30. Storytelling special - make your sales and marketing work

Introduction

So many startup founders and small business owners have problems connecting with their audience. For most of us, when we start a business, marketing isn’t our main career.  That’s why story is so powerful. It gives a simple method to clearly convey the way in which we solve a problem for our customers.

In our 30th special edition episode, Simon Harvey is joined by Alister Grigg, CEO of Fastman, to discuss the power of storytelling in marketing. He shares his success story of using storytelling to revolutionise their approach to communication. 

Listen in now to learn how to transform your sales and marketing efforts to help you create marketing that resonates with your audience and drives results.

To help you improve your marketing strategy, download the free brand script worksheet, which includes sections for each part of the storytelling framework we discuss in our episodes, here (or copy and paste the link below): 

demodia.com/brandscript-worksheet

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Episode Transcript

When people don't understand the problem that your business solves for them, they just chewed out. And that's the reason that so many small businesses fail within their first year. It's also the reason why story is the most powerful way to engage with prospects and customers. By telling customers their story, and not your own, You communicate with them in a way that they understand. When they know that you feel their pain, they trust you to solve it for them and they want to learn more. In today's special episode of the Authentic Marketing Podcast, we take a step back in time and revisit one of our most popular episodes to see how storytelling changed Fassman's approach to sales, marketing and more. So let's get started. Hi there! I'm your host, Simon Harvey, and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia, where we give you actionable advice that will help you create marketing that works. It's quite amazing to think that this is episode 30 of the podcast, and we've covered a lot of ground in these shows. And the one recurring theme that keeps coming up over and over again, and people keep asking me to talk about, is storytelling though. You know, so many startup founders and small business owners have problems connecting with their audience. You know, for most of us, when we start our business, marketing isn't our main career. You know, it was like that for me too. You know, we started life as. Software developers, maybe, engineers, financial specialists, biologists, whatever you happen to be, you know, we were all experts in our own field, but we were by no means experts in marketing or even communication for that matter. And that's why story is so powerful. You know, it gives everybody a simple structure to clearly convey the way in which we solve a problem for our customers. So as it's the holiday season, uh, I wanted to use this opportunity today to recap one of our most popular episodes and revisit the topic of storytelling. So we'll go back and talk to Alastair Grigg, the CEO of Fassman, and hear how storytelling changed their business. You know, story and finding our story was the thing that changed my company. I know, uh, it was the moment of change that we moved from being just another digital marketing agency to being a company that gave small businesses a path to sales success through clear communication. So before Alistair, maybe it's worth going through the simple steps that you need to follow to create a story for your business. So firstly, step one. This is to identify the hero of your story. It's the most important step. And to be honest, it's the place that I've seen so many businesses fail. As I've said many times on podcasts before, if you want people to listen, then your story needs to be about them and not about you. So that means that the hero of your story is your ideal customer. So, for a B2C company, that might be a specific type of person or individual. For a B2B company, this is going to be the organisation that you're trying to sell to. So step one's your hero. Step two is to spell out their problem. So as with any good film or novel, no story starts until there's a problem to solve. Let me give you Luke Skywalker as an example. Um, you know, he lost his parents and he lost his way, well and truly, in Star Wars. Or Woody in Toy Story. You know, slightly different genre but, you know, he had a problem. Suddenly he was no longer Andy's favourite toy and he needed to do something about that. You know, he felt lost as well. And your customers are the same too. You know, there's something that's causing them enough pain to want to fix it. And that's the key thing. It's your job to find that pain. and to clearly articulate to them. So when you do that, that's when you know that they're going to be listening. The third step. The third step here is to introduce yourself or your company. And if you're not playing the hero, you're going to be playing the guide. Or rather, should I say, as you're not playing the hero, you're going to be playing the guide. So the guide's not the hero. But it's actually a more important role. It's the person who leads the hero and shows them what success looks like. It shows them the path to success. If you want a great example of a guide, uh, you could think of someone like Yoda from Star Wars again. Need I say more? He's the absolute stereotypical guide out there and takes Luke through that path from knowing nothing about the Force to ultimately being one of the, the sort of the, the leaders, I was going to say in the world, the leaders in the universe of, uh, the Force. So, as you guide them, a couple of things to call in here, you can use empathy and you can use authority. So these are the two ways that you can connect best with your hero and you can show them that you've been there before and that you understand how to solve their problem. So next, we'll move on and take a look at step four. Step four is to give them a plan. Now you've told your hero how to solve their problem, they know what to do, but they're afraid to act. All heroes are the same. So, in a few simple steps, what the plan is going to do for you is it's going to outline how your hero will engage with you and what they can expect from that initial interaction. Next, you want to call your hero to action. So without giving them a specific task to perform, heroes don't act. Again, we can just look back at Star Wars as the example of this. Without the death of Obi Wan on the Death Star, you know, Luke would never have believed in himself. He'd never have turned out or shown his true potential inside there. So heroes need to be called to action. And similarly, you need to put a clear call to action regularly throughout your website or other communications. Talking about success. That leads me on to the last two points in here, which are success and failure. So, it's essential that your story paints a clear picture of what success looks like, and what a successful ending looks like to your hero. You know, this is where you can outline the transformation that your hero is going to undergo when they work with you. And you can show them how their life's going to look once they've undertaken your engagement together. Finally, just like when you're making bread, you know, you add a pinch of salt to stop the bread from rising too far, in your story, you need to add a dash of fear into the hero's mind as well. So this doesn't need to go over the top, you know, don't put too much salt in or it spoils the recipe. Same goes with failure. You don't want to go over the top, you just want to explain to them clearly and realistically, you know, what the life will look like if they don't act, uh, and if they just carry on doing what they've always done. So those are the seven simple steps to creating your story. Find your hero, call out their problem, introduce yourself as the guide, spell out the plan, call them to action, and then paint a picture of what success and failure looks like. So to make your life really easy, I've outlined all of those for you in a worksheet so that you don't need to go through and remember any of it yourself. You can just download the worksheet, fill it in, and start writing your own story. If you wanna download that, you can just go to one authentic.com/brand script minus workbook. So that's one authentic.com/brand script. Uh, don't worry if you didn't catch that, you know, I'll repeat it again later on in the show. And just to make sure that you've got it, I'll put a link in the show notes too. So as I mentioned, story is the thing that changed my business. It moved Demodia from being just another agency into being the trusted partner of so many small businesses. And telling the story is the clearest way that you can communicate your message to. So I said earlier we were going to listen to the story from Alistair so let's hear what Alistair thought once he'd created his story. Alistair Griggs, the CEO of Fassman, and he was struggling to get people to understand the value of his business and what it brought to its customers. So here's my interview with Alistair. Hi Alistair, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. So, maybe to start with, you can tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and what Fassman does generally.

