Podcasts about leadwithastory

Paul Smith spent 20 years working at Proctor and Gamble. He's written 4 best sellers and is one of the most respected storytelling experts in the world.If you're having trouble getting listeners to latch on, it's simple. Tell better stories. In this episode, Paul breaks down 10 stories every good leader should have. Start building your story portfolio today!Other topics covered:- How to build your list of stories- How to tell if your story sucks- How to get someone to listen to your story- How to get guests to tell storiesGet More from Paul Smith Right Here!www.LeadWithAStory.comwww.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9www.facebook.com/leadwithastorywww.instagram.com/leadwithastoryPodcasting doesn't need to be complicated. Get simple, actionable steps + community support starting at $25 a month: https://podcast-savants.mn.co/

  Have you embraced the art of storytelling as part of your leadership strategy? Storytelling is a skill that is impactful in influencing people's character and developing them in their careers. Both personal and work stories can be impactful in making people realize their mistakes and learn to be better in how they pursue their goals.   In this episode of the Legendary Leaders Podcast, we have Paul Smith, one of the world's leading experts in business storytelling, one of Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and bestselling author. He helps leaders and salespeople excel at their jobs by telling better stories.  Paul spent 20 years of his career at the Proctor and Gamble company and had a very typical corporate path, before getting fascinated with storytelling. He later left the corporate world after discovering his passion for teaching, training, and speaking.   Listen in to learn the importance of telling failure stories as a leader to connect and develop your team members. You will also learn about the stories to tell to help people value diversity and inclusion better and empathize with what it's like to not look like you in the workplace.       This podcast is sponsored by InnerProfessional online training programs. With courses geared specifically for Legendary Leaders, InnerProfessional provides an extraordinary catalog of leadership and professional development programs unlike any online training you've experienced before.   Key Takeaways:  How to create a framework to help you move towards your most important goal.   Why you shouldn't rush to quit your day job without a logical test-marketing strategy in place.   Tell a failure story to help people you work with to avoid making the same mistakes you made.   How to teach people character through storytelling.   Stories to help people learn how their behaviours impact others at the workplace.   Episode timeline:  [1:13] Intro  [5:32] Paul's decades' long corporate career and his journey to discovering storytelling leadership.  [7:30] How wanting a career change inspired him to write his first book.   [10:42] The 5 criteria that got Paul to leave his PNG job and go do what he's passionate about.   [20:05] How his dad's encouraging letter drove him to pursue his dreams.  [25:27] The power of telling failure stories as a leader to connect and develop your team.   [31:15] Why leaders need to learn the skill of storytelling, plus the techniques of creating powerful stories.   [34:39] Paul, on why life stories are more impactful than leadership ones.   [45:02] How Paul uses the art of storytelling to teach his children and how that has impacted them.   [50:51] Stories to share to help people value diversity and inclusion better.   [55:28] Treat storytelling like a learnable skill like any other leadership skill you want to have.   Quotes:   “Stories are impactful and if told well, then they'll stay with you forever.”- Cathleen Merkel [20:19]  “When you're satisfied and happy, you often don't even recognize it, but when you get to the point where you're consciously aware that you don't love what you're doing, then you start to search for something else.”- Paul Smith [10:50]  “If you won't pursue your own dreams for your sake, do it for someone else, because there's probably somebody else in your life who wants to see you achieve your dreams almost as badly as you do.”- Paul Smith [24:37]  “People want to work for the kind of boss who's more interested in developing his/her people than they're about protecting their own fragile ego.”- Paul Smith [26:07]  “Stories are about people and things that happen to people, and anything that happens to you at work or to somebody else at work is both a work story and a personal story.”- Paul Smith [51:19]  Connect:  Find | Cathleen Merkel  At cathleenmerkel.com  On Instagram: @CathleenMerkel  On Facebook: @CathleenMerkelCoaching  On LinkedIn: @CathleenMerkel    Find | Paul Smith  Business (Lead with a Story): https://leadwithastory.com/    On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9/   On Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/LeadWithAStory   On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadwithastory/     SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST On Apple Podcasts.    About Cathleen Merkel:    As a Thought Leader in the Mindset & (Self-) Leadership space, Cathleen supports high achieving, but worn-out women to create a more content & balanced life without sacrificing their hard-earned success. Following a simple 6 step framework, she helps you not only reconnect with your inner feminine side; Cathleen also supports you to rediscover your REAL YOU!     Cathleen focuses on women who have lost their sense of purpose, who feel they are running in a hamster wheel, trying to please everyone but themselves. She helps you to turn your careers, your social connections and personal life around, so that you start feeling fulfilled and excited again about the days to come.  At the end of the process, Cathleen's clients will feel healthier, happier, energised, and clear about their future.    With over 15 years of leadership experience in Retail, Media & Broadcasting, Engineering and Property Investment, Cathleen has not only experienced the challenges and opportunities of a female leader herself; she has also been leading and supporting various leadership development initiatives within large, complex, multinational matrix organisations.   Only by deeply experiencing her very personal life challenges – ‘hitting a wall experiences' –Cathleen was able to redefine her own purpose, deciding to bring ease and content to as many women as possible on the planet!  Tune in here:   https://apple.co/2CaSQ5K   https://spoti.fi/2XzM4QJ   https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/85d200fb-8e1d-46b3-b550-b00b9666f00f/The-Legendary-Leaders-Podcast   

In this episode, Paul Smith will discuss the importance of storytelling for salespeople and how to capture attention, build trust, and close the sale. You'll learn why stories work so well and the different types of stories salespeople should be telling.Sales stories draw people in and actively engage them. Whether you want to build a relationship, negotiate, or close the deal, sales stories help convey your value, your commitment, and your product's ability to solve problems.You can connect with Paul on:LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9 Or through his website at  www.LeadWithAStory.com 

How do you communicate the story of your company to your workers and customers? Doing it the right way can improve sales and retain employees. But how do you do that from home? And how can you also use it in your family? Paul Smith joins Adam and Naresh to cover these topics and more. Paul is one of the world's leading experts on organizational storytelling. He's one of Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and #1 bestselling author of Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire, Sell with a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell, and Parenting with a Story: Real-Life Lessons in Character for Parents and Children to Share Website: www.LeadWithAStory.com Featured Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash www.WorkFromHomeShow.com

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts in business storytelling, one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell, Lead with a Story, Sell with a Story, Parenting with a Story, and Four Days with Kenny Tedford. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Post, PR News, CIO Magazine, Investors Business Daily, Marketing Research Magazine, the American Banking Journal, and London’s Edge Magazine, among others. In his 20 years with Procter & Gamble, Paul held leadership positions in both research and finance functions, and most recently served as director of consumer and communications research. Prior to P&G, Paul was a consultant for Arthur Andersen & Company. His keynote speaking and training clients include international giants like Google, Hewlett Packard, Bayer Medical, Walmart, Kaiser Permanente, Ford Motor Company, Luxottica, and Procter & Gamble among dozens of others. Paul holds a bachelors degree in economics, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio. Contact information: Web: www.LeadWithAStory.com Email: paul@leadwithastory.com Twitter: @LeadWithAStory LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9 Facebook: www.facebook.com/leadwithastory Instagram: www.instagram.com/leadwithastory 

On this episode Josh speaks with Paul Smith from LeadWithaStory.com. They discuss the types of stories business owners should be telling.

