of why, which
is what is a meaningful difference that this is going to
have on the company or the company's
strategic goals. But what really matters if you can get to that 3rd
level of why, which is the individual
(25:14):
motivation for that person. So for that customer as a human being, not that customer
as a customer as a human being,
not that customer as a company because it's people that buy companies,
not I mean, people that buy products, not companies that buy product, but
we're always trying to sell company to company.
And if you think about these customer stories and here's another example of
(25:36):
a story of what we did at Tableau is we went
to all of our customers and asked them why did they buy
Tableau, and how did Tableau have an impact. And, initially,
they wanna talk about ROI, and they saved money, and they worked
faster. But we tried to get to that 3rd level of why,
and we had our customers saying, like, I remember stories
(25:59):
of one person said, I I have
my son is on a little league team, and I work so hard, and I
have so much work that I can never go to the
games. And then I started using Tableau, and Tableau helped me
to do everything so much faster and so much more effectively.
I was able to do what was taking me till 10 PM.
(26:21):
I was able to leave at, you know, 3
o'clock on those game days and still get my work done
and go to those little league games. So I feel like Tableau
has helped me to have a better relationship with my son. Or
another example where the customer said, I've been
trying to get a promotion, and I've been saying we should do these things with
(26:43):
data for so long, and no one really,
like, listened. And then I started using Tableau, and
Tableau has helped to drive our decision making in our
company so much that I've actually had 3 promotions
in just a short period of time that I've used Tableau. And so people
got very emotionally engaged, and this is what we
(27:06):
did with our customer stories. Of course, we talked about the ROI and how they
were using it, but we got into the actual human
essence of why that person cared, that bought
them level of why, the individual motivations of the
customer. And so I would ask for in your go to
market team and in your marketing and your sales, are you
(27:28):
actually using customer stories that they emotionally
connect, and they're driving a level of engagement and empathy
that people are gonna care, and it's not just about the data and
facts. So that's the second level, which is the customer level.
Excellent. Now, perfectly stated, how can you really resonate,
connect, and engage emotionally at that, you know, individual
(27:50):
buyer level. That that's really powerful. Well, let's,
talk about the 3rd. It's good for
individuals when they're first interacting with the
prospect or customer to actually tell their own personal
story as to why they're working for this company
in the first place, why they're passionate about this company's mission.
(28:13):
And that is like for instance, if you think about podcast, all
podcast, what they're doing is they're trying to get people's personal stories.
Right? What is the story? And so the whole world operates in
stories, but companies end up spending a lot of time and
energy on their company story, maybe some on
their customer story, but they don't actually invest
(28:36):
in having their sales and marketers and the rest of
their executive team understand understand how to
actually tell their own personal story in a way where it
fits in to the whole broader equation.
Absolutely. Yeah. So so many things, to say about this one.
I used to do a presentation, Kelly, called connect before you
(28:59):
sell, which is a little bit of a misnomer because, you know, you don't sell
anything if you don't connect, and, you know, it it goes hand in hand.
But first, connect, you know, at a personal level. You know, make
make sure there's some sort of a trust bond so you can move
forward into some of the bigger dialogues that you're gonna have together as part of
that whole buying experience. But, you know, the personal
(29:21):
story really does help in creating that bond. As you
say, even, you know, with people coming back to you 15 years later
remembering your personal story about your kids at that point in time and
checking in because because they care, because you created that bond from the
stage or or even from the one to one dialogue that you're having. But, you
know, the personal stories are are the best at that, you know, where you
(29:44):
can tell common stories and figure out what what your buyer
believes in, what's important to them, what are they passionate about, and you're sharing
yours, and you're looking for those points of connection through those personal
stories. Absolutely. Laid out. Well laid
out. Well, why do so we've got our 3 types of
stories. Why don't we talk a little bit more, Kelly, next about just how do
(30:05):
you create these stories and integrate these stories into your go
to market or sales motion?
Yes. Well, Bruce, as as we've talked about,
companies spend a lot of time and energy developing playbooks
and stories, but there could be a lot
more training and learning of how to be effective storytellers.
(30:29):
So if you think about how companies engage their go to market
teams, I mean, there's a whole bunch of trainings around it. You have,
you know, solution selling, spin selling, customer centric
selling, and then all these other sales
philosophies and methodologies, Medpick, all these different things.