My name's Alistair Green, I'm the Managing Director of Fastman. And, uh, Fastman's a company that's been in existence since 2006. We specialize in information management, primarily on the Open Text and SAP platforms. And, uh, we've been working with Simon and his team for a good number of years now.

So we've been talking a lot about storytelling on the podcast today. We've done quite a bit of this work together. I know in recent years, but I think it'd be interesting for our listeners to hear a little bit more about some of the challenges that you were having, getting your messages across to customers and even internally to staff. So

the problem we were having was that we weren't providing a consistent message to customers around our solution sets, if you like. So we were quite comfortable going to customers and talking about the products, what features they have and how they would. benefit from them, but as time goes on, customers are more interested in an overall outcome and they want to know what you do in their context. So you've got to translate what you do and what your solutions do for a customer. So what is it that a customer actually is looking to get out of the relationship with not just your products, but with you, the company. So that's really important. But it's also important for us to be able to understand the sorts of, uh, vision that we have in the outcomes that the customers are achieving with the products. So the brand story does that for you. It gives you the ability to be able to, to visualize the end state, if you like. So you can explain it more clearly, but in words that the customer is comfortable with, um, that they don't feel that being overly solved to. You know,

you mentioned then that before you reviewed the way you talk to customers, there were times when they didn't understand exactly what you were trying to get across. You know, when you know you've got the perfect prospect lined up and you know that they could absolutely benefit and use Fassman's products and services. How did that make you feel? You know, how did it make you feel when they just don't engage with you because maybe they didn't understand the benefits or didn't see the problem that you were trying to solve? Well, it doesn't make

you feel very good, does it? Because you've put a lot of effort and work into your products over the years, and into your company, and then, and you see the customers who are successful, and when you break down why they're using your products, and what they're getting out of them, and then you look at other customers or other prospects you're talking to, and they don't get it. When you send a message to somebody, it's always your job to make sure that it gets to them in a way they can consume. So, you've got to look at yourself first, if you believe your message is correct. And you believe that the product is appropriate for them. And I think it's incumbent on you, the person sending the message to look at how you're sending it, because if a message is not received, that makes you feel

frustrated. Yep. Very much so. And I think you're absolutely right. It's up to us as marketers and salespeople to make sure that our prospects and customers understand our message. In this age of social media, memes and other quick consumables, people don't sit and read for hours these days. You're absolutely right. You know, they want to see a message and understand it quickly, and if they don't, they're off to something else. I think the other thing that you said in there is insightful as well. It's our job to explain that for sure. So, back to you, what was the tipping point for Fassman in the end, what made you finally decide to embrace Story and update your messaging? The timing

