Sell Through Storytelling

[0:00] You have absolutely got to check out this episode because on this show, I'm going to show you some simple perspective shifts in how and why to tell stories that are perfect for salespeople of all experience levels to start implementing in your sales process, implementing when you speak and in your presentations, and telling stories that enroll people and overcome their biggest objections before they arise on your sales calls. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. If you are listening to this, you are likely leading a team responsible for generating revenue. Purpose of Full Funnel Freedom is to support people like yourself and keep your.

[0:45] Music. Welcome to the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Hamish Knox. I am really excited to have Kyle Gray as my guest today. Kyle is a world-class presentation coach, story strategist, and author who helps coaches, startups, and executives use storytelling to better communicate their unique value and improve sales with their audience. He combines timeless storytelling with cutting-edge marketing to ensure you've got the right story to tell while presenting, on a sales call, or in a conversation, both online and offline. Kyle, welcome to Full Funnel Freedom. Hamish, I'm so honored to be here. Talking about stories in the context of sales

[0:45] Funnels consistently, reliably full.

[1:35] is just one of the most exciting things to do. So I'm very happy to be here. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in and listening.

[1:44] I am a huge fan of stories and storytelling as well. That's how we used to share knowledge before we had the written world was we used to tell stories. So I'm curious about your story. I've given the audience the 30,000 foot view of who you are and what you do. Take us from where you started to how you got to where you are today. Yeah, there's a couple of threads of this. And since we're on a podcast, I'll take a little bit more time than I might if I was giving a speech. The first thread begins in my late teens I'm in a rock band I want to be a rock star I want to write music and lyrics that influence and impact people and playing playing in a band for a while doing my own thing for a while and I can remember putting a lot of pressure on myself to make it it happen in my early 20s to write the hit song and just souring myself, not enjoying the process anymore because I was trying to force it.

[2:43] After I've had a hard time finding my own meaning and purpose, and it's kind of this quest. Maybe most of us do, probably. So after losing music, I wanted to travel. All I knew is that I wanted to go another place as I guess I feel like kind of a strange person. And so when I was in another place as a foreigner, it felt more comfortable and made sense in kind of a way. I spent a lot of time living in South America, learned to speak Spanish and Portuguese, and had many adventures in the Amazon. I took a swing into a big lake, which would end up changing my life in a really interesting way. No ayahuasca or anything like that. Those are more modern things that everybody's excited about these days. But anyway as i was traveling the world i started to hear about people who were building businesses from their laptops and working wherever they wanted and i wanted to figure out how to do that but i didn't really it's like i'm not that much of an entrepreneur like i thought entrepreneur meant.

[3:48] I i associated it with like somebody with an mba and a powder blue shirt in a big glass building building. And that was what business meant to me. I think that's what business or even something as bold as sales, you know, especially a lot of people have those associations that are really kind of limiting factors and keeping them from treasures in a lot of ways. I started learning how to write and how to create sales with writing and stories and I got hired to work for a startup doing content marketing, telling their story for a few years. And this was the beginning of my writing and copywriting and eventually storytelling career.

[4:31] I've worked with some incredible minds as a consultant, helping them facilitate their workshops. And as this was happening, my body started to fall apart in different ways in my mid 20s as my career was going up.

[4:45] I started getting wrist pain. And when I figured out how to deal with the wrist pain, it would go to my elbow. My jaw felt like it was going to fall off my face. And I had this constant story I was telling myself of not being good enough, not working hard enough, not being worthy to achieve what I really was setting out to achieve. And no matter how many Tony Robbins books I read at the time, I couldn't get past him. One day I was sitting, facilitating a workshop filled with speakers, helping them position themselves to be great speakers and get on stages. And this workshop just so happened to be filled with health and wellness experts.

[5:25] These people were amazingly smart, deeply talented, spent years developing their skill sets and their knowledge and their expertise. And I remember sitting down next to one woman. And by this time, I had learned a lot about myself that I had a thyroid problem and probably some gut health issues, learning about that for the first time. And I sat next to a woman who helps people overcome chronic autoimmune diseases through better gut health. And I started sharing some of the stuff about my jaw. She could see the bags under my eyes. And I started speaking to the real experience. There's no big words. I didn't know what the fancy words were or what the doctor's things that they say or that my mitochondria needed more riboflavin or whatever I, started talking about the confusion of the different symptoms and not being confident in myself or my ability to Direct my life the way I wanted to because I was constantly.

