Episode 425: Authentic Sales Narratives to Drive Revenue

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Enjoy the show.

0:00:56 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m your host, Brynne Tillman and I am so excited to introduce you to our special guest today, Shannon Plumb. Shannon is an award-winning sales leader with over two decades of experience driving revenue growth for B2B organizations. She’s recognized as one of the 100 powerful women in sales and among the top 15 women in B2B sales. Amazing. Shannon specializes in building scalable go to market strategies and optimizing sales processes to achieve measurable results.

0:01:28 – (Brynne Tillman): As the CEO and founder of Finding your Narrative. I’m so excited about this. How Shannon helps companies uncover the stories that not only resonate with their audience, but also drive revenue. When she’s not transforming business, Shannon enjoys adventures in the Colorado mountains. I love Colorado. And exploring the world. Shannon, welcome to the show.

0:01:52 – (Shannon Plumb): Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited about our conversation today.

0:01:55 – (Brynne Tillman): Me too. Like, there’s a little selfishness in this interview for me because I cannot wait. I think storytelling is the bee’s knees today. Right? Like if you’re not telling stories, you’re boring. It’s just the way that it is. Right. What gets us hooked is, you know, it’s the story and the story is what makes you feel and it makes you remember. So the idea of helping businesses find that narrative that uncovers the stories, number one, that resonates and number two, that draws revenue, is just so exciting. So I can’t wait to jump into that. But before I do, we ask all of our guests the same first question, which is what does Making Sales Social mean to you?

0:02:45 – (Shannon Plumb): Such a good question. And I, saw this coming guest so I knew that I needed to think a little bit about it. And I think the thing that makes it social sells social is really being authentic. It’s about having a two-way conversation. It’s about truly connecting on a human level. Rather than a transactional level. And it’s so interesting. So I started my career and it was all about relationships, relationship, relationship, relationship.

0:03:11 – (Shannon Plumb): And then I watched as I got into SaaS. It went transactional, and no longer were people talking about relationships. And we have come full circle. I don’t think it ever went away, but now people are talking about relationships again. It makes me so excited because it’s always been near and dear to my heart. And so that’s what I think it is.

0:03:29 – (Brynne Tillman): And I love that. And I truly believe good storytelling leads to faster relationships.

0:03:34 – (Shannon Plumb): Yes.

0:03:35 – (Brynne Tillman): You’re connecting on a human level, and so I love this. So I’m just going down. Just dive into your genius to talk a little bit about finding your narrative, your company, and the journey of how you got here from a traditional salesperson to really leveraging narrative to drive better, more profitable relationships and sales.

0:04:05 – (Shannon Plumb): Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, I started a very traditional account executive and really just worked my way up. Clogged my way up, I like to say, as when I started in B2B SAS, which was my background, um, which is my background, there was no one that looked like me. And so I would go into these companies and they would bring in sales trainers. They would put us through courses. And every single time that they did, it didn’t resonate with me.

0:04:33 – (Shannon Plumb): And I looked at it, I was like, oh, makes sense. The person that wrote this book that is giving this training is a male. And I would try to say and follow the methodology, the story that they presented from a male perspective, and it just wouldn’t land. And I would see the people on the other end. This time, it was in person. Now it’s over, Zoom. But I just kind of watch their eyes glaze over, and it wouldn’t feel authentic to me.

0:04:57 – (Shannon Plumb): And so I struggled for so many years to try to figure out, how do I take what they’re teaching me and use the best practices, but put my feminine spin on it? What does that mean? And that became a really important part of who I was. And so I became really successful as I found my groove, and I was really understanding how I connect authentically with audiences. And it wasn’t around features and functionality.

0:05:22 – (Shannon Plumb): It wasn’t around following this methodology that I had to do step after step. It was about truly stopping, listening, and connecting on a human level. So the second that I stepped back and let all of that go and just had a natural conversation and was genuinely curious, that was the second that my career took off. And from that point, I started getting Promoted. And when I got promoted, I just vowed that I was going to bring authenticity into my team. So that meant everything from who I hired, how I trained, what kind of conversations we had, even down to, like, how I wrote the job description, right, Just to make it so that people that truly wanted to be there, that understood that I wasn’t looking for someone to sell transactionally.

0:06:05 – (Shannon Plumb): I was looking for somebody who actually got on a call, listened to the needs, and then was willing to say, you know what? We’re not a great fit for you, but let me tell you, who is that? Those are the people that I was looking for. And so I had the most diverse teams. I had amazing retention on my teams because I really worked from a human level, not from a, hey, here’s a list of a job description. If you check out all these boxes and have hit quota for the last six years, this is who, you know, who I want to hire.