But are people and companies actually spending enough time
(30:52):
teaching storytelling? And so this goes
back to one of the things that we had done when I was a
leader is realized, well, maybe we should
actually invest in storytelling. And so and this goes
back to time at Tableau, which is my longest tenure. I was there for 12
years as sales leader, and we went and told all of
(31:13):
our sales leaders, all of our go to market leaders, a 100%
of our enterprise sellers that we were putting them through a storytelling workshop.
And people thought this was crazy. Like, why are you spending money
on storytelling? Can't you tell like, we're trying to get into enterprise
selling more. Can you teach us more
about this customer centric selling or whatever was the latest enterprise
(31:36):
selling fad? We said, no. We're we're gonna take a different approach, and we're gonna
teach the storytelling. And so we brought everyone in the room,
and a lot of that was, well, can you start off with a
personal story? Tell us who you're about, how like, why
why are you here? How do you tick? Tell us something about
customer stories. We help to get everyone to understand how to tell company
(31:58):
story. And an interesting thing happened with this because if you're telling
stories, you have to get personal. People were able to show much more
vulnerability. But 2 interesting takeaways came from this.
One is at the end of this whole
session, we had a bunch of our
salespeople that said, wow. This was super powerful. This
(32:21):
is not only helping me to connect with my
customers and prospects. This is helping me to
better connect with my coworkers and my direct reports.
It's helping me on a family level to connect better with my
significant other and with my kids and my family
members. Like, this has been profound in life changing.
(32:43):
That was the first interesting takeaway, which was unexpected.
The second was oftentimes when I, as the sales leader
in the the chief revenue officer type, was brought in
to talk to our customers and our customer execs. It
happened very frequently that these executives who are our
key buyers said to me, hey, Kelly. I just have
(33:05):
a question for you. Try to understand, like, why is
it that your salespeople seem to
understand our our what we're doing so much
better? Like, we're dealing with tons of other of your competitors
and other vendors, and they're trying to sell us all these different things. And I
know you're trying to sell, but it seems like your
(33:27):
team is understanding us on a different level.
And I realize it's all coming back to the storytelling. People are
starting with stories, and they're developing a
sense of trust, of openness, of vulnerability
where the prospects able to open up in a way where maybe they
weren't if we were just going back to the beginning, peppering them with questions. And
(33:49):
so I think that companies should be thinking,
like, are they actually intentionally
training how people can tell
stories instead of just walking through a pitch deck.
So that's number 1 of a really important
how to. Yeah. If I could anchor on that just for a little bit, what
(34:12):
what you're saying there, in my experience with Tableau and you,
Kelly, is, we were able to train everybody in
in the Tableau story from chairman, you know, to to
frontline, to to even product development, etcetera.
So it became whole company training, which was so
impressive for people to be able to embrace that.
(34:34):
And then, the way we crafted that story as, you know,
it was being delivered to 2 potential buyers.
You know, we were in inside their mind, Kelly. I don't know if I mentioned
to you, but when I was doing a bunch of testing of the story
with Tableau customers, you know, they they I would share some of
the visuals, and that's also what made, the Tableau story so
(34:56):
powerful. There are visuals to back it up and and to help with that, you
know, the memory forming on behalf of the buyer. But when I chose
some of those visuals, they would just go, oh my gosh. That's us.
You know? We we really got inside of their world in their
mind showing that current state visual
around that. And if you can remember, it was around, you know, the people dimension,
(35:18):
the experience dimension, the time dimension, but especially as it went to
the experience, and we talked about the report factory. And I I
just, you know, remember testing that, and then subsequently where customers, like,
just gonna, oh my god. That's us. You know? It's almost like, how did you
know? And they they would laugh a little bit sheepishly, but talk about
a connection point, just really meeting them where they're at.
(35:40):
Yeah. Well, Bruce, I think this brings up another point too. Like, the
whole world of sales and how companies
buy is evolving in a very big way. We're seeing a
massive, massive transformation. So I think that let's talk about
that just for a moment. It used to be when companies were
selling, they needed their marketing team and their salespeople
(36:02):
to give the large volume of information
about whatever that product was, but the world has changed.
There's so much information out there on the web.
And there's now you have AI that is giving all kinds
of information. There's tons of competitors. There's lots of
data that's available. And so your prospects and your customers
(36:25):
are very well versed probably when they come to you.