coincided really well because at the same time as we started working with you on the brand story, we packaged the products up into solution sets. We've always had solutions, I mean, we've always presented solutions, but we've never thought of it and presented it the same way that we decided to do this time around. We were able to use the brand story approach as part of the launch process, if you like, for those solution sets. So for what we present now, it's quite different to what it was six,

eight months ago. You're right. One of the first tasks that we performed when you asked us to look at this was a review of your existing content. And I seem to recall there was quite a large disconnect between the messages that people were seeing on the website and what your sales guys were presenting to them in their own presentations. Some of the content we saw was more business focused. Other bits were much more technical focused. Everybody seemed to have their own take on things, their own spin, even though you're all trying to sell the same thing. So yeah, I mean, it wasn't surprised that customers were confused really.

I think previously, you could see, uh, a specific customer would get the message, right? If it was the right audience and it was the right group of people, you could see the technical people would get it. But you had to make sure you had those people in the room. And that was one of the problems. When you approach a customer, it's always hard to get the right people in the room. And if your message can only be delivered to one group of people, then I think you've got a bit of a problem. Because you need to have a message which is relevant to a broader audience inside the customers. Because the sort of products we deal with, the They're not sort of, they're not products that are bought by someone over the internet using a credit card. Um, they're generally bought by a group of people or get consensus across a group of people before a decision is made to implement them and use them.

Yeah, that idea that technical people in the room aren't the ones to hold the credit cards is absolutely spot on. I think many of the new business owners that we talk with as well overlook that when they're working on their pitches. This is something that I know we went through with you Alistair but let me introduce the storytelling framework that we use to our listeners that maybe aren't so familiar with it. So it consists of seven simple steps. I'm not going to try and go through them all here but I'll give you a link for those that are interested at the end of the podcast where you can learn more. So step one is to be really clear as to who the hero of the story is. Look at the target audience and create your story for them. As you mentioned Alistair, it's unlikely that that's going to be the technical person. It's more likely to be someone managerial or in a decision making role of some sort. Step two is that you've got to understand what the problem is. Or in other words, what challenges are they trying to overcome? This is really the key part of the story that's going to get them interested. When they hear you talk about a problem and they know that they've got that problem, suddenly all their attention is going to be on you, because they now want to hear how you're going to solve that for them. Next up, step three. There's only one hero in any good story, and as that role's already going to be filled by our customer, we need to position ourselves, you know, our company as their guide. So I like to think of something like Star Wars with Obi Wan and Yoda. Their job and our job is to guide the hero and help them overcome the challenges that we identified previously. Then comes step four. This is the idea of giving them a clear plan. Heroes in stories are helpless characters, you know, we talked about films earlier, and prospects are much the same as that. We need to clearly outline a few simple steps that they can follow in order to take action and engage with us. So, I know we went through that whole process with you, Alastair, and in a lot more detail than that. It sounds like a lot of work and it's a very different approach, I know, to what you guys were doing before. What were your initial thoughts about this approach when we originally introduced it to you? I know it was something that was quite new to you.

I was open to it, because Reality is, storytelling has always been part of our approach to business. If you think about when you're talking to customers, or not customers, anybody, you're talking to business associates and so on, you often tell stories to stress a point or to give an example of what you're talking about. You often do that. But what you don't do is you don't have a framework. Storytelling itself is something we've always, I say always, a lot of us do throughout our working career, automatically. But we don't do it with structure. And realistically, I'll be straight, it doesn't take a lot of work once you've got the structure. It's actually fairly straightforward. And as you talk about the steps, it's obvious that it doesn't take long for that to become habitual. You just say, okay, how am I going to approach this? Who's the hero? Who's the villain? What's the success look like? That sort of stuff.