PAUL ANDREW SMITH Paul is one of the world's leading experts on organizational storytelling and one of Inc. Magazine's Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018. He's the bestselling author of several books, including Lead with a Story and The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell, and a 20-year former executive at Procter & Gamble. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Forbes, and Fast Company, among others. He can be found at www.leadwithastory.com What you will hear in this podcast:   the different ways stories are used how he teaches people to tell stories that actually happened to help them grow their business Viktor Frankl- and Man's Search for Meaning the work of a psychologist or a counsellor vs. the work he does and what is the work he does and the purpose of his stories how to use stories to accomplish their objectives; to teach people to tell stories to communicate more effectively; the art of story-telling what is the difference between what he does and what a psychologist does and the meaning we give to it there are stories that motivate a salesperson but most of the stories he teaches people to tell are more matter of fact stories of things that happen the problems my products solve is the purpose of story to help people see what they see differently? how do you define story? what are the specific elements of story in the way he uses it why psychology doesn't feel like story to him asking questions vs how to tell a story to set a vision to accomplish your objective how do you get your buyer to tell you stories so you know which stories to tell perspective and the reality of a story a story of what happened in his classroom and the lesson his teacher taught him a personal story of something he believed and then it changed and then it changed again the baseball story the story of my dad dying, his take on it and the story of Kenny Tedford the integrity he shows of staying in his lane what scares him most about what he does hear how he answers if this is the world he would want to give to his children what he would suggest to see the world better. to learn more about Paul: Web: www.LeadWithAStory.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9 My books: The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell
Four Days with Kenny Tedford
Lead with a Story (Amazon #1 Bestseller in Business Communication) Sell with a Story (Amazon #1 Bestseller in Sales and Selling) Parenting with a Story   to learn more about Danny please visit www.DanielBruceLevin.com www.TheMosaicOnline.com www.TheMosaicPodcast.com to get a copy of The Mosaic go to, https://themosaiconline.com/shop/ or get it on amazon by going to: http://a.co/dvgsgG3      

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on organizational storytelling. He’s one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and author of the Amazon #1 bestsellers, Lead with a Story (now in its 11th printing, and published in 7 languages around the world) and Sell with a Story, in addition to his latest work, The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell. He’s a former executive at The Procter & Gamble Company and a consultant with Accenture prior to that. Why you have to check out today’s podcast: Discover how to use storytelling as a leadership and influence tool Learn how to craft compelling business stories that resonate with the audience and drive people to action Know what a leadership story is and why you should tell leadership stories “Treat storytelling like any other skill that you wanted to master and learn it from somebody who knows as supposed to just winging it.” – Paul Smith Valuable Free Resource from Paul Smith Subscribe Now to Paul’s newsletter about Storytelling for Leaders and Sales: http://leadwithastory.com/     Key Takeaways from Paul Smith: “Storytelling is definitely an art form.”   “If any leader can tell those four stories (founding, case for change, vision and strategy story) you’re more likely to get the organization to go where you need them to go.”   Connect With Paul Smith: Website:http://leadwithastory.com/  Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9/  Twitter:  https://twitter.com/LeadWithAStory  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeadWithAStory  Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/user/leadwithastory?feature=mhee  Connect With Trish Tagle: TrishTagle.com: https://trishtagle.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrishTagleLeadership LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciatagle  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamtrishtagle/  Book: Everyone Knows You Suck: Bad Boss Stories. A Succinct Guide by Trish Tagle  

Before today, you might have not realized the importance of storytelling. How can storytelling relate to building wealth and leadership skills? Today, WTR discusses the importance of storytelling with Paul Smith, an author and speaker who has an expertise in storytelling. This podcast will uncover the steps that are necessary to help engage your audience while you are communicating your story, along with the most important stories that any leader needs to be able to tell. Ingenious tactics to accumulate wealth, for people who see things differently. Paul SmithWebsite: http://www.leadwithastory.com (http://www.leadwithastory.com) Website 2: http://www.kennytedford.com (http://www.kennytedford.com/) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9/) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LeadWithAStory/ (https://www.facebook.com/LeadWithAStory/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/LeadWithAStory (https://twitter.com/LeadWithAStory) YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/LeadwithaStory (https://www.youtube.com/user/LeadwithaStory) NOTES: [00:25] Kevin: Today, we're joined by guest Paul Smith, whose expertise is storytelling. Specifically, storytelling that has to do with you in your life and your profession and relationships. Stories are great ways to convey ideas and get messages across clearly to people in ways that people can relate to you and understand you [01:38] If you wouldn't mind, could you tell our listeners a little bit about where you came from and what inspired you to do what you do today? [01:57] Paul: I studied economics in undergrad, got an MBA, and spend a couple of years as a consultant. But along the way, I just got fascinated with this concept of storytelling and I just recognized that the leaders that I admired the most were really good at it[2:36] I set out to learn about it myself by interviewing a bunch of leaders (about 300) and this has allowed me to reverse engineer my way into what works and what doesn't with storytelling (this lead to books I've written) [02:57] I research and write about storytelling at home and at work and I spend my time teaching people how to do that [03:20] Kevin: Let's go into the storytelling part of this and why storytelling? What's really in it? What is it do for our listeners and why should they care about this? [03:30] Paul: There are a lot of reasons, but the most important to me are:[03:34] Human being don't make the rational, logical decisions that we'd like to think that we do[03:43] Human beings often times make subconscious, emotional decisions in one place in their brain, and they rationalize those decisions a few nanoseconds later in a more conscious, rational thinking part of the brain [04:18] Storytelling allows you to talk to both parts of the brain and you need both. So if you want to influence what people think, feel, and do (leadership), you need to speak to both parts of the brain [04:38] Stories are a lot more memorable and people tend to remember what you say more [05:13] Kevin: I remember some expert said that the brain thinks in pictures, and when you tell a story, a person gets a picture of what's happening in their mind and maybe that's one of the reasons why it sticks with people [05:39] Paul: When you're just telling people what to do or what to think or just bossing them around, there's no movie to watch in their mind's eye [05:52] Kevin: How do you use storytelling? (at home vs. at work?) [06:05] Paul: Storytelling is useful at home and at work. The main difference is simply what type of stories you're telling and what your objective is[06:30] At work, you're trying to get people to see and understand your vision or you're trying to lead change or you're trying to get people to collaborate more (accomplishing some leadership objective) [06:44] At home, you might be trying to parent your kids and teach them what kind of...

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on organizational storytelling. He’s one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and author of the Amazon #1 bestsellers, Lead with a Story and Sell with a Story, in addition to his latest work, The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell. Paul is a former executive at The Procter & Gamble Company and a consultant with Accenture prior to that. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Time, Forbes, and Success Magazine, among others. Paul has trained executives at international giants like Google, Hewlett Packard, Ford Motor Company, Walmart, Kaiser Permanente, among dozens of others. Visit www.LeadWithAStory.com.           Get the new Your Inner World – Guided Meditations by Sister Jenna. Like America Meditating & on Twitter.  Visit www.americameditating.org. Download our free Pause for Peace App for Apple or Android.