0:06:32 – (Shannon Plumb): And so I hired this team. I grew VP of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer. And I realized as Chief Revenue officer, I always had quota as my end goal. But that was never my personal North Star. And that was kind of my aha moment. What I did to drive revenue was important. It wasn’t about hitting the number. That was ultimately the goal, and I achieved that. But I did it through these authentic connections. I did it from being real, from showing up and showing who I was and teaching my reps, my team, to do the exact same thing.

0:07:05 – (Shannon Plumb): You can’t isolate that human aspect of you. And I feel like so many companies, especially in technology, try to do exactly that. I remember if I can tell you just one quick story at a role, and this company said, handed me a script, and they said, this is the script that you have to read. And you have to do this on every single discovery call and every single demo. It was the most torturous role I’ve ever had.

0:07:31 – (Shannon Plumb): I sold nothing. I literally closed not one sale because it felt so inauthentic. And I decided I was never gonna. I was gonna vet companies, obviously, for that criteria, but I just realized at that point in time, the authenticity and bringing your true self is what. What people buy from, they buy from you.

0:07:53 – (Brynne Tillman): So I. I think that’s so interesting because when you have a script like that, I. Three things pop in my head. Number one, leadership does not trust people to have real conversations. They might as well be AI today, right?

0:08:09 – (Shannon Plumb): Like, absolutely.

0:08:10 – (Brynne Tillman): You want to follow a script like that, it really. You were hired for. For sound, not for a real voice. Right? Like. And number two, that prospect is very clear that it’s a script and it’s not about them.

0:08:28 – (Shannon Plumb): Yes.

0:08:29 – (Brynne Tillman): And number three, that is a hundred percent about qualifying them to make a sale versus trying to identify how to make a solution so you know how to create a solution. So I really. That really resonates with me a lot. I love that. I love when I learn right off the bat. That’s great. It’s so much fun. Thank you. It’s inspiring. So I do want to talk about the narrative from a business perspective and an individual perspective.

0:09:00 – (Brynne Tillman): I mean, I’ve got lots of personal situations that make for great stories. I’ve had testimonials and things like that that can convert into stories. But from a company perspective, how does a company find their voice, their narrative?

0:09:19 – (Shannon Plumb): So it’s an interesting question because really, if you think about it, it starts with the founders. So the founders have their why. So I always tell people that we have to find out why. And one of the first questions I’ll ask you if we sit down ever is why do you do what you do? Because that’s what a business is founded on. It’s founded on seeing a problem that you have to solve, knowing you have a better solution, wanting to make an impact for people. There’s gotta be something that is driving you.

0:09:44 – (Shannon Plumb): I heard something the other day which is choosing to be an entrepreneur and starting a business is like playing the game of life on the hardest setting. And that resonated with me. I just went like right now to have some really compelling reasons why if you start a business, it’s not for the faint of heart. As you very well know, it takes a lot of grit to do that. And so starting with that why? And that’s the founder’s story. So they do that for founder-led sales. And they tell that story for a while and then what happens?

0:10:14 – (Shannon Plumb): They outgrow their story and they get to the point where what was working is no longer working or they need to scale and they hire that first salesperson, that first ae. And then they go, oh, the story I told. Same story that somebody else can tell because it’s not their story. So I coach people on, you’ve got to understand why the business has started, but then you’ve got a layer on top of it. Why did you join?

0:10:38 – (Shannon Plumb): What did you see in this solution? What did you see in the impact that this organization was doing? Whether it be a service or a technology that made you join? Because really people resonate with emotion. You mentioned this at the beginning in the introduction. It’s like this visceral feeling of oh my gosh, I can see that. I resonate with that. I feel that that’s painful for me. Whatever it is, that’s what you’re looking to tap into.

0:11:02 – (Shannon Plumb): So it’s telling the story of why they joined, but then it’s taking it and telling it from the prospect’s eyes. So there’s really three steps, like why was the company founded? Why did you join that company? Or why are you part of this organization? And then what does it mean to the prospect? Ultimately you have to tell it from the perspective of somebody else, see their pain, see their challenges and what you’re offering.

0:11:27 – (Shannon Plumb): And you’ve provided these little doorways, these little entryways into that story where they can join you. And that’s when you know that there’s mutual benefit. It’s a two way street. You’re no longer trying to sell transactionally. You’re really actually saying, this is what we solve, this is the problem you have and here’s a solution we offer. Let’s explore if it’s the best solution. So that’s how I think of it as those three steps.

0:11:51 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. Talk to me a little bit about how you implement that digitally, verbally. How do you take that narrative and thread it through all those interactions?

