The Sales Demo Slide Deck: How to Make it Your Own

It’s not all that uncommon for salespeople to be armed with a presentation or demo slide deck that was put together by the marketing department. The purpose of a “single source of truth” like the corporate-approved slide deck is to ensure that all salespeople have the same talking points and are communicating a consistent narrative in the marketplace. This is a noble goal, but one of the unintended consequences of a company-wide narrative in the form of a slide deck is that it can become stale and devoid of any kind of personal, authentic touch.

ArticleKara DavidsonMay 2, 2022sales, slide deck, make it your own, presentations, storytelling, stories, authenticityComment

Storytelling Strategies for Sales Success

If your job is to sell your company’s products or services, you need to know how to communicate their value in a compelling way. When we work with salespeople, they already understand that storytelling can be a powerful tool for them, but they struggle with how to leverage stories appropriately. Sometimes they can come up with a story, but it’s too literal and leads them down a rabbit hole of demo-ing their product rather than actually telling a story. Other times they drone on and on, losing their audience along the way. Sometimes they just can’t come up with a story idea, even if they know they should be telling stories! Here are some tips and tricks to get you started if you’re having the same challenges.

ArticleStephanie JuddJanuary 24, 2022Storytelling, salesComment

Build a Library of Customer Success Stories

Recently we delivered our Influential Storytelling program to a sales team that was interested in the content for two reasons: They understood the value of storytelling in their sales process and wanted to bone up their skillset, but they also saw storytelling as a crucial part of developing internal institutional knowledge about the product, their customer success stories, and more. As the company grew, the sales team was experiencing a lot of turnover. The Director of Sales wanted to capture and codify the institutional stories that everyone on the team should be familiar with and leverage in the sales process

With this objective in mind, we recommended they establish two routines after exploring our Influential Storytelling content.

ArticleStephanie JuddSeptember 29, 2021sales, storytellingComment

Bootstrapped Founders - How to Craft the Story Behind Your Business

As bootstrapped founders, we may not find ourselves about to give a formal pitch in front of suited VCs, but we do constantly interact with potential customers, partners and other stakeholders in our networks. Every one of these people should know what you do and most importantly why you do it.

You’ll know it’s time to tell a story about what you do and why when you get questions like these:

Why did you start your business?
What are you up to lately?
Tell me about yourself

Here’s how you can craft a version of your story that will feel authentic and extemporaneous, but also be an influential and powerful representation of you and your business...

ArticleStephanie JuddSeptember 1, 2021Storytelling, entrepreneurship, salesComment