[6:29] Afraid and adapting to weird health stuff all of the time I mean, I didn't notice know this at that time, but I didn't have access to my mindset when you feel bad when you feel anxiety biologically, It's difficult to think in the clarity and the creativity and your brain is always going to come up with other Reasons of why you're feeling that anxiety that usually aren't true. Mm-hmm, And it was in that conversation that I discovered that this sickness, this disease, was actually a gift. And I could help these people by using my storytelling and my life experience. And I went from being a copywriter, another copywriter blogger, to I help health and wellness experts share their story. And this helped me recover my health. I started doing a gut health, a thyroid protocol. call, I've worked with some of the best experts in the field and in many different ways. And I've been able to in my 30s, get a much stronger grasp over my own health, and have a value of that, that after hearing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people's stories firsthand, as a result of the work I do, learn how important and valuable a turning point in health is.

[7:52] There's nothing more fundamental. And so it was my honor to do that and help these people get their message out there. And I found purpose in that because I knew that there were people like me. And I had several other friends going through these things that now, knowing what I know now, were obvious and easy to treat. And we were doing all of the wrong things as 24-year-olds. I'm I'm drinking beers, I'm eating terrible food, and then I'm feeling such anxiety, wondering what's wrong with me. And it's like we laugh about it now. You're like, wow, that's so obvious.

[8:28] But it wasn't then. And there are so many doctors that are not reaching these people in the same way. And so it created a purpose for the pain that I had experienced, a resolution. And I went from I remember for one time hearing a coach asked me if Hashimoto's disease which was the thyroid condition could be a superpower and I laughed at him I thought that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard and.

[8:55] Now I can see it as a gift and in the same way I, When people come to work with me, it's not just about refining your speaking technique or making better slides, but most of the deep, brilliant experts that are selling amazing things that I work with, just like I did, I had a poor assessment of the value and the meaning of my story and experience, and for years, I let it determine things. And with a small shift, Hashimoto's disease went from being a curse to one of the best things ever to happen to me. That is an incredible story. And sales leaders, I hope you were as engaged as I was as Kyle was sharing his journey because I didn't fall off for a second. And too many times in my experience, I go see a speaker and they start telling a story. And within 45 seconds, like, can you just wrap this up, dude? Because like, I'm kind of bored. And I was engaged the whole way. So Kyle, thank you for that demonstration of a great story to tell your own story. And I am so happy to hear that you are back in better health, I would assume. Is that a fair statement? You're back in better health now? It's always a process, really.

[10:13] It's been, it's like a yoga practice. I am in better health. And I do little things to manage my diet and take good care of myself and most of the time I don't need to think about it. I could definitely do a lot better in some ways but it's not something that's constantly a part of my life anymore. Yeah, it sounds like you have a process to manage the condition. I hate to use that phrase. That's just the first thing that popped in my head and so you don't have to burn a bunch of mental and emotional energy on it every day because you've got a process set up.

[10:48] And processes are wonderful because it allows us that freedom to think on things. And so as we're looking at stories, and you've written a couple of books,

[10:56] which I'll definitely ask you to talk about in a bit more detail later. As we're looking at telling stories, how would you recommend, if you were coaching me or coaching one of the sales leaders listening today, what's a great starting point when someone says, Kyle, I just don't know how to tell stories? Yeah this is the most important thing and so many people they usually don't say i don't know how to tell stories they will say i don't have any stories to tell or they will say i have way too many stories to tell i don't know where to start either way you're speaking the truth they don't know how to tell stories and a lot of the times experts tell stories or teach which i i delve a lot into as much as a story and when they think about what story do i tell or what do i want to teach they think about themselves oh what kind of impacts do i want to have what kind of influence do i want to have what kind of results what's the coolest thing for me right now that i want to to share with these people.

