⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️
Today’s edition dives deeper into an area I see missing from a lot of sellers’ toolkits, which was immensely beneficial throughout my career – being able to convey a point of view like a founder CEO.
Let’s go!
Read time: <5 minutes
If you missed last week, read it here.
Who do you sound like?
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” – Steve Jobs
People think I’m crazy when I say sales is a creative role.
Yet, I benefited immensely from being creative in sales, and I continuously see the top voices in sales sharing powerful benefits of being creative in their roles too.
But creativity is often mistaken as something you’re born with or it has to be flashy or complicated. That’s not the case at all. Sometimes it simply comes down to how you communicate. And the best way to communicate is through stories.
No one, in my experience, does this better than founder CEOs. These are the mavericks that saw a solution when there was a problem and had the gusto to make it come to life.
Learning to talk like these folks can be a massive upgrade to your sales career (and add an extra comma to your commission checks).
In today’s edition, I’ll point out some simple examples and an exercise you can do to elevate your ability to communicate big ideas to important executives like a founder CEO.
Find a few founders you resonate with
“Storytelling is by far the most underrated skill when it comes to business.”– Gary Vaynerchuk
When I entered the enterprise space with Revel, I was starting to come into my own as far as having a voice that could drive interest and action amongst a group of executive stakeholders.
I credit this to being able to talk and present differently than my peers and competitors. When I was speaking to others, I was trying to speak with a distinct point of view about our product. It was less about positioning solutions (a mobile, cloud-based point of sale) and it was more about communicating a bold vision for the future of commerce in hospitality.
One of our partners, Olo, were masters of communicating this vision. In fact, their CEO Noah Glass, was one of the best at articulating this future.
Noah never led with Olo. He always led to Olo by describing in very simple, yet powerful terms what the future of hospitality holds. In fact, here’s a 55 second clip of him doing so:
Notice Noah’s tone (calm but passionate), his demeanor (alive but not overly energetic), his confidence (clear but not complicated with jargon), and his story arc (brief but connected to what they do at Olo).
Let’s look at another example from a founder CEO I admire, Aaron Levie of Box. Here he is recently on CNBC talking about the power of AI in Enterprise:
Like Noah, Aaron does well to articulate the vision of what’s possible while leading to Box, not leading with Box. Notice the absence of any complicated language or jargon? It’s simplistic, clear, and inspiring.
Who are the brands or companies you admire the most? Is a founder CEO still in charge? If so, start following them and bookmark their interviews on YouTube and watch (and re-watch) them while you’re on a plane, sipping on your coffee in the morning, or during quiet time on a Saturday morning.
This repetition will serve you well.
You’ll also notice there is a similar blueprint in how they communicate:
– Speak simply
– Be natural and organic
– Don’t be afraid to talk with your hands
– Paint a vision that is bigger than features
– Communicate ideas through stories
– Lead to, not with your company
A simple exercise to upgrade your talk track
“People don’t need more information. They want faith—faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell.” – Annette Simmons
Imagine you’ve become CEO for the day and have to do a five minute exclusive interview on CNBC.
Pull out a journal or hop onto ChatGPT and pretend you have to go on CNBC’s Mad Money and talk to millions of people about:
– A big idea
– What you do
– How it got started
– What you’ve overcome
– What’s happening right now
– What’s exciting on the roadmap
Write, edit, then practice. Use ChatGPT to assist you using this prompt:
“I have to go on CNBC’s MadMoney to do an interview with Jim Cramer. I work at <your company> and I want to speak more like a founder CEO, like Aaron Levie at Box or Noah Glass at Olo <or your founder CEOs of choice> about the following 6 things:
1. Big idea
2. What we do
3. How it got started
4. What we’ve overcome
5. What’s happening right now
6. What’s exciting on the roadmap
Write this summary in the form of a natural script that I can practice regularly so that I am prepared for the interview. I want to sound natural, so be sure to incorporate these 5 key restraints:
1. Speak simply as if I am talking to a 6th grader
2. Do not use buzzwords or jargon
3. Paint a vision that is bigger than features
4. Communicate ideas through proven customer success stories
5. Lead to, not with my company
Don’t talk about our company in the big idea and be sure to give me at least one customer success story to share.”
Note: If your company is small or unknown, you may have to teach ChatGPT about it by pointing it to specific areas on your website before trying this prompt.
It won’t be perfect. Tweak, adapt, and try a few different versions. Then practice, and then practice some more. Make the entry, and then the talk track, sound and feel natural. Be able to tell a story rather than sound like you’re reading from a script.
This will force you to understand your company’s history and product suite in less than 24 hours and give you a natural talk track that you can use on-demand (at events, in meetings, sitting on a plane next to an SVP of your top prospect).
That’s a wrap! See you next week.
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