#198 From Status Quo Bias to Action: A Sales Storytelling Journey With Bruce Scheer

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mehmet. Today I am very pleased to have a great guest, a best-seller author, with me, bruce, the way I like to do it, I don't introduce the guest because I believe the guest can introduce themselves in the best way, and this is why I will leave the introduction for you Excellent, mehmet. 

0:00:23 - Bruce
Well, it's great to be on the CTO Show with you, mehmet, I'm so excited about it. But just to, and also just your heritage with Dubai, one of my favorite places to visit. I've been over there a couple of times, been over to Abu Dhabi and out in the desert man, you live in such an interesting place in interesting times, mehmet. I don't know if I mentioned to you when I was out there, you guys even were hiring some millennial people to be part of the of your governing body. So you know, just wow, you know really interesting, innovative place. 

But a little bit about my backstory, mehmet, is I've been consulting for about 25 years now in helping organizations go to market and one of the and so I've done that with Hewlett Packard, motorola, nordel you know HP, lots of big companies, microsoft, for example and putting together go-to-market strategies and successfully going to market. So that's been one of my career focus areas. And then over the last 12 years I've really doubled down One of the. I call it the cherry on top of my ice cream sundae. 

Probably the special part is that cherry on the top For me, probably one of the most the cherry on the top for me things I like to do most is helping everyone get their story straight as we go to market. You know, how do we have a consistent, unifying, catalyzing story that's super clear and compelling as we go to market, because I see that as being just a critical part of a successful initiative. How do we, how do we launch this thing, how do we get traction, how do we repivot if we're going into a new market or new competitors are coming in or we make an acquisition, we need to calibrate a great story as we go to market that sales can use, that marketing can use, that the product team can use, that our strategic partners can use. I see that as the cherry on the top, and that's what I love to work on. So that's a little bit about me, mehmet. 

0:02:34 - Mehmet
That's great, bruce, and you know I love your passion and when you mentioned story, because I believe the best way to sell something is to sell it you using a story, or what they call it, story telling, right. So, and I love this, honestly speaking, because when I used to work in as a sales consultant, always I used to think how, how I would extend to myself and the only way I'll tell you something maybe funny. So always my father taught me if you want to explain something, tell it in a story way. And think about water and flow. So tell them. Like you know, this is how the water flows, and imagine like, for example, you have a tank over here and then you are filling it and then you are doing this and this is the problem that you will have. So I love this way, bruce, and you know I'm a big believer in stories. So let's start discussing about your recent book, which is called, is vital bias. 

0:03:33 - Bruce
Absolutely. Yeah, let me show everybody here and all its glory. You can see that for the viewing audience you'll see a book cover and for people just listening to this if you're driving down the road, etc. What I'm showing is my book cover and I've got a buyer who's trying to engage with a vendor, somebody who's selling with with him or her, and it's on this slope and my, I guess what I'm trying to do with this book is helping people get their story straight and I and the books called inspire your buyers go to market with a story that sizzles and there's more to the word sizzles. But you know how. You know what we're trying to do is help that buyer change and the met. 

If you can look on here, can you see on the cover there's a chasm, yes, and all that chasm, a chasm of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Hey, you know, should I really cross over and get to the other side? Do I really want to change my life and make a big investment with you? And and there's there's a big chasm that typically has to be overcome and it's fear, uncertainty and doubt. It's filled with that and it very much can prevent people from moving forward. And you know, you know, I guess in scientific circles they call that status quo, status quo bias. I don't want to change, I want to stay just right where I am, because change is fearful, you know fear. 

So how do we help that buyer get across that chasm and into the promised land of everything we promised for them? And just as another distinction for you, mehmet inspire your buyers. What that means and I am the CEO of this entity inspire buyers. Calm to inspire is to get someone to take action. So how do we get these buyers to take action? And I say you know it comes with a story that sizzles that's how we get help them take action and that's what this book is all about. 

0:05:41 - Mehmet
That's fantastic bruise and you know I like to cover and I like you know exactly because, by the way, I was sitting on the other side of the desk. So, yeah, like making changes is not easy at all. I got you there. Can you little bit tell us? You know why it's important to go to market with this story, so we discuss this especially now. So what are the main problems that needs to be solved? 

0:06:14 - Bruce
Yeah, typically I see organizations going to market and they don't have a clear, compelling, consistent and, I like to say, catalyzing story. You know, that helps somebody get over that fear, uncertainty and doubt chasm that we talked about on my book cover here. So you know, and it's funny, I'd love to give you a Dubai story about this and turn to just kind of the problem that I see all the time and how do we overcome this? So what's this building called? Again, Mehmet, it's the. It's Burj Al Arab. It's Burj Al Arab. Okay, yeah, and I've been up into it and kind of paid money and got way up into it and it's kind of blow away. It's a unique building in downtown Dubai. That's just absolutely beautiful. But I was out in Dubai sitting in a room with a bunch of folks and I was out there to do some training, and one of the head individuals out there I'd like to, you know, just name him as Jeremy, just to protect the innocent, I guess, or maybe the guilty. 