0:12:07 – (Shannon Plumb): So I think the first step is really interviews with each person to understand their perspective. Because if you think about it, you’ve got to connect the dots. And I think finding your narrative is really connecting the dots. It’s not just about the marketing and what is put out there. It’s not just about the demos and what’s being said. It’s about connecting all of them and making a cohesive story throughout the experience.

0:12:31 – (Shannon Plumb): So interviewing is the first step. I record all of those interviews. I’m a huge proponent of using the technology we have today to make our lives better and easier. So, you know, taking those transcripts, feeding them in the chat GPT, figuring out what the overlap of those stories are and then starting to weave together. It’s really a lot of questions. When I say interviewing, it’s like asking them questions to get them to realize things themselves, which is very much what sales is from synthesizing that information and taking an, extruding it into, okay, how do we talk about it in different parts of the sales process?

0:13:09 – (Shannon Plumb): What does your message, does your marketing message reflect? What you’ve, what we’ve decided and all agreed upon is the narrative as a business that makes sense at this point in time for who we’re talking to, you know, what value they’re going to derive, what impact you’re going to have. So it really touches everything from branding, the marketing message, the ICP and who you’re talking to, the Personas within that icp, and then all the way down to how you as an individual take all of that information and deliver it in a way that feels really authentic to you, that you feel comfortable saying it, that it doesn’t feel like you’re reading from a script.

0:13:44 – (Shannon Plumb): And that is a lot of role playing. How do we certify that? How does it come across as authentic to you? Because you actually have to embody it for somebody else to resonate with it.

0:13:57 – (Brynne Tillman): I feel about sales, professional sharing, case studies. So for example, I had one client who was new in a company and she hadn’t sold anything yet and was struggling. And I said, you know what? Go tell me if I’m okay. Okay, go interview the other salespeople and find some case studies and you can use those as stories. Doesn’t matter that you didn’t sell it. It’s the. It revolves around the solution that you sell. What are your thoughts on that?

0:14:28 – (Shannon Plumb): I think it’s a great way to get started and oftentimes a great way to continue. I think the problem is that in most organizations that are starting or even scaling, those aren’t documented and most people don’t take the time to think. And kudos to you for prompting her to go do that, but most people don’t feel that they have the authority to go and ask those or don’t know how to get that and pull that information out of somewhere. So I think the best thing that a business can do is record those stories, hear them from different people’s perspectives, and share those with new hires so that they can get onboarded faster, so that they understand not only the metrics. So a lot of companies are good at sharing the impact. Like what was the ROI and what are those numbers? What they’re not good at is weaving together the story of how they got there, what was the pain, the customer’s feeling, why did they choose my business to solve that?

0:15:22 – (Shannon Plumb): And then taking them to what was the impact of that? But without the impact it doesn’t land. It doesn’t mean anything. People forget that real quickly.

0:15:33 – (Brynne Tillman): So. So I have this vision mind map or org chart where you’ve got this overarching narrative and then you’ve got all these subcategories. So here’s the narrative, here’s the narrative based on what we sell or who we sell to. And then here’s the narrative based on each individual rep and how that aligns with their personality and beliefs. So. So when you go into a company, you help build all that out.

0:16:01 – (Shannon Plumb): That is correct. Hit the nail on the head. And I think oftentimes it starts as that, and then it morphs into touching other areas of the business as the customer journey affects so much of the company and it is impactful in so many different ways. It’s not only pre sales, but then you go post sales and you think about, okay, we sold the narrative. We told the narrative pre-sale. How does that translate to keep customers engaged?

0:16:25 – (Shannon Plumb): What is that? How does that narrative shift once they become a customer, their needs evolve. How do we make sure that we are meeting those needs so that we continue to have a fruitful partnership for the long term?

0:16:38 – (Brynne Tillman): So I had. That was a really good aha moment in there. So there’s this. A lot of times we talk about culture and the consistency of culture, but I’m hearing the consistency of narrative is just as important so that they know, like, wherever they are, that it’s one team, one similar. Oh, I love that.

0:17:05 – (Shannon Plumb): Absolutely. And if you think about it, people don’t just buy from you once. You are constantly having to prove the value of what you offer and deliver. You are constantly selling. You’re constantly building a relationship. It’s not a one and done. And I think people think of sales as like, I sell them and they, it’s a transaction and then we’re done. But this idea of partnership is I’m continuously proving my value and we’re continuously saying, is this a good fit for both of us?

0:17:32 – (Shannon Plumb): And if not, then we’re going to part ways. But obviously, businesses are most successful when they have high retention of customers because acquiring new customers is so expensive.