They already know 70 or 80% of what you
historically would have taught them along the way. They've already
done the research themselves. And so they're coming
to you to say, hey. I'm trying to decide
which which company I'm gonna go to, which solution I'm going to
(36:48):
use, and they're already very knowledgeable and well
versed in whatever it is that you're selling. And so what they're looking
for is they're looking for not only someone that they can trust
and someone that's gonna help them to achieve their ROI, but they're also looking
for a vendor that's gonna help teach them and provide some thought
leadership so that they can be challenged and listen and
(37:10):
learn along the way. And so this is a whole different
element of stories because companies often were all talking
about this is what we do and very vendor centric.
And that's not effective anyway because people don't wanna hear, like, all about the
vendor. But it's changed and become even more important that thought leadership
is very, very critical. And so if you think about
(37:33):
a customer saying, well, what is the state of the status quo?
What's the problem and the challenge to the status quo? And where
what is it that would help them to break out of the status quo in
a way where they could actually be better? Think about it of going to the
desired state or to the promised state. And then they're looking
for companies to help lead and guide to paint
(37:56):
a narrative of not only what their company is about, but how you're
going to help teach and bring and lead that company
to this promised desired state. And that is
all about framing this narrative and in a
storytelling in this thought leadership way. So I think
what companies can think about when they're thinking about
(38:18):
their narrative, their go to market approach stories,
it's not only, well, what are our company story and
our customer story and the personal story? What are the stories in a way that
can emotionally connect? That's number 1. Number 2 is,
how do we actually train our team to be
more skilled in storytelling?
(38:41):
Because storytelling I mean, if you think about it, you go look at
your best salespeople. Almost always, your best
salespeople are your best communicators, and your best communicators
are fantastic storytellers. So communication and
storytelling and emotionally connecting is all that. So the second is, how do you
train them? But then you also have this 3rd piece when you think about the
(39:03):
how is how are you creating
thought leadership and a narrative of telling a
story of how you wanna guide and lead and
bring your customers to this new desired state.
And that is a company story that is related to your
company story, but it sounds slightly different. And so you should
(39:27):
be asking how skilled is your team on thought leadership and
telling those thought leadership stories. So those are the 3 how to that I
think are really important. Yeah. Absolutely. And should we talk
about, you know, where that comes from a little bit in terms of how to
how to craft the the story? I thought that could
be interesting. Well, you know, where does the thought
(39:49):
leadership and where where where does that narrative come from?
I think a lot of that, Bruce, goes back to this
whole thought the thought leadership is tied to the narrative. So you have
your mission, vision, differentiated value proposition,
and this is a lot I mean, this is a whole impetus of what I
teach in culture driven sales. This is basically, like, what my
(40:12):
course is and what the framework is and the thought leadership of
this. It is you want to understand from your
prospects what is the current state of
affairs? Like, what it where are they in right now,
and what is frustrating and challenging to them in that
current state? And if they were to look at this current
(40:34):
state, then where is it that they want to go? So this is what I
was talking about. What is the desired state? What is the place
they want to be? And then there's a gap. There's a gap
between the current status quo and the desired state.
This is why they're talking to you
you in the 1st place. If they didn't care and they didn't have this challenge,
(40:54):
they wouldn't even be engaged in your company to solve a problem. But
rather than just talk about, here's all these features and functions and
ROI and data to get you from here to there.
What you actually want to do is you wanna understand,
well, what are the biggest challenges with
the current state? And then you know what your
(41:17):
company is super good at, And then you need
to figure out what are your unique
differentiated value propositions. So companies
should have maybe 3 to 5. Some companies have 25
value propositions. It's way too many. And oftentimes, people will have
value propositions that all of their other competitors have, so they're not
(41:39):
differentiated at all. So you wanna think in a unique and differentiated
way. What are the 3 to 5 most important
differentiated values you have? And then you do this in a thought leadership
way where you're marrying it together. So you say, what are the
challenges with the current state? And you wanna get out of the current state and
get to the desired state. Well, your biggest challenges
(42:02):
are these four things, and then
those four things exactly map with our
value propositions. So to give you an example of that, and since
we've been talking about Tableau, go back to Tableau. Like, the
biggest challenge that people had was time. It
took people way, way, way too long. And if you
(42:24):
look at the other things that they had, it took too long. It was too
complicated, so you had to have a very, very skilled
computer scientist or data scientist to do it. And it
took took way too many resources for them. So you had to have
a whole teams taking huge amount of time, but it
actually drew them away from other important stuff. So there were
(42:46):
some other things, but when you think about that,
if you said, well, people doing data analytics
is taking too much time. It's taking way too highly
specialized people. And of those people, it's
taking way too much of those people's resources.