[12:05] You can already see where I'm going with this. Sounds self-centered. Yeah. Everything that we do as experts is self-centered. They reference what's exciting and interesting to them as experts, and they build their ideas and content along those lines, as opposed to thinking about what a novice or somebody would ever think. And so they teach the wrong things and they teach things the wrong way and they tell the wrong stories. We'll start, we'll break each of those down. But the solution is always, what does my customer need? And to start with an origin story, what story could I tell to relate to my customer? Whereas we want to figure out what's the goal of the story, relate to our customer. So let's think about the customer. And normally in a process, and we'll go through this on my podcast soon, I'll ask you about the biggest pain points that your customers have. Maybe one's cash flow or not enough sales. If we're talking to salespeople, people. Well, let's then we can immerse ourselves in that experience for a little bit and start to feel what that's like. Because it's not just, oh, I don't have enough money. That's coming home and having to explain that to the wife or put off a vacation. Or maybe you don't explain it and you just hold it inside and you keep a nice smile over the dinner table while you're holding this weight.

[13:35] And they can see it in you, but they don't want to talk about it either. And there's just this this dull pain that you've been holding on to as a salesperson for a long time. And so now when we get to something like this, I can ask you, Hamish, when did you feel like that? And we can use our understanding of our customer and language as a way to sit ourselves in the right emotion. Because you can't just recall any moment at any time. We have to frame the mind and set up things. And so if we can put ourselves in the scent of an emotion, we can recall memories better. And usually we're not, and when we're trying to think about our customer, we're not thinking about ourselves. And so we don't, we, we, the stories that we would choose when I'm asking you questions would be ones that probably wouldn't naturally occur to you if you were sitting by yourself and thinking, what stories should I choose? Fair but yeah it's always around we start with the customer what do they need what are their pain points and the job of an origin story is not to make them understand you but to show them that you understand them it's to say i've been exactly where you've been i know what it's like to be you and the first place we start is making sure that we use our clients language language, even when we're telling our own story. It's a service to them.

[15:02] And we can move into that and how we teach as well. We don't just want to teach to show how cool we are or how smart we are or how effective we, this is really their strategy, but they believe if they just teach enough information, somebody is eventually going to come to the conclusion that this person is smart and I should listen to them.

[15:30] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote an article years ago called Educate and Be Destroyed, and it was related to that idea of like, well, if I just tell them a bunch of stuff, then they're going to think that I'm smart and they should work with them. No, actually, they go, thanks for the free consulting and see you again, never. And now all we've done is educated someone, and now we end up feeling frustrated, and now we're back at the dinner table with the pit in our stomach because we haven't closed a sale. That's a great way of framing it. and sales leaders, that idea of using their language, not our language, as a service to your customer is a great, great way. Reinforcing what Kyle said there is amazing. So Kyle, take this down a level and maybe this relates to your one clear path

[16:14] framework that you have as well. So once we have an origin story, once we are comfortable with that idea of framing it about our audience and not about ourselves. How do we actually go from, hi, everybody, nice to meet you, nice to see you, into actually delivering a story in a way that resonates with the buyer?

[16:38] Yeah, I'll go beyond that and explain what I think a presentation is and does. And hopefully, this will be relatable in the processes that somebody would see this in sales. I see a presentation as a sales call or a coaching call, but you know your clients so well that you can coach them at scale. We've done the homework in advance. And so we want to answer a couple of different questions. First, the first question is, what do we want them to do next? Is it book a call with us? Is it buy the thing directly, is it download the free thing? It's important that we know what that is and we want to be building towards that long before.

[17:28] We actually make the offer at the end. So once we know where we're going, then there's a series of small questions that we want to answer. The origin story, first five minutes, do I want to listen to this person? Because no matter how good your information is, if they don't like you or feel that you understand them or just flood them with information, then they're just going to add you to the long list of people that sound smart that can't do anything. Then the next phase in the teaching is, could this work for me?

[18:04] Not, how does this work? Everybody wants to teach how does this work with my process. I'll give you an example of this, and this is another kind of story that I'll teach about in a sec. I had a client that was a health and wellness coach, and she had a proprietary process. She worked with children with gut health problems. Okay. And so her process that she would go through in a sales call was called healthy gut, happy child. Excellent name. Love it. We all get it. Her first step in her process was one, eat more vegetables to eat fermented vegetables. Could you imagine telling a mom with a child with gut health problems to eat more vegetables? They would laugh at you and they would kick you out of the house. Of course, I want to feed my child more vegetables. It's the fact that they only will eat yellow cheese or explode. That's my problem. How do we deal with that? And that was basically what I asked her. And she immediately had the answer. It didn't occur to her, but she revealed this reverse psychology method that got kids to try vegetables and eventually like vegetables. I felt like I needed to work with her because I don't really like fermented things that Not much either.