0:17:45 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I mean, the land and expand, but it’s really land, retain and expand. Right. So you want to get it all. You want to make sure you’ve got that consistency through there. My brain is shifting slightly into, like, I’m thinking, you know, my clients. If I. If I were to say, okay, you’ve got to get your narrative down, I want you to talk to Shannon. They would say. Many would say, I don’t know my story.

0:18:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I don’t know, I just sort of ended up here. Or, you know, I got a job out of school, I got really good at it, and now I launched my own business. Or I’m a sales rep in a company, or I’m a sales leader in A company, but I don’t really have a. Why? It’s just sort of been my job. How do you draw out, like, what discovery process do you go to to draw out? Because they have a narrative, they stayed. There’s something right? Like they didn’t look for another job, they stayed. So how do you bring that out in someone that’s like, I just don’t have a narrative?

0:18:53 – (Shannon Plumb): It’s so funny that you asked that question because I believe everybody has a story and I know that everybody has a story. It’s whether they recognize that story or not. And personally, it took me a really long time to find my narrative. So I. How frustrating that can be. And what’s my story? And like, what is this all adding up to? I felt very much like what you just described, which is that I fell into it.

0:19:12 – (Shannon Plumb): I just happened to get a job in sales and then I just happened to get another job. And I didn’t think of things strategically or intentionally at the time. And so then I got to the end of my career, you know, and I was like, what in the world am I doing? I feel like I’m just, you know, flying through this and not really choosing these things. But then it came to me what my narrative was. And I think everybody has a story and the best way to do it is through discovery, which I love what you said. So it’s really getting curious. It’s just like discovering with a prospect, with their challenges are what problems they need to solve, how they think about things, what their goals are.

0:19:47 – (Shannon Plumb): It’s the exact same process. It’s like interviewing. It’s just like this. You pull on the thread and then you keep pulling it and see where things unravel and get asked questions to get them to do self discipline discovery. Record it so they can listen back to it. You ask them, you kind of plant seeds and you ask them questions so that when they’re sleeping or when they’re taking a shower, these seeds are kind of nurturing. So it’s not a one and done. And if somebody needs help discovering it, it’s a process, but it’s a process of, hey, I’m going to ask you these questions. And we spend some time thinking about it. Journaling is a great way to do that. Having conversations with your friends, all kinds of ways to get the creative juices flowing, taking hikes, whatever gets you to start thinking introspectively.

0:20:32 – (Shannon Plumb): That’s the process that we go through. So yes, it is a process. It’s also a fun process and I love seeing the Aha. Moments of I never thought about it that way. That is my story. And a story isn’t one and done. It often continues to grow and evolve. It’s not that. That is forever going to be your story. And I think that’s really important. There’s no perfect answer. There’s no end result. It’s the start of this journey that we’re going down.

0:20:59 – (Shannon Plumb): For you to pay attention to your why so that you can be more impactful in your job and get in. Like, showing that connection is one of my favorite things about doing what I do.

0:21:11 – (Brynne Tillman): I think that’s great. So there’s so many. I have like 50 ideas popping through my head. I’m like, which direction do I go in? So I’m going to ask a couple more questions because I’m really fascinated with this. Introvert versus extrovert. Is there a better personality for storytelling?

0:21:31 – (Shannon Plumb): Oh, I don’t think there really is. I actually consider myself very much an introverted extrovert. I think the important thing is when you find authenticity, when you align with your story, when you understand your why, it doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert or an extrovert, because you’re really just talking about something that is really comfortable to you. That’s like part of who you are as a human being. It’s part of your personality.

0:21:55 – (Shannon Plumb): And I think that’s where we all aspire to get to. That is the most comfortable way to sell when it feels authentic to you. And so that takes a process again to get there. But the goal is to make you feel comfortable with that story. And there’s baby steps. It doesn’t have to be that one day you’re just going to be, you know, driving a million dollars in revenue. It’s starting to test it and see how people react and paying attention to the questions you get and paying attention to maybe the. The. The pushback you get and what people are saying about that. And then it evolves.

0:22:28 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. And I think that’s one of the reasons what you do is so powerful, because the script is whatever the company voices or whatever they’re choosing. But the way that you’re doing this, by empowering each of those sales reps to take the mission, vision, passion of the company and embrace it and make it theirs in their own story, makes it so much easier and so much more authentic to share that they’ll connect with more people through that.

0:23:00 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that you’re doing that. And I really don’t hear a lot of people in sales talking about that, they’ll definitely talk about the company narrative, but never do they. Have I. Not never, obviously you’re doing this, but I had. I have not encountered the empowerment of the sales folks to be able to tell their own story as it aligns with the solutions they offer. So I think that’s really powerful.