  One of the most effective leadership communication tools you’ll ever have is a powerful story. Join David and his guest, Paul Smith – an expert in leadership and business storytelling – for a powerful discussion of how to tell a good story, the stories great leaders tell, and where to find your stories. Paul reveals how you can use story to build a better connection with your team and translate your leadership philosophy and values in a way people will not forget. And yes, there are some fantastic stories! Get Paul’s book: The 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell Get the Workbook companion to 10 Stories Great Leaders Tell Connect with Paul at his website: LeadwithaStory.com

Episode 145 The Power of Story to Parent and Sell: Interview with Paul Smith   Join me today for my interview with Paul Smith Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts in business storytelling. He’s one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books Lead with a Story (http://amzn.to/S2Zf5n) (#1 Amazon bestseller in Business Communication) already in its 11th printing and available in 7 languages around the world. Paul is also a former consultant at Accenture and former executive and 20-year veteran of The Procter & Gamble Company. As part of his research on the effectiveness of storytelling, Paul has personally interviewed over 250 CEOs, executives, leaders, and salespeople in 25 countries, documenting over 2,000 individual stories. Leveraging those stories and interviews, Paul identified the components of effective storytelling and developed templates and tools to apply them in practice. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Time, Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Post, PR News, and Success Magazine, among others. Paul delivers professional workshops and keynote addresses on effective storytelling for leaders and salespeople. His clients include international giants like Hewlett Packard, Google, Ford Motor Company, Bayer Medical, Abbott, Novartis, Progressive Insurance, Kaiser Permanente, and Procter & Gamble. Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio. He can be found at www.leadwithastory.com (http://www.leadwithastory.com) . Tune into the audio for my candid discussion with him and hear some of his favorite teaching stories. To buy his books or follow his work: Web:  www.LeadWithAStory.com (http://www.leadwithastory.com/) LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9 (http://www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9) Books: Lead with a Story (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814420303/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=pausmispetraa-20&linkId=846df254b21bb5269521a3336f25c24a&language=en_US)  (Amazon #1 Bestseller in Business Communication) Sell with a Story (https://www.amazon.com/Sell-Story-Capture-Attention-Build/dp/0814437117/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459376833&sr=1-2&keywords=sell+with+a+story&linkCode=ll1&tag=pausmispetraa-20&linkId=02d93e31fccb04d2dcf39510fe7db1d9&language=en_US)  (Amazon #1 Bestseller in Sales and Selling) Parenting with a Story  (https://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Story-Real-Life-Character-Children/dp/081443357X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1459376884&sr=1-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=pausmispetraa-20&linkId=80865d43e0f255eba3f00e54399201cd&language=en_US)

Welcome to Episode #187 of How Storytelling Can Help Bring So Much Positive Impact in Your Business In this episode, Paul Smith and I are discussing the topic of "Why a lot of entrepreneurs are getting so much result because of their ability to tell a story" So if you want to understand why is storytelling considered as a business skill that a business owner should have?; How to do it well; where and when to use it; and how to develop it, tune in now! In this episode, you will discover: - Why storytelling? - Some examples of where storytelling is used successfully by business owners and entrepreneurs - What is the first skill anyone needs to hone in for them to use the skill? - Is Storytelling a legit business skill? - What is the easiest structure in writing a story? - How do you end the story in such a way that people remember it? - What are other questions about storytelling in which audience wish to do when it comes to storytelling? - What is the particular mindset that you need to have? About Us:  Paul is a popular keynote speaker and corporate trainer in leadership and storytelling techniques, a former executive and 20-year veteran of The Procter & Gamble Company, and bestselling author of three books: 1) Lead with a Story, 2) Parenting with a Story, 3) Sell with a Story. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Post, PR News, CIO Magazine, Investors Business Daily, Marketing Research Magazine, the American Banking Journal, and London’s Edge Magazine, among others. In his 20 years with Procter & Gamble, Paul held leadership positions in both research and finance functions and most recently served as director of consumer and communications research. Prior to P&G, Paul was a consultant for Arthur Andersen & Company. His keynote speaking and training clients include international giants like Google, Hewlett Packard, Bayer Medical, Walmart, Kaiser Permanente, Ford Motor Company, Luxottica, and Procter & Gamble among dozens of others. Paul holds a bachelors degree in economics and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio. More Information: Web: www.LeadWithAStory.com Email: paul@leadwithastory.com Twitter: @LeadWithAStory LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/smithpa9 Facebook: www.facebook.com/leadwithastory Instagram: www.instagram.com/leadwithastory Understanding Insurance Links & Mentions From This Episode: Click Here! Thanks for Tuning In! Thanks you much for being with us this week. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Please leave a note in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this episode on understanding the whole concept of insurance and how it plays its role on your business., please share it with your friends by using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes to get automatic episode updates for our "Understanding the True Meaning of Insurance!" And, finally, please take a minute to leave us an honest review and rating on iTunes. They really help us out when it comes to the ranking of the show and I make it a point to read every single one of the reviews we get. Thanks for listening!

Paul Smith is one of the world’s leading experts in business storytelling. He’s one of Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers of 2018, a storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books Sell with a Story (#1 bestseller in Amazon’s Sales and Selling category), Parenting with a Story, and Lead with a Story (#1 bestseller in Amazon’s Business Communication category) already in its 11th printing and available in 7 languages around the world. Paul is also a former consultant at Accenture and former executive and 20-year veteran of The Procter & Gamble Company.  And a return guest to storyhinge.  First, appearing in episode #5.   www.LeadWithAStory.com   My books: Lead with a Story  (Amazon #1 Bestseller in Business Communication) Sell with a Story  (Amazon #1 Bestseller in Sales and Selling) Parenting with a Story   StoryHinge http://storyhinge.com Where we amplify personal stories to consider more possibility and realize more potential and happiness in life.