[19:21] We changed the name of what she was talking about from Eat More Vegetables to Create an Adventurous Eater.

[19:30] Think about just that. Yeah, there's a context. We can see that in our minds. And a lot of us as experts, we want to talk about what they're supposed to do. We want to prescribe the action. And most of my work is just applying friction to these experts and standing for it's not what they need to do. It's what we're going to get after. I want to see myself in the kitchen with the adventurous eating child and a peaceful environment where my kid's eating broccoli and I'm finally relaxed. Or maybe I can have a nice Thanksgiving without worrying about a nuclear child meltdown for the first time. But we haven't at all talked about what the actual technique is to get the kid to eat it. Maybe you want to hear it. Maybe you don't. It's actually not important. Contrary to belief, we want to show them where they can go and why. And if we can get people believing that they can have an adventurous eater as a child, then they will want to move forward with us. We're overcoming objections and opening up possibilities, not teaching how to do things. Which I think should be, if a lot of salespeople should understand this pretty naturally on a call, They just probably haven't thought to apply this in the same way at when you're speaking.

[20:55] Fair point. I, my experience is sellers, especially technical sellers, right? They've been trained in the, uh, they've been trained in the product, right? I, I had a experience going to buy a stroller for my first daughter. My ex had done all the research and they knew the one that they wanted. And, but the seller had gone to stroller school. And so they had to show us absolutely everything. And they actually almost talked themselves out of a sale because we were ready to buy. We didn't have our credit card out, but we're like, can we have that one? And they went, don't you want to hear about it? And we kind of reluctantly said, sure. And then it was a 20 minute features and benefits demonstration that actually did more harm than good. So I love this idea from, you know, as sales leaders, you're coaching your sellers.

[21:44] It's not the how, listen to what Kyle's saying. It's the let them paint the picture. So Kyle, how do we get our sellers to be able to translate technical knowledge into stories that our buyer can see themselves in? Yeah. Just one point before we go into that is I bet that salesperson selling the stroller felt like they were kicking ass when they were doing that too. It felt good to them. Oh yeah. It was obvious from their body language. They were all pumped and excited. And actually I asked if there was a bassinet option because I had read something in a medical journal about the baby needs to be face up looking at the parent because they're not cognitively developed and uh and the seller said oh yeah it does and showed me and then said and they said oh well but you know after a year they're going to be like forget you mom and dad i want to go look out in the world and i went oh my god she's going to reject me after a year i thought i had to wait till she was 12 or 13 for this you have cleared my calendar, and the salesperson went what my ex was like he doesn't want to be here just wrap it up and let's get out of here. But that was how I extricated myself from the situation because I was like, I don't want to hear about it. I just want to buy it.

[22:53] Yeah. Well, and lucky him. Most of us don't have that good grace. And especially when we're on stage, we can't even have the conversation. But it's people's role in the audience to do that. That everybody wants to disqualify themselves as they are listening to your presentation because they've heard 12 other people just like you before and they overtaught them and then they tried to implement it about 10 as good as it would have been and then they add them to the list of people who don't work and so now you're the 13th one and they as as much as they want their problem solved they would also like to just add you to the list of reasons why it's not working so when we when we are self referencing like that guy was and feeling really good about what we're doing and what we're talking about then we miss out and we miss read and so really it's always about bringing it back to the client and in and I start with when I teach what are the biggest objections. And if we can start there, then we can just reverse engineer what we would talk about, what we could teach about, what kind of stories we could tell. Brilliant.

[24:12] Brilliant. So how do we get our sellers, especially if we've got that domain expertise, that technical knowledge where we're like, I just can't wait to share this with the world. And the sales leader is going, hey, that's great, Hamish. Let's back up a step. How do we bridge that gap between the technical knowledge and a story that is actually going to convert into a sale.