Well, what Tableau did is it created this self-service
(43:09):
where people could do what was taking weeks months in
literally minutes and hours. It was a self-service, so when it
empowered everyone to be a data worker where you didn't have to be
a specialized data scientist
to do it. You could have anyone who is in recruiting or sales
or marketing or product be able to answer their own own
(43:32):
questions. And 3, it freed up these really complex
resources that you wanted them to be able to be doing more
complicated tasks that you freed up all their time, so
it freed up all these resources. A
thought leadership around where we told our company story.
(43:53):
We were able to tell a picture of the status quo. We were able to
explain this what the desired state was, and then we were able to
come up with very
differentiated unique value propositions where we could make
this claim knowing that our competitors couldn't
touch us with the 10 foot pole on that. And so that's the kind
(44:15):
of thought leadership you wanna be thinking. How can you teach them and guide them
in the future and then tie that back to your
company story and narrative that makes you very differentiated?
Oh, per perfect. Perfect. Well, let's talk about some of the,
traps and pitfalls to avoid when when
crafting these amazing stories. Do you wanna go first? Or
(44:40):
Well, do you have anything that you wanna start with? Well, yeah, I'll
I would. Typically, you know, we we did talk
about either delegating it down or delegating it
out, you know, to try to work on a story. And with
the tableau story, you know, I can remember it like it was
yesterday. But, you know, we all got into a, you know,
(45:02):
wonderful hotel room at the time and just batted ideas
around. Kelly, I don't know if you were there
personally. There there's probably about 25 people there. And,
from product development, from sales, from marketing, you know, and
we were just getting ideas on the table, which was
fantastic for a few different reasons. A lot of those ideas were
(45:25):
excellent. But, b, you know, the the revenue
team effectively was uniting and working
towards this common goal of having a really compelling
story. So that level of involvement, I,
is is unlike things I I typically see where
it gets delegated down or out, and then and then it sometimes it
(45:47):
comes back really good. Oftentimes, it doesn't. Or most
often, it doesn't. But sometimes it comes back really good, but then it goes
onto the shelf or the digital shelf, if you would, and
nobody uses it. But in in Tableau's instance,
everybody effectively had a hand in creating
the narrative and owning it over time, which
(46:10):
was really special. Yeah. Bruce, I
I completely agree with you. I think if let let's go over some
of the traps and pitfalls. The first, I would a
100% agree with you that be careful
about not delegating down or out because when
you think about a company story remember, a company story is not
(46:31):
just a messaging playbook. It is
your company story is tightly integrated with your go to market
strategy, and this all threads back to your mission, your
vision, your purpose, the why, which is your company
story. And you need to make sure everyone on
your executive team, everyone on your board is completely
(46:53):
aligned by that. Otherwise, you might have a story that sounds really good,
but it's not gonna land. It's not gonna drive alignment, and
it's not gonna be used. So you need to make sure
that you have, it's it's an
having a company story is an executive level
top priority. So that's the first. I thinks too
(47:16):
is companies don't focus enough on the
why. And a lot of that is because it's much easier to
do the what and the how. It's easy to say, this is what we
do. Here are our features. Here are our functions. Here are
our benefits. This is how we implement,
and it's actually really hard to put
(47:39):
everyone in a room to figure out how are you gonna
tell a story, how are you gonna convey a mission where it's
short, it's succinct, it's powerful, it's engaging,
it emotionally connects? It's it's very
hard. It's one of the hardest parts about coming up with the
whole go to market and marketing and sales strategy. And
(48:01):
so because it's hard and it requires people sitting in a
room for a long period of time talking about what
words evoke the right emotions, what what,
what are the feelings you want people to think? How are you gonna
actually engage in, like, in a
connected type of way? It's not the way people usually
(48:24):
think when we're working so fast on an operational tactical
way. And so many companies just bypass it. I mean, I've been at
companies. I've done a lot of advising, and oftentimes, they'll say, hey,
Kelly. I understand that you think mission and vision and company story
is all important. We are moving so fast. We
literally don't have time. So we're gonna bypass that, and we'll
(48:46):
come back at some point in the future. And I'm like, but you brought me
in to help drive alignment on your executive
team to help you figure out how you're gonna grow faster
and increase sales. And you're saying it's not important
to have a company, a holistic company story. Like, what else
could be more important? And and so I think they're just
(49:08):
kinda missing the So that is a huge other
tactical pitfall. So the first is don't delegate
it. 2, you have to make time to understand and communicate the
why instead of the what and the how. And I think the third,
and we've talked about this before, is you
actually have to invest in how people tell the story. You
(49:30):
can't just say, hey. We just developed this story, and now I have a pitch
deck, and everyone just go to it. That that's the 3rd.