Announcer: And now your host. He thinks his uncle, Father Bernard Coughlin, SJ, is a saint. Kelly Coughlin. Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover reward. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly Coughlin: The name of the book I read is Sell with the Story, and this is part two of my interview with Paul Smith, who’s the writer of that book. Paul, how about you and I do some play acting now? I'll be the banker offering traditional commercial banking which are depository and lending services. I know you've deposited your wealth of money in your bank there and you've probably borrowed money for your home. I've produced two sales pitches that are in my mind clear, concise, and credible. That's been my mantra as you've heard me saw a couple times in the previous podcast. I want it clear, concise, and credible. Now, I have not focused on it being interesting, attention getting, and memorable, and that's where you come into the picture. I'm the banker. You're going to be the prospective client whom I've never met. This is just a sales introductory presentation. I'm going to give the initial pitch, and you just make some comments on how I could juice this up a little bit. It probably doesn't lend itself perfectly for a story, but if you can't get this introductory piece down where it's interesting, attention getting, and memorable, I never get a chance at telling the story. All right? Paul Smith: Yeah. That would be great. Kelly Coughlin: Let's give it a shot. Hello, Paul. My name is Kelly Coughlin. Paul, I'm a vice president and commercial loan officer at Bank Bosun in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I love to work with companies to help them succeed and grow by offering high-quality, competitively-priced cash management and lending services. We've been around since 1960. I was hoping I could come by your office and get to better understand your business and the banking services you currently utilize and maybe identify any services we have that might help you better manage your business. Would that be okay? Paul Smith: At this point, there's a couple of different types of stories that you might tell instead of what you just said. By the way, that was just first two or three sentences. If you and I really had a conversation, it would last three or four or five minutes. You'd have time to say more stuff than just that. A couple of types of stories you might tell there. One is, once they know that you're a commercial banker, they're used to getting phone calls from commercial bankers. They'll know what a commercial bank is and the kind of things that you might offer. What they're wondering at that point is, how are you any different than the other five commercial banks in this county, four of whom have already called me? That's what they're wondering. Why should I even bother meeting with you if you're going to be the same as all of them? What you need at this point is a how we're different from our competitors’ story. Let me give you an example of one of those from a different industry, the industry of the commercial cleaning business.   These are the folks that literally come in at night and clean your offices. You've got these companies. One of them is United Building Maintenance. I think they're in New York. The owner of that, Sharad Madison, when he's at that stage and he's got to convince people that his company is different than the others. Instead of listing, here are the four reasons why we're better than our competitors. He tells them a story about the last new client that he got. He said, when we get a new client, I always go in before the old cleaning company has stopped so I can observe them working because I typically end up inheriting the contract labor that comes with these cleaning services and I want to see how they're doing their job now because I'm going to have to get them to do it better, because I want to do better. He says, we go in, in the middle of the night, and we come across this guy. He's shampooing the carpet. He’s shampooing with one of those shampooers that you'd use at your home, a residential style shampooer. But there's a half a mile of carpet just on one floor of this building.   It's going to take this guy weeks to get through shampooing all of these carpets. What I did, as soon as we took over the contract I put him in a commercial-grade riding shampooer that you can sit on. It's three times as wide. It goes twice as fast. He can get the whole building done in one night. He said, then we went over to the offices where they were cleaning the cabinets. I looked on top of all the file cabinets and there were these half moons swiped out in the dust. I know exactly what that means. What that means is, the person cleaning the cabinets isn't tall enough to reach the back, and they're just reaching up and they're swiping out a little half-moon shape. The truth is, it would be better if they didn't even clean it, because it's the contrast between the dusty part and the clean part that makes it obvious that it's dusty. He said, I went to find the people that are cleaning those cabinets. Sure enough, I was right. Most of them were about 5’4” tall and these cabinets are 6’ tall.   They just can't reach the back of them. I gave them these simple, little plastic 2.5’ extension wands on their dusters so they can reach the back. That solves the problem. He just told these little simple stories like that. Now, you know the difference between the way he does business and the way his competitors do business. For you, I would come up with a story like that that explains in a very concrete way how doing business with you as a commercial bank is different than the bank across the street. Now, if you're calling on somebody who doesn't know all the basics, then it's a different story you need. It's one of those introducing yourself stories that explains in a very simple way what it is you do. But it's not going to be radically different from what anybody in your industry does, because you're just explaining the basics. That's a different kind of story that you would use. Kelly Coughlin: Yeah. That's terrific, Paul. There's a story I remember reading in your book about, I think it was Andy Smith and these relocation bonds I thought was pretty interesting. Why don’t you share that with us? Paul Smith: This is a guy who works in investment banking, I guess you would say. His job, he's a bond dealer who sells bonds to banks, to other banks. You know how these Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs will aggregate a bunch of home loans and put them together into a big multimillion-dollar asset that they can sell to banks. All of them are essentially the same, depending on what the number. It would be, these are 30-year mortgage bonds with 3% coupon and they're trading at 30 basis points below par or something. If it's another package of loans and it's got the same numbers, 30 years, 3% coupon, 40 basis points below par, it's going to be almost identical in terms of an asset. What he wants to do is differentiate the ones that he's putting together or the ones that he's selling from the others. One of his favorite ones to sell he calls relocation bonds. The way he explains that is he says, these are bonds that are almost identical to all the others that are 30-year 3% coupon 40 basis points below par, except all of the borrowers, all the homeowners that have all these mortgages are people who have recently been relocated with their company.   You know how that works. You get a big company, a General Electric, a Ford Motor Company, a Procter & Gamble, whatever, and they want to send their senior managers to a new location to run the new office here and then move them around somewhere else because they're grooming them for senior management positions. Every three years, they pick up and they move somewhere else. The company literally buys out their mortgage, pays to relocate them to a new city, they buy a new house, they get a new mortgage. Then, three years later, it happens again. The company is buying out that mortgage and moving them somewhere else. What you've got, the numbers sound the same, but the truth is, the underlying riskiness of these bonds is way different because instead of being Paul Smith that's on the line to pay off this mortgage over the next 30 years on month at a time, the truth is in three months, some multibillion-dollar company is going to pay of the mortgage, which is a guaranteed thing. General Electric is not going to go bankrupt tomorrow, but Paul Smith might.   The risk profile is really different, even though the numbers all sound the same. Even if he's not getting relocated, these relocation people, they're so upwardly mobile that they're going to get promoted soon and they're going to want to buy a bigger house. They're going to cash out this loan and get a new one. This thing is going to turn so much faster than a regular loan that has the exact same financial statistics attached to it. He would tell a story like that about these people moving from house to house, from city to city, getting promoted. He'd pick one person. He actually tells a story about his brother, which turns out to be me, by the way, going through that career that way. That's his story that sells the bonds that helps the bankers see that this set of bonds is different than the others. It's a story that that banker can then tell the bank president, and the bank president can tell that story to the shareholders of the bank. It will give all of them comfort that, oh yeah, we're investing smarter than just your average banker who’s buying bonds just based on the numbers. Kelly Coughlin: Okay. That's terrific. I want to finish with just a restatement of your perspective on story structure, because I think that's what I want the bankers to come away with. Can you talk about selling with the story structure, the steps, the transition in explaining the hook again? Context, challenge, conflict resolution. I show you have transitioned out. I'm not sure what that means. Lessons, and then recommended actions. Do you mind spending some time on those? Paul Smith: Yeah. The main four parts of the story are the context, the challenge, the conflict, and the resolution. Those four parts, that’s the real story. I'm often asked by people, how do I transition into my story? How do I kick off my story and get into the storytelling from whatever else I was saying before? That's what the hook does for you. It gets your audience’s attention and lets them know that if you will pay attention for the next two minutes, I'm going to tell you something that's very important to you. It's going to be a story, but they don’t need to know that. It gets their attention and forces them to be interested in listening to your story. Kelly Coughlin: That would be the why. Paul Smith: Yes. That's that first question that you need to answer, which is in the hook, which is why should I listen to this story? It's a half a sentence. It sounds like, the best example of that I've seen was, and then you start into your story. If somebody asks you, why do customers come to your bank instead of other banks? Your answer could be, I think the best example of that was, a customer of mine named Bob that we just had start last week. Let me tell you about him. That's your hook. All the hook does is, it tells them, I'm going to tell you a story about a guy named Bob who’s like you, but that's the hook. It's, oh, good, because that's exactly the kind of thing that I want to hear right now. I don’t want to hear some sales pitch. I want to hear about somebody real. So, that's the hook. Kelly Coughlin: If it's a millennial that's coming that's coming into your bank and, why should I go with you versus Rocket Mortgage? You don’t pull out, I had an 80-year-old woman in here. Paul Smith: Remember we said three most important parts of the story is get a relatable main character, a hero they care about? People will care about a hero that's like them. Kelly Coughlin: Like them, okay. Paul Smith: Yeah. That's the first question. Then, you're into the context, and two questions you've got to answer in that part. Where and when did it take place? And who’s the main character and what did they want? That sounds like, back a few years ago at this other bank, there was one of these customers who was trying to get a loan. That's it. That's the context. The next thing, the challenge. What was the problem they ran into or the opportunity they ran into? The problem was, it was too hard to get a loan at that bank and they couldn't get a loan. They couldn't buy the car or the house or whatever. Their wife divorced him because he couldn't provide for the family. That's the context is, some guy two or three years ago, at this other bank, trying to get a loan. That's the context. Then, like I said, the challenge or opportunity is what good or bad happened that created the whole need for the story to happen? Question five gets you into the conflict.   Question five is, what did they do about it? This is where you show that honest struggle between the hero and the villain. You've got to see them. You'll say, he did this and then the banker did this and then he tried this and then the banker did that. This is the longest part of the story, by the way. The conflict. Answering question number five could be half of the story. Half of the words in the story. Half of the time is this conflict about the back and forth between the hero and the villain, the struggle they had. When you're done with that, then you've got to answer question number six, and this is the resolution of the story. It's, how did it turn out in the end? How are the things or the characters in the story changed as a result of this? A made-up story it might be, he got so fed up that he took all his money out of that bank and came across the street to deal with me. That's how the story was resolved at the end. Kelly Coughlin: I assume that you like to do consulting with banks and other companies, obviously. What do you do, training sessions with them and public speaking? That sort of thing? Is that part of your business model, too? Paul Smith: Yeah. It's specifically training on using storytelling to either help them be a better leader or help them be a better sales person. I do half day and full day training sessions with their whole team, usually not one-on-one. I can do that as well, but the most effective ones are a full day, in a conference room with their whole leadership team or their whole sales staff on how to craft better stories to be more effective in their job. Kelly Coughlin: I want to know how people can find out more about you and your work and get in touch with you. Is there anything else that I missed that you feel need to be communicated? Paul Smith: For now, folks can find me, the easiest way is on my website which is LeadWithAStory.com, which is the name of my first book. They can find out about my books and the coaching and training I do on storytelling for leaders and sales folks. Kelly Coughlin: Paul, thank you very much. That's terrific. I enjoyed talking to you. Thanks. Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.