And yeah, I think you're being relatively modest there when you say it doesn't involve much work. But, yeah, it really was great to see the whole team involved in the process. You know, we had the development folk involved, we had sales people in the room, and we really did dig into the various parts of your story over the course of a couple of workshops. A thing that, to me, was amazing to watch, though, was over that time, How everyone's whole concept of communication and how to communicate your product really evolved in people's mind. It moved from these small technical conversations and focusing on very, very specific individual challenges to a much more holistic view that everybody agreed on. So, how have things changed for you at the moment, Alistair? Um, you know, have you seen changes in your overall alignment? Or what's the transformation behind the scenes been within Fassman? So when we go to

partners now, we can go to partners with a broader story when we go to those partners, we can talk to them about data transformation, which we which before we would just talk about a specific product. So that's one area we can use it in the other area. Interestingly, I think is internally. So I think I mentioned to you before that we use this method. Do I use this method internally now? So when I'm talking to them about why we're investing in certain areas or why are we going to market or why are we doing different things to what they would be expecting or they're used to seeing, then I actually use a little brand story approach in a micro way, you know, even just for a two minute discussion on one of our town halls. I'll use the same thing. I'll say, this is a current situation. This is where we want to be. This is the thing that's causing grief. That's really cool to

hear. Yeah, it

works really well. So it's not just pure marketing. It's, it's also in relationships and internal messaging. You know, we do a lot of webinars, various points, and I see the results in terms of the number of people we're getting to the webinars. Even when we do the simple invitations and the followups and so on. I'm seeing that I'm also seeing a bigger response from our partners to those.

Fantastic. Now it's always good to hear that the hard work was really paying off, and paying off across the board, and not just on the original website that we were working on. Given how successful this has been for you, where do you think Fassman would be today if you carried on doing your marketing the way that you were before?

If we kept doing what we were doing before, You know, I think we would have been fired in terms of our sort of sales model and eye operations, but I don't think we would have been as comfortable with the message we're giving to people. I think we would have been piecemeal still. I would have been still fighting the battles against individual people's perception on things. I mean, that would be frustrating.

So overall, looking back at all the things that you've managed to achieve over the last months, what would you say is the biggest benefit that you've been getting by having a clear story that everyone's now using? A little bit more

comfort. Uh, a little bit more confidence, I'd say a fair bit more confidence actually, not just a little bit, a fair bit more confidence that we actually add value to our customers and we as an organization deliver value. I think that's probably the biggest thing. It's allowed us to have a better clarity around the solutions, the products, the value that we provide to customers. And to use that internally and externally to present our message more clearly and more

confidently. I like the word confidence. Yeah, I definitely like that. It's amazing how that makes you feel when suddenly you find the confidence that what you're selling is really what people want. So Alistair, before we wrap up, if there's other business leaders out there that are suffering from the same sorts of challenges as Fassbund was, what would be your message to them?

Why haven't you done it already? It seems like an obvious thing. Honestly, it does. My message to them was. If you haven't done this, I think you're missing a golden opportunity. If you haven't done this type of thing, you're missing out on one of the, one of the single central things you can do, which provides clarity around how you run your business. And I think if we look back at ourselves as business leaders, And if we're not doing this, then I think it's fair to say you're failing at people, you know, you're failing your customers, you're failing your staff, you're failing your team, because that clarity of mission, that clarity of story is one of the central tenets that we have as a business leader. I'd say it's kind of, you must do it. Now having done it, I don't understand how we could operate without it, to be honest. I think it's that central to what we do. I think that's true.

I've got to say, I think that's a pretty powerful way to end. Thank you very much for your time today, Alistair. It's been great to have you on the podcast and to hear your story. No problem. Pleasure. It was great to hear that conversation again. It's a while since I recorded that, so there's a few memories came back. You know, as Alistair points out, when you've got a clear story for your business, there's so many practical things that you can do with it. You know, it's not just an academic exercise, it works everywhere and it's something that every small business needs to create. Yeah, thanks once again for your time Alistair, it's always good to chat. So, if your prospects and customers don't understand what you offer and you want help to build your brand story for yourself, then you can hire an authentic engagement coach. Just go to wantauthentic. com to hire a coach who will show you how to increase the clarity of your communications and give you an easier way to grow your business. So we're at the point in the show again, where I like to give you a set of concrete actions that you can take to increase the effectiveness of your marketing and drive business through your sales pipeline. So as it's the holiday season now, I guess it's the traditional time that most of us try and take a bit of a step away from our daily business and spend a bit of time to look after ourselves. And my gift to you at this time of year is a complete brand script worksheet that you can use to create a clear story for your business. So if you go to wantauthentic. com slash brand script workbook, you can download a template and I'll give you a complete set of instructions on how to fill it in. You know, I've written a short series of emails and they're going to tell you how exactly to complete each section of that workbook. So, you know, by the time you get back into the office, you've spent some time working on your business. You've spent some time helping yourself and helping your business, and you're going to be ready to explain to all your prospects how you help them too. So that's all for today's episode of the Authentic Marketing Podcast. Thanks once again, as always, for listening, and don't forget to bookmark the podcast and follow me on LinkedIn. You know, I love to hear. What you want to know and how I'm helping your business to succeed. Thanks very much. And I'll see you again next time.