[24:35] So there's a couple of things. And again, we want to think about the scope of what a real conversion is. Do we want somebody to hop on a call or are they ready to throw down 50 grand to buy it right on the spot? And we would approach it slightly differently, but we want to start with where do we want to go and what are the limiting beliefs in the way? And it's never going to be a technical thing. And a lot of the times I've been reading a book called Made to Stick and a Hewlett-Packard team full of engineers, kind of like what we're talking about here.

[25:14] They didn't do this in a presentation, but this encompasses the idea and the spirit. Instead of having a long PowerPoint presentation about why their point of sale software was the best at Disneyland, They had several different exhibits of a family going and attending Disneyland at several different points in their lives. And there's just little details of how the HP technology, a little picture of the family appears on the stand or this or that. And it shows a memory and an experience. And it was so popular that people wanted to or they kept the exhibit open longer. And it was a sales thing, but it became art. people wanted to see it and talk about it and they were noticing little things like they would read over a Harry Potter book and analyze it.

[26:07] And the difference is between concrete and abstract in the way that the book frames it. As experts, as we go deeper and deeper into our expertise, things become more abstract. But we learn and familiarize ourselves with them. You know, a world like cold calling has a meaning to you and a very different than somebody who's never done sales before. And it's because you've developed that over time. And then it feels natural and actually talking in concrete things, which the experience of the Hewlett Packard is concrete or the results that we get after something that they can feel and taste and experience themselves and create an adventurous eater versus what what is necessary for to get a child to eat vegetables. That's really like what what a lot of like classic stories are based on it's it's not about like they they talk about the the tortoise and the hare for example and they don't describe the average land speed of the hare or or how the tortoises weight you know distribution or the exact time that the hare took the because none of that actually matters it was there's an essence to the story that gives it its thing, that makes it memorable, that all of us know probably what I'm talking about.

[27:35] Without me having to do a lot of context. And so when we can boil it down to the same things when we tell our stories and when we give our talks and we can start to think about how do I describe, the results that they want to get and show them a path to that, rather than prescribe what they need to do to get there.

[27:56] Brilliant. That's a great way of framing it for our audience. So sales leaders, as you're coaching your sellers, go back and listen to this part that Kyle just shared about how do we build down to the essence and that emotion. Now, Kyle, you and I could talk story and probably about a lot of other things all day long, and both of us are highly scheduled. So I got a few questions for you before we wrap up today. The first one being, if you could go back and coach younger Kyle, go back as far as you like and say, hey, younger Kyle, in the future, you're going to have these two amazing books. You're going to have this great coaching practice. You're going to work with really amazing individuals. You're also going to have a bunch of scar tissue and bumps and bruises. What would you coach younger Kyle to say or do different to get to the same place with little less scar tissue and fewer bumps and bruises? As a salesperson, it's your divine responsibility to stand for this person and create clarity and truth. Not necessarily to offer your product or to win.

[28:57] But right now, I truly believe that the world needs people at their best, doing their best things. And it requires sales for somebody to create that clarity and make that leap and grow. And there are people that need your help. And if you're thinking about your imposter syndrome or your insecurities or are just overly involved in yourself, then you're missing out on the bigger opportunity here. And so I hope that you see what you're doing as a responsibility for you to offer, to stand for, and to help people believe in the future that's possible with your things. And if you don't feel that yet.

[29:45] Then you need to tap into what that really is because you're not going to have the energy to get there without it. What a beautiful sentiment. Thank you for sharing that with us today, Kyle. Now you have written a couple of books, Selling with Story and The Story Engine. Would you share with the audience a bit more about both of those books and where they might be able to find them?

[30:06] Absolutely. I have The Story Engine, which is my most successful book. It's more about content marketing and telling your story consistently over content. But it seems that the common thread between everything I do is the blend of storytelling and teaching and good frameworks. And selling with story is also that, but applied a little bit more in a context of what we're talking about now. The story engines about how do I create content over a long time to build a brand and selling with story is how do I create stories to get great results now. And I also highly recommend, probably by the time this comes out, we'll have recorded an episode on the Story Engine podcast where I regularly interview experts. And I have a really unique format where it's my goal to create a story with the expert on the show that they can use. And so most of the climaxes are me telling an expert their story in a way they've never heard it before. And it's a great way to examine how I ask these questions, how I lead people, how we create and find those emotional moments. And if you listen to the show, you can learn the same process for yourself.