0:23:29 – (Brynne Tillman): I have. Okay, I’m going to jump in. Are there specific essential skills that you think a salesperson needs to have in order to be a good storyteller or are we talking about the same thing? Introvert, extrovert skills? No, skills. It’s just about embracing it and being part of you.

0:23:48 – (Shannon Plumb): I think there are learned skills that will help. Just like you probably didn’t get on a bike and you know, ride without training wheels your first time.

0:23:58 – (Brynne Tillman): I have my kids in my head. I paid a lot of money.

0:24:01 – (Shannon Plumb): Did you run alongside them? Just praying they didn’t crash. I know we had a little love. Yeah, yeah.

0:24:09 – (Brynne Tillman): I just side note that, that so my, my. I have 22 year old twins who. It was insanely difficult to teach them. I literally paid people to teach. I’d run as everyone’s running on the side and both of them ended up to be incredible athletes. One of them is a senior at Rutgers on crew. And so I’m like, wait a minute. So that didn’t correlate. So what I’m going to say is that it is learned. Right. So you can learn it. They were not.

0:24:40 – (Shannon Plumb): Yeah.

0:24:40 – (Brynne Tillman): And they’re really good at riding bikes now too. So.

0:24:43 – (Shannon Plumb): Yeah.

0:24:44 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that because it just triggered like, you know, I think, do you have to be a good storyteller? Yeah. If you were a theater kid, you’re probably really good at this, but I love that. So I’m going to have you dive back into the learned piece and then we’ll start to wrap this up. Because I’m having so much fun over time.

0:25:03 – (Shannon Plumb): Yeah. So it’s a learned skill. So you get better at speaking by giving a thousand speeches. You get better at writing by writing and journaling. You get better at anything by practicing it. And my motto is practice makes it better. Because perfection is just a, you know, a mirage out there that’s never going to be achieved. And I think a lot of people feel that they’re never going to be perfect, so why try?

0:25:28 – (Shannon Plumb): So practice makes it better. You’re going to learn. You’re going to fail. My first attempt in learning is failing. Right. You’re going to fail forward. All those things. You just got to put yourself out there, which is really uncomfortable. But when you do, the positive results you get from it justify the means. Right? It justifies the work in time and putting and making yourself feel uncomfortable out there.

0:25:49 – (Shannon Plumb): And it’s not going to be perfect the first time. So I always say, hey, practice on recording. Put on a zoom and record yourself. Say it like you would to say to somebody else. Write it out. One of my favorite ways of processing is writing it out. And I know anytime I go to tell a new story, I write it out. There are other people that just say it out loud. They get themselves in a room and they just talk.

0:26:11 – (Shannon Plumb): But the key is that you have to practice it some way and do it in order to get better at it.

0:26:19 – (Brynne Tillman): I love this. Okay, so my second to last question is what question did I not ask you that I should have.

0:26:30 – (Shannon Plumb): You have done such a good job of asking me all the questions I had in my head. I was going to say why, but I think I will share that with you. You know, I think my reason is really the impact in helping people feel comfortable doing something that I think has a negative connotation. You know, sales. You always think of used car salesmen and pushing things on people. And I remember just in my career having girlfriends go, how could you do sales? That feels so icky to me.

0:26:57 – (Shannon Plumb): And I have never thought of it that way. I’ve always thought about it like I am genuinely trying to help people and I will be the first one to tell you if I can’t help you. I will be honest and authentic with that. But I absolutely love helping people discover new things and being really curious and having that mindset. So that’s how I think of sales.

0:27:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. That’s a really great way to end this. So I am sure there are lots of people at the edge of their seats saying, ok, how do I get in touch with Shannon? I want her to help me with my narrative. What should they do?

0:27:29 – (Shannon Plumb): I would love to connect with you. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. I am also@shannon findingyournarrative.com thank you so much.

0:27:40 – (Brynne Tillman): I got so many takeaways. It was really awesome and I really hope that our listeners start to truly build out their narrative and if they’re not sure where to go that they come to you. Because I think that this I know will change everything, right? Because it’s going to change, the number one reason sales folks are not successful is because they don’t resonate with the buyer. That is the number one reason.

0:28:09 – (Brynne Tillman): It isn’t even. It’s not the price. It’s not. It’s when the buyer does not connect with you. And nothing connects better than stories. So thank you so much for your insights.

0:28:20 – (Shannon Plumb): I. I know that thank you so much for having me.

0:28:22 – (Brynne Tillman): Brought a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. And to all our listeners, when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

Outro:

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