An old Native American Proverb: “Tell me the facts and I’ll learn them. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” Announcer: And now your host. Kelly Coughlin. Kelly Coughlin is a CPA and CEO of BankBosun, a management consulting firm helping bank C Level Officers navigate risk and discover reward. He is the host of the syndicated audio podcast, BankBosun.com. Kelly brings over 25 years of experience with companies like PWC, Lloyds Bank, and Merrill Lynch. On the podcast, Kelly interviews key executives in the banking ecosystem to provide bank C suite officers, risk management, technology, and investment ideas and solutions to help them navigate risks and discover reward. And now your host, Kelly Coughlin. Kelly Coughlin: Greetings. This is Kelly Coughlin, CPA and CEO of BankBosun. As most of you listeners know, BankBosun and I as CEO are committed to helping community banks navigate risk and discover reward in a sea of risk, regulation, and revenue threats. While risk and regulation threats are key and critical forces to consider when managing your bank, revenue threats and revenue opportunities are what really gets me excited and jazzed. Absent high-quality revenues and revenue growth, it becomes very challenging to deal with the other two. I like using the term creating revenue. Some have asked me, why the word creating? Well, it's simple. Revenues really are the only thing that businesses create, like an artist from Greenfield. More blank canvas. Sometimes from nothing, sometimes from just an idea or a vision. We have an idea. We put some packaging on the idea. We offer it to others, some purchase the idea, and shazam. We've created a revenue. Expenses on the other hand, are revenue ideas created by others.   If we like those ideas, we have to pay for them. Those are expenses to us and revenues to them. In my mind, the creation of revenues is first and foremost the primary duty of the chief executive of a company. Everybody else is responsible for ensuring that these revenues generate profits for the company. Consequently, creating revenues is becoming my singular purpose with BankBosun, whether it be through improving your public speaking with help from my actor colleague Chris Carlson at Narrative Pros or using our tactical ecosystem marketing strategy to produce your own syndicated podcast and develop new customers and centers of influence, guaranteed. Or developing fine-tuned sales messaging that is clear, concise, and credible. It is our mission and goal to help community bankers create and grow revenues through the utilization and implementation of some key practical tools. Today, we are going to talk about sales messaging.   To be clear, sales messaging includes sales phone scripts, one-on-one personal visits, emails, and presentations. For years, my mantra on sales messages has been that they must be clear, concise, and credible. To me, sales messages are a bit like poetry. I like to say, you have small words to communicate big thoughts effectively and efficiently. However, the one thing I had missed was to ensure not only your message was clear, concise, and credible, but interesting, attention-grabbing, and memorable. My accounting background is one that tends to lead me to believe that simplicity, clarity, and accuracy are all you really need, but the reality is, if your message isn't interesting, your audience will never really hear how clear, concise, and credible it is. This leads me to my daughter, Cara. I have four daughters. Two months ago, Cara started selling drugs. Marijuana. How do you think I felt about that? Actually, terrific. Cara took a job communicating to medical doctors the benefits of medical marijuana for certain types of patients with chronic pain or seizures. Totally legit, totally legal.   She works for one of the highly regulated medical cannabis distributors in the state of Minnesota. In the course of talking to Cara about her sales job, I learned that she and apparently many millennials refer to sales as outreaching, not sales. Outreaching. Apparently, sales is a bad word. As we started talking about how and what to communicate to the doctors and clinics to whom she was outreaching, we started working on her outreaching phone call script and her outreaching office visit messaging script. I started to research ways and methods I could help her with her outreaching script, and I started coming across the works of Paul Smith. Smith is one of the world’s leading experts on organizational storytelling. He's a bestselling author of the books Sell with a Story, Lead with a Story, and Parenting with a Story. I purchased the audio book version of Sell with the Story, and I must say I loved it so much. I didn't buy the whole company. Rather, I bought the printed book as well. I told Cara to listen to it and read the book. I thought it would help her with her outreaching script. It did help her.   It helped Cara convert a sales script that needed to quickly overcome the inherent skepticism medical doctors had about what was once an illegal drug to an effective outreaching story about how medical cannabis helped a 14-year-old boy who had repetitive seizures and was teased by classmates to now live a happy and healthy life. Today, we're going to focus on sales messaging because today, I'm going to interview the author of that book, Paul Smith. I'm going to divide this interview into two podcasts. Part one we are going to focus on the general perspective on what storytelling is. Why is it important? And the theory behind his work. In part two, we're going to focus on specifics related to the financial services and community banking space so our listeners can come away with some clear and specific ideas to help structure clear, concise, and credible messaging that is interesting, attention-grabbing, and memorable. As part of his research on the effectiveness of storytelling, Paul has personally interviewed over 250 CEOs, executives, leaders, sales people in 25 countries, documented over 2,000 individual stories. Leveraging those stories in interviews, Paul has identified the components of effective storytelling and has developed templates and tools to apply them in practice. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Time, Forbes, Fast Company, The Washington Post, PR News, and Success Magazine, among others. Paul holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio. With that background and context, let's get Paul here. Paul, are you on the line? Paul Smith: Yes, I am, Kelly. It's good to be here. Kelly Coughlin: Great. Did I mess up anything in that introduction? Paul Smith: No, that was great. I'm pretty sure that was me you were talking about. So, that's good. Kelly Coughlin: More importantly, how bad was my storytelling in that introduction? Be honest. I can handle it. Paul Smith: No, no. That's good. I liked hearing about your daughter and a very nice surprising beginning to that with the marijuana sales. I didn't see exactly what twist that was going to take, but it clearly took an interesting one. So, well done right off the bat. Kelly Coughlin: To be honest with you, I put that in there after having read your book. I thought, I think that's what you're talking about, is get something that is interesting and personal. I got a specific time, person, event, and that's what you're all about, aren't you? Paul Smith: You did, and you got a nice surprise at the beginning to grab attention. Well done. Something must have worked in the book. I'm glad to hear that. Kelly Coughlin: Let's talk about the book that I read, Sell with a Story. Tell us what exactly is a sales story. Let's start with the very basic thing. Paul Smith: That’s a great place to start, because I think a lot of people have a very different idea about what the word story means, especially when attached to the word sales. Imagine it's Monday morning and you're in a meeting with a number of your peers and comrades and you're preparing for a big sales pitch that you've got to make in a week or so and the boss comes in and maybe that's you and leans out over the table and says, all right, people. What's our story? Now, do you think for a minute that what that boss means by story is an actual story? A narrative about something that happened to somebody sometime. The answer is almost certainly no. What they mean is, what is the series of facts and data and arguments that we can put together in a logical sequence probably in a Power Point presentation that we're going to walk the prospect through such that by the end of the meeting, we've got the highest odds of successfully making a sale? That's what they mean by, what's our story? In other words, what's our sales pitch? But that's not the kind of thing that anybody would have called the story 20 years ago. They would have called it a sales pitch or talking points or a message track or presentation slides, or something.   