[31:22] Awesome. We will put links to all those in the show notes, and I strongly encourage

[31:25] the audience to check out the Story Engine podcast as well. So, Kyle, you've given us great ideas and insights around storytelling and how to go from technical to emotional. What do you have as a final thought or a closing bit of wisdom, something to plug? The floor is yours. One thing that I've been doing that I'd love to invite people to if you're interested in this. One of the most difficult things I've found, especially for experts who are really doing well and have a lot of success, is they don't have a place to practice these things in a safe and useful way. And so they'll either try and implement it on the fly, which doesn't always go that well, or they'll just bury these new ideas and continue kind of rushing along and rushing forward. And one of the things I've been doing is hosting speaker round tables for experts who want to speak more or are speaking.

[32:24] And I create a space where four people can share stories or teaching content, and everybody can listen and give feedback. And I'll speak into it as well, but everybody that participates is there. And this is a really excellent place to practice a new story and idea and develop it around peers that you respect. And if anybody out there is interested in participating in one of those, I would love to hear from you. and I'll share my email, kyleatthestoryengine.co. I'll probably get scraped by the bots, but it's okay. I love you guys and reach out if you want to participate. And as I've learned from my friend Melina Palmer on her podcast, we will not put the link to your email in the show notes. So listeners, go back and listen to that email address from Kyle Kyle, and go join his speaker groups to enhance your storytelling capabilities.

[33:23] Kyle, I've had a blast visiting with you today. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful ideas and insights on the Full Funnel Freedom podcast today. Thank you so much for having me, Hamish. You're a brilliant question asker, and I hope it's been in service to everybody today.

[33:41] Sales leaders, I had a blast chatting with Kyle today. They love storytelling. I used to be a journalist years ago, and journalism is, as much as it was reporting, it's also reporting in a way that engages and tells a story. And I really appreciated his thought around his advice to his younger self, which is we have an obligation to create clarity and the truth.

[34:09] And whether that truth is we're not a good fit, this candidate's not a good fit for the role, or we are not a good fit to work with that particular buyer or to pursue this particular opportunity, clarity and truth. If you take nothing else away from this episode, that is my highlight from what Kyle shared with us today. I also very much appreciated how he told his stories. And as I shared after he talked about his story, how engaging it was. And ultimately, from my experience, I find when someone's telling a story, they try to tell this story in long chunks. And to be quite frank, our attention spans aren't that long. And so when I've done some coaching on pitch coaching to entrepreneurs, and I've shared with them that we want to think about a story like Roger Bannister thought about breaking the four-minute mile, which I appreciate as a super current reference. However, way back before Roger Bannister broke the one-minute mile or the four-minute mile.

[35:17] Everybody was trying to run a mile faster than four minutes. And Roger Bannister said, well, wait a second. If I can run a quarter of a mile in less than a minute each, by extension, I will run a mile in under four minutes. So he broke his training into quarter mile chunks instead of mile long chunks. And he ultimately was the first person to break the four minute mile. Same thing with stories is what are those chunks? What are those like 15 to 20 second chunks that we can tell a portion of the story and that creates engagement? And then maybe we put a dramatic pause in like Kyle did as well, which were really, really engaging. The other thing that I found super insightful from Kyle was this idea of how do we distill down our information?

[36:09] Our buyers are not interested in the how-tos. technical leaders i hear you i hear you screaming at me right now but we have to have the technical detail we have to respond to the rfp i get it that's a box to check that's not the ultimate reason someone buys they're not buying because your tech specs they're buying because you were able to distill down your story into something that resonated with them emotionally and then they worked backwards and they justified their choice by all of the details that you provided. So all those technical details actually don't make the sale. They support your buyer in justifying why they picked your seller over everybody else. I'm very curious to hear what your big takeaways are in the comments on our social media.

[36:57] Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the full Full Funnel Freedom podcast. You can continue to support us by leaving us a review and a rating, sharing this episode with a couple of sales leaders in your network who you care about. I'd love to connect with you. I'm easy to find, Hamish Knox on LinkedIn. Also, if you'd like a free 15-minute call with me, go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash howtosandler. Until we connect on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[37:34] Music.