And, actually, I'll add a 4th. The 4th is you have
to do periodic checking of asking all of
your salespeople, asking your marketing, asking your executive
team what is your story. And if you
(49:53):
ask 10 people and you get 10 different stories, then
you have work to do. And I'll tell you work.
It, like, it's more than 50% of the time. It could
be 70, 80, even more percent of the time that you
asked 10 different people. And you might not get 10
different answers, but you get more than 5 different answers, and then it's just not
(50:14):
gonna work. So that's another. Yep. No. I love it. No. I
think we did that really well, and then I think we just
need to move towards final thoughts. This has been so rich.
Any other thing that you'd love the audience to walk away with, Kelly?
I think, I would
(50:36):
I would challenge each of you whether it is
how you're engaging with your prospects and customers, how
you're talking to your peers at
work in your direct reports, or even think
about how you're engaging with people and communicating your personal
life. Just track yourself
(50:58):
for the day or for the week. Are you using
stories? And if you're not, try to integrate
them and see if you notice a difference. Like, are people
engaging better when you use stories? And, of course, the answer is going
to be yes. So are you peppering with questions
instead of stories? If if so, tweak it. And
(51:21):
just see how you can whether you're doing an
intro, you're doing a speech, you're doing a 1 on
1, Try to thread in those stories because,
remember, the best salespeople and
the best communicators, and I would say the best
leaders and the best employees, they're the ones
(51:44):
that know how to have empathetic two way communication,
and they are going to be fantastic storytellers.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's, talk
about just, you know, you did lay out stories should
be a top priority for for any executive team, and you gotta get
that right that drives alignment and go to market success.
(52:07):
How can people reach out to you for that type of support, Kelly?
Oh, perfect. Well, I would love to connect with as many of you as possible.
You can find me on LinkedIn. Just go search for
Kelly Breslin Wright and Culture Driven Sales. You can also find
me on my website, which is www.culturedrivensales.com.
(52:28):
On that site, there's a bunch of articles. There's a series of
different podcasts. I also do
executive seminars that help companies to
understand who are we and why do we exist, walking through how to
have an effective integrated go to market strategy. So if your
company is interested in that, whether it is for your company
(52:50):
internally or for venture capital funds or PE
firms if they wanna bring a collection of different executives from
different companies together. I offer seminars on all of
that. But most importantly, just use your stories, and I'd
love to hear from you. So reach out on LinkedIn or on my site.
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you, Kelly. Thanks for all this wisdom, all
(53:13):
this practical wisdom on just embracing the
power of stories. Really appreciate it. And thank you,
Bruce, to one of the main pros in the worlds of storytelling.
So thanks for having me today. Awesome. Thank you.
What an insightful conversation with Kelly. She gave us a
master class in the art of storytelling and sales. She covered the
(53:36):
importance of anchoring your company's mission and vision within your company
story, how to craft compelling customer stories
that emotionally connect and engage, and last but not
least, she taught us how to harness the power of our own
personal narratives. Her experiences from selling
books door to door to scaling some of the most successful SaaS companies
(53:58):
are a testament to the transformative power of stories in
connecting with buyers and driving improved sales
performance. Remember, your stories aren't just about
products or services. They're about building trust, creating emotional
connections, and aligning on shared values. If you're
looking to elevate your sales game or transform your team's
(54:19):
approach to storytelling, be sure to check out culture driven sales for
more insights from Kelly. And thanks for tuning in to the ValuePro
Show. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this
episode with anyone who needs a little storytelling inspiration.
And until next next time, keep delivering the value your buyers
love.
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