Today, people use the word story for all kind of things that was really never originally intended to mean. When I talk about a sales story, I do not mean another word for a sales pitch. I mean actual stories about things that happen to somebody. The indicators of that are the things that you mentioned earlier. There's a time, a place. There's a main character like your daughter. That main character has a goal. There's usually someone or something getting in the way of that goal. There are events that transpire throughout the story that hopefully by the end resolve themselves nicely in either the main character achieving their goal or not achieving their goal, and generally some lessons to be learned from it. That's a story, an actual story. As opposed to a sales pitch, which is, Kelly, let me tell you the three reasons why you should hire me as your sales consultant. Then, I give you my list. That's not a story. That's a list, or that's a sales pitch. That's what a sales pitch is, essentially. It's a list of reasons why you should buy what I'm selling.   One of the uses of sales stories is contained within the sales pitch itself. You may have 30 minutes that your prospect has agreed to meet with you face-to-face or on the phone. So, you've got 30 minutes to make your sales pitch. You've got 30 minutes on the phone and you're going to spend five minutes of it building rapport and then 25 minutes of it on your actual sales pitch. Of that 25 minutes, you might spend five minutes actually telling a story. You might tell two, two and a half minute stories within that 25 minutes of well-structured logical sales pitch. The rest of it is the normal kind of thing as you would do when you're making a sales pitch. You're giving people reasons why they should hire you. You can also use these stories at other places in the sales process that is not the sales pitch. The whole sales process is a much longer thing. It starts with introducing yourself and building rapport and yes, making the sales pitch itself, but also handling objections and closing the sale, and even managing customer relationships after the sale. So, there are sales stories that you will use throughout all of those phases of the sales process and only one of those phases is the actual sales pitch itself. Does that make sense? Kelly Coughlin: Okay, I got it. Paul Smith: In fact, can I share an example with you? I think that’ll make it even more clear. Kelly Coughlin: Okay. Paul Smith: May, a year ago, we were at an art fair. It was actually something that happened to me and wife. She was looking for some art for our kids’ bathroom at home. We're going booth to booth. We get to this one booth of this underwater photographer. He just takes these mesmerizing pictures of underwater life like sea anemones and coral reefs and sea turtles and things like that. She gets emotionally attached to this one picture that to me just looked about as out of place as a pig in the ocean. The reason is because it literally was a picture of a pig in the ocean. I just thought that was a craziest thing. Pigs don’t live in the ocean. They generally, you don’t find them swimming around. When I finally got a chance to ask the artist himself, I said, dude. What's with the pig in the ocean? That is when the magic started. He said, it was the craziest thing. That picture was taken in the Bahamas off the coast of this uninhabited island called Big Major Cay.   Apparently, what happened is a few years earlier some local entrepreneur decided he wanted to raise a pig farm for bacon, I suppose. He bought all these pigs and he throws them out on this uninhabited island so he can keep them for free. The problem was that there wasn’t much on the island for them to eat other than cactus. Apparently, pigs don’t like cactus. He said they weren't thriving. They got lucky in that they noticed that there was some local restaurant owner on a neighboring island who would boat his kitchen refuse every night over to Big Major Cay and dump it a few dozen yards offshore, just literally over the side of the boat. Pretty soon, these pigs get hungry enough that they're like, I'm going to swim out there and get that food, even though they generally aren't known to be native swimmers. So, one pig braves the waters and then two pigs brave the waters. Here it is, several generations later and all the pigs on Big Major Cay can swim. He said, that's what it made it so easy for me to get this picture is because they've just been trained that any time a boat comes near shore, they assume they're going to get fed. They think it's the guy from the restaurant. He said, I boated up to this island and these pigs swam out to my boat.   I didn't even have to get out of the boat. I just leaned over and stuck my camera in the water. Boom. Easiest picture I ever took. Of course, at that point, I got my credit card out and I'm like, okay. We'll take it. Why was that? Two minutes earlier, that picture was worth nothing to me. It was barely worth the paper that it was printed on, but after hearing that short, two-minute story, all of the sudden, I had to have that picture. It was literally worth more money to me now because I wasn't just buying a picture. I was buying a story that had a picture with it. Every time somebody comes to my house and goes to the bathroom, I can tell them that story, and I like telling the story. It's this history lesson and geography lesson and animal psychology lesson all rolled into one. That's an example of a sales story as opposed to a sales pitch, because what that guy could have done is said, look, Mr. And Mrs. Smith, here are the three reasons why you need to buy this picture. First of all, it's the right size to fit in your bathroom. Second of all, it's got the right color palette to match your towels and the pain on the walls. And third, it's in the right price range that your wife already told me. So, don’t you need to just buy this right now? That's a sales pitch. They're logical, rational reasons why I should buy it, but the story is very different. It was far more effective at getting me to buy that picture. Kelly Coughlin: That's a great story. I love that one. Why do you think stories are so effective? Paul Smith: Probably my top three reasons are, first of all, this storytelling speaks to the part of the brain where decisions are actually made. There's been a number of studies lately that show that human beings make subconscious emotional, sometimes irrational decisions in one place in their brain. Then, they rationalize those decisions a few nanoseconds later in the logical conscious part of the brain. We think that we're making these rational, logical decisions, but the truth is, we're really making emotional subconscious decisions a few nanoseconds earlier. The second one is, it literally makes things easier to remember. Right now, I'm giving you a list of three things. My guess is that by this time tomorrow, you and most of your audience members are not going to remember these three things. I'm telling you right now. And it's okay. I'm not going to be insulted.   My guess is also that by this time tomorrow, you and everybody listening to this will remember the story of pig island. A week from now and a month from now and even a year from now, most of you listening to this will be able to tell the story of pig island and get most of the facts right, but there is nobody that a year from now is going to remember this list of three things that I'm giving you right now. It's just a list of three things. Storytelling literally makes things easier to remember. I guess the last reason I'd give you is that stories inspire. Slides don’t. When’s the last time you heard somebody say, wow, you'll never believe the Power Point presentation I just saw? Nobody says that. But they will say that about a great story. I think that's what you want your communication to have that kind of an impact on people. Kelly Coughlin: What makes a great story from simply a good or average one? Or do we need great stories? Paul Smith: The worst time to tell a story is when you don’t have a good story to tell. In fact, I'd even say, if you don’t have a great story to tell, don’t tell a story at all. What makes the difference between a great story and just an average story, I think, is three things. This could be any story. A movie, a novel that you'd read. Any kind of storytelling really centers around having a hero you care about, a villain you're afraid of, and an epic battle between them. Think Star Wars. You've got your Luke Skywalker, you've got your Darth Vader, and you've got this epic battle between them. That's what great storytelling is at its core. I admit that sounds rather Hollywood. If you translate that into business relevant language, what that means is, a relatable hero, a main character your audience can relate to. A relevant challenge. So, the villain becomes a relevant challenge, which could be a business situation. It doesn't have to be a human being they're fighting with. Then, that epic battle just becomes an honest struggle. You need to see your main character struggling with this challenge that they're faced with. If there's no real struggle, it's just not an interesting story. I've got to add one thing to that since it's a business story and that is, there's got be a worthy lesson or an actionable recommendation that comes out of it. Or you've just entertained people. Those are the four things, I guess. A relatable hero, a relevant challenge, an honest struggle, and a worthy lesson at the end. Kelly Coughlin: I recall in your book you said there is, I think, about 20 or 25 stories that every sales person should have in his or her repertoire. Tell us about that. Paul Smith: As I mentioned earlier, what I found when I was interviewing people for this book and by the way, I interviewed professional sales people and professional buyers at over 50 different companies just for this last book. I was looking for where in the whole sales process are great sales people telling stories. Real stories like I'm talking about stories. I was surprised to find out it was throughout the entire sales process all the way from introducing yourself to the buyer to preparing for the sales call. Even stories they told themselves prior to the call just to motivate themselves for the sales call, then to building rapport with the buyer, making the actual sales pitch, handling objections in the call, closing the sale. That never occurred to me that somebody would tell a story to actually make the final closing of the sale. I thought that would be a very fact-based, handshaking type moment. Even managing customer relationships after the sale. In those one, two, three, four, five, six, seven phases of the sales process, there's three or four specific types of stories that I found great sales people using in each of those phases. That's what the first third of the book does. It just documents, here are the seven phases and the 25 stories that you probably need to have at your disposal. It's throughout that entire process. Kelly Coughlin: You'd probably agree that the stories have to be authentic, real stories. Paul Smith: Yes, stories definitely need to be genuine and authentic. Actually, that's one of the things that most stories are. Just telling a story in general, especially if it's a story about yourself, is going to almost always come across as genuine because, I was there. I'm telling you something that actually happened to me as opposed to, I'm reading you a script that my marketing department told me to read over the phone to you. That is going to come away not genuine. In fact, this is where I think I learned more from the professional buyers, professional procurement managers than I did sales people. One of the questions I asked them was, what is it that makes a sales pitch sound like a sales pitch? They had a lot of really interesting answers to that. In fact, most of them described how it made them feel when they could tell that they sales pitch had officially started. They said, basically, it just made me want to throw up. One of them said it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I would get very defensive. I just thought, oh, God. It's started.     It's not a feeling they want to have, and it's not a feeling you want them to have that they can tell exactly when your sales pitch has started. It turns out, and I asked them, what is it that makes you know that the sales pitch has started? Most of them said when the tone of the conversation changes from something that sounds conversational and extemporaneous to something that sounds memorized and scripted. That's when I know the sales pitch has started. If you don’t want your sales pitch to sound like a sales pitch, don’t tell it to people in a fashion that sounds memorized. The best way to make sure that it doesn't sound memorized is quite frankly, don’t memorize it. Don’t memorize every word of your sales story or your sales pitch. Memorize the general ideas and the general flow of it and then every time you tell it, it’ll be slightly unique because you're going to choose different words to craft your sentences. Now, they'll mean the same thing, but it will sound like it's the first time you've ever told that particular story before, because it will be the first time that you've ever told that precise story because you're having to make a little bit of it up as you go along. Or at least make up the words that you use because you didn't memorize word for word. Kelly Coughlin: Yeah. Fair enough, but I think you would agree that it's good to at least memorialize the script so that you're not wasting words. I look at it like writing business poetry. Try to get big ideas in small words. In today’s environment where you've the attention span has probably been cut by 70% in this whole culture, you don’t have much time. So, don’t be rambling on with the big, long sales pitch. Fine-tune it, work it, use precise, concise words. Otherwise, you're going to lose them. Paul Smith: Yeah, I agree. That's just a little different than memorize the whole—I think you said memorialize, and I think that's a good word for it. You're memorizing the major concepts and the order in which you're going to deliver them. You've probably thought through some of the key words that are going to help you deliver it, but that's different than memorizing a script. If you do that, you're going to deliver a memorized script. Then, it won't sound authentic. Kelly Coughlin: How long do you think the sales story should be? Paul Smith: Of all the sales stories that I documented in the book, the average length was about 300 words, which was about two minutes to tell. They ranged from as short as 50 or 60 words, which is like 30 seconds, to as long as three and a half minutes, maybe four minutes. The average was about two minutes. I found that interesting because in my first book Lead with a Story, which about storytelling for leadership purposes, the stories were twice that long. Four minutes on average. I think that makes sense, because leadership stories oftentimes, you're telling it to the people that report to you. People will listen to the boss longer than they'll listen to a sales person. They're your boss. You have to listen to them and show some respect and deference and all that. When a sales person is telling a story, they're telling it to the buyer. The buyer is the boss. Your time is cut down. We're not talking about five or 10 or 20 minute stories. We're talking about two-minute stories that you might use to punctuate a 15-minute sales call. They're very short things. Kelly Coughlin: Let's talk about story structure. I've always been schooled in this presentation formula of, tell them what you're going to tell them. You tell them, and then you tell them what you just told them. Then, you have the journalist’s approach where you give the meat first, the lead, I think they call it at the very beginning. You do that to get their attention or the reader won't ever get past to the remainder of the piece. Now, I think you recommend a bit of a modified approach to this where you focus on context, action, result. Then, you also then talk about seven steps including the hook for business. For business and banking pitches, what structure would you recommend? Paul Smith: Those other two that you mentioned, the tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them what you told them, then the journalist one, those are good structures but not for storytelling. The first one is the one that you learned in the third grade, and it's the structure of a presentation. If you're going to stand up and give an oral presentation about the book you just read, tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. It's introduction, body, conclusion. That's not a story. That's a presentation. That's a speech. That's the structure of a speech. The journalist one is not a structure for stories, either. It's a structure for a newspaper article. I know some people say it's a newspaper story, but it's not. It's a newspaper article. It's not a story unless it really is a story about something that happened to somebody. They have to write in that inverted pyramid, and for lots of good reasons that we probably don’t have to go into today. That's not the structure of a story, either. Real storytelling structure is the structure that you would use when you're writing a novel or a screenplay for a movie or something like that.   Those are real stories. People like that follow very complicated, very complex story structures like Joseph Campbell’s Heroes Journey story structure, which is 17 steps long. I don’t recommend using that simply because it's too long to use for a two-minute story. What I recommend is a four-step process. It's context, challenge, conflict, and resolution. That's the main body of the story. Now, what I've found is that people need a little bit more help than that. How do I get into the story? Then, how do I get out of the story and do some business with the story? I've added the hook at the beginning, which is how you get your audience to pay attention and listen to your story. Then, when you're done, the lesson that you learned and the recommended action are two extra steps after the story is told. The main body of the story is just this context, challenge, conflict, and resolution. Probably the best way to think about it, Kelly, is not in terms of these steps, but in terms of the questions that your story answers.   In fact, there are eight questions your story’s got to answer. I'm just going to give you all eight of them right now. This is the order in which it should answer them. Number one, why should I listen to this story? That's the hook. If you can't answer that question, then they might not listen to you story. Then, you get into the main body. It's, where and when did the story take place? Who’s the hero and what did they want? What was the problem or opportunity they ran into? What did they do about it? And how did it turn out in the end? That's the first six. Now, you're done with the story, technically. The remaining two questions are, what did you learn from that story? And what do you think I should do now? That's your opportunity to make a recommendation. If your story answers those eight questions in that order, you've got the story structure right. It doesn't matter if you call the first part the context, the challenge, the conflict. That's less relevant than getting those questions answered and in that order.   Every time he or she tells the story, that's the structure that it should be in. If he or she is actually telling a story, if what they're doing at that moment is, I just want to tell you a little bit about my bank. There are three reasons why we're different than our competitors across the street. Let me tell you about those three things. He's not telling a story. He's giving you a list of reasons why they're different, and that's fine. You need those things. You don’t need a context, a challenge, a conflict, and a resolution if you're going to give somebody a list. But if you're going to tell them a story about one of your bank customers who came in and said, look, I used to bank across the street and I've had it with them. I can't stand it anymore. Let me tell you what happened. I went there and I tried to open up a checking account. I had this problem and then in finally got it resolved. I went back and then I needed to get a car loan. They made me fill out 500 sheets of paper, and it was ridiculous. Then, they told me I wasn't qualified because of some silly thing that was wrong on their part. Now, you're telling a story. That story needs a context, a challenge, a conflict, and a resolution if you're going to do it well. If you're just going to ramble on, you can say whatever you want. If you want an effective story, you'll answer those eight questions in that order. The conflict is simply the struggle that the main character is having achieving their goal. Kelly Coughlin: In the banking world, you can pick a new customer that you've got because they had a bad experience with a competitor. You can tell that story around how you were able to get this customer and solve their problems because the competitor had created these problems. That's the conflict part. Or, a customer that you took care of as a sample case study on, here's how we take care of our customers on a recurring basis. There's no real conflict with that, right? Paul Smith: What you're describing is one of the type of the 25 stories. It's a customer success story. It's story number 14, by the way, in the book. There's still conflict in a customer success story because the customer has to have a problem that needs to be solved. They struggle with that problem, and the solution they decide to settle on is hiring you. The other type of story you just mentioned is called a problem story. That's story number thirteen. It's a customer having all these problems but not having a good solution. Hopefully, that's with one of your competitors and not with you. The customer success story is hopefully when they come to you, they have a better experience. Those are two of the 25 types of stories, but your banker, your hypothetical banker we're talking about might tell a story that's story number 10, which is the story of the founding of their company. Who founded this community bank? And why did they found it?   What made them quit their day job? Because nobody ever quit their day job for a boring reason. It's always because they're fed up with the boss. They hate their job. They hate the industry they're in, whatever. I'm going to go become a restaurant owner. I've always had a passion for cooking or whatever. It kills me that all these farmers around here can never get loans at the big city banks. My dad was a farmer and his dad was a farmer. I'm going to go start a local bank. That can be a fabulously important story for a banker to have in their repertoire is their founding story, because that tells you a lot about the bank. Why was it started? That will have the same structure. A context, a challenge, a conflict, and a resolution. The main character is going to be the founder of the bank. That's three of the 25 types of stories, but they all follow the same structure. Kelly Coughlin: Give us the 25 story categories so that we've got a good feel for those if you can. Paul Smith: I'll mention a few of them, and I'll send you a list and you can put that on your website. The seven categories are the ones I mentioned earlier. Introducing yourself, that's where you'll tell a story about what you do for a living in an interesting way as opposed to just reading your job description. You tell a short story about somebody that you've helped and how you helped them. Then, in the building rapport part, that's where you tell a story about the founding of the company is an example of one of them that would be in that building rapport. Or you might tell a story about yourself, why you decided to do what you do for a living. Why did you decide to be the CEO of a bank? What attracted you to banking? That’ll tell somebody some important about you. In the main sales pitch itself, we've talked about two of those types already. The explaining the problem story and the customer success story. There's other types there, as well. The pig island story is an example of a value-adding story. That's a story where the story actually adds value to the product that you're selling. I've actually got an example from a bank there on that one that I can tell you shortly if you're interested. The next phase is handling objections. Somebody always says, oh yeah, I like what you're selling, but the price is too high or I don’t like your quality or you're too far away or whatever.   So, stories to help resolve those objections. Sometimes even before they're brought up with a story about somebody else who had the same objections, and it turned out not to be a problem after all. You just thought that was going to be a problem, and it turned out not. Then, in closing the sale, there are stories that will help you create a sense of urgency on the part of the buyer to become my customer now instead of waiting six months. That can help you close the sale. An example of one in the last phase which is managing customer relationships is a loyalty building story. This would be stories that you tell your customers about other customers of yourself who love you and why they love you. Let me tell you what we did for this customer that lives six blocks away from here, and what we did for her. Let me tell me what we did for this other guy that lives in the next county but he drives all the way to our bank because we do this for him that nobody else does. The reason you're telling those stories about other happy, loyal customers is because you want this customer to be a happy, loyal customer and know, wow. I'm never leaving this bank. If you do all that for other people, you'll probably do that for me when it's my turn to need that kind of thing. Those are examples of the 25. Kelly Coughlin: I want to know how people can find out more about you and your work and get in touch with you. Is there anything that I missed that you feel needs to be communicated? Paul Smith: No, that's good. I think we're going to do the second podcast, and I can share one or two of those banking stories then. For now, I guess folks can find me, the easiest way is on my website, which is LeadWithAStory.com, which is the name of my first book. They can find out about my books and the coaching and training I do on storytelling for leaders and sales folks. Kelly Coughlin: Paul, thank you very much. That's terrific. I enjoyed talking to you. Then, we'll continue with part two of this. Thanks. Announcer: We want to thank you for listening to the syndicated audio program, BankBosun.com The audio content is produced and syndicated by Seth Greene, Market Domination. Video content is produced by The Guildmaster Studio, Keenan Bobson Boyle. The voice introduction is me, Karim Kronfli. The program is hosted by Kelly Coughlin. If you like this program, please tell us. If you don’t, please tell us how we can improve it. Now, some disclaimers. Kelly is licensed with the Minnesota State Board of Accountancy as a Certified Public Accountant. The views expressed here are solely those of Kelly Coughlin and his guests in their private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other agent, principal, employer, employee, vendor or supplier.