But, Jeremy was out there and at the time he was the chief commercial officer and he had a lot riding on the line. Two billion dollar business, new CEO, huge expectations. Jeremy had spent a whole bunch of time working on their branding and kind of getting new branding in place and so just for fun, he decided hey, I'm just curious what the sellers think. And he had all his sales leaders in from across the world for this big event in Dubai and he asked everybody to go one by one in one of the breakout sections. He asked people to go one by one. Just give me the story, the story of our company. And this is what he experienced. So for everybody listening, it's Jeremy over at the side hearing just tons of random act of introduction, you know, just to. And everybody had a different spin on the organization and what they were all about and how they would introduce it to a prospect that they might be pursuing. How do they kind of give that overall umbrella elevator type pitch to a prospect? And he saw so much variance. It was amazing. And then, much to his horror, he saw a lot of consistency where people were talking about, hey, this organization had been around since World War II and he was trying to buck that. He, in his competitive space he had lots of new entrants, new technology infused entrants that were kind of changing the game and they were making huge technology investments. But, you know, instead of coming across as being shiny and new and innovative and cutting edge, world War II, we've been around for a long time and the implication was we're kind of set in our ways, we're old and stodgy, so that was just kind of killing him. And then another thing, mehmet is he heard another theme around hey, they were based in a place in Europe and they had a lot of heritage there, and that was completely wrong. He was trying to get across in his branding the point that they're global in nature and in coverage and in capability. But if you got a local need here in the United States or down in Mexico or down in Peru, they could bring the best of the best capability from anywhere in the globe where they have that center of expertise. Bring that straight into you. So global, yet local, but yet all the sellers were saying, oh, we're based over here, completely missing that big point. So thank goodness, jeremy, I had a chance to have lunch with him after that session and he was, you know, distraught and I did talk to him about that, like going, yeah, yeah, not fun to be you at this point, huh, and we talked about a story for sales at that point in time. That story, you know sales needs a story. But in all honesty, the whole company needed a new story. So he said, bruce, I don't have any budget, but I'll make this my top priority and I'll work on this personally with you. Send me a proposal, I'll approve it. I need to get started on this now. 

So the beautiful thing when you get a go-to-market story right, mehmet, is it can be really catalyzing, not just for your buyer but even internally. So we crafted a story and I always like to craft a story just like a good suit. Maybe it's just an inch too big. You know that. You're gonna grow into it. You know a little bit, you know. So just a little bit of room to move. I like to make the story that way. So it's somewhat aspirational, both for the buyer and also for the company. 

And lo and behold, about a year later, the organization $2 billion company did a reorg around the dimensions of the story, especially the solutions dimensions of the story, created a fundamental shift in the organization. So it's not just you know, putting lipstick on a pig and how do we talk to the buyer. It actually can be profoundly catalyzing, both for your buyers and also internally for the organization. Quite a motivating force, especially if the organization has strategic partners. It's fabulous to have a great story that everybody can be aligned with. So, anyways, does that help and explain the importance of this whole thing? Yeah, definitely. 

0:12:20 - Mehmet
Now is it like something that fits all, I mean any company size, bruce. 

0:12:28 - Bruce
Absolutely yeah. Yeah, you know I've done this type of work for startups. I like to. You know I typically play in the scale up area. So, oh, a few clients I've worked with Tableau. They were acquired by Salesforce. Or another company called Concur. They were acquired by SAP. 

You know I love building those scale up stories so the founders can have successful IPOs and then hopefully remember me when they're drinking their Pina Coladas on the beaches of Dubai. But you know so definitely that's created a lot of wealth for a lot of people having a great story. But and then all the way up to the enterprise class and, like I mentioned, hp, microsoft, et cetera. So it's wonderful to you know you need to go to market story, in my mind, just whatever type of business. And I've even done this for not for profit, you know, for unpaid, pro bono work. 

I helped an organization training, helping 10,000 kids a year stay in school down in the Los Angeles area and really wonderful. But they needed a clear, compelling, catalyzing story and built one for them too. So, yeah, it applies. And then also, I met before the show I was telling you that I met with an IT executive who wished he would have had this book in his career because it would have helped him selling internally. As some of their critical you know, we need to stay in business and grow our business IT initiatives. The book would have helped him too. So yeah, it can. You know the principles, as one of my friends likes to say deceptively simple but mastered by few. You know it can be used across the board. 

0:14:17 - Mehmet
Now, one thing you know while you were explaining that, bruce, you know so, first, you know, like, how do you get the alignment, especially in scale up, so they are not small anymore, they are not like just 10, 20 people, they are, you know, let's say, like a couple of hundreds maybe. And you have to get the alignment between, of course you know, you know top staff members, executives, sales organization, marketing and everyone else. So what is the secret source, let's say, to get this alignment across all? Because you mentioned just in the example that first everyone was mentioning something and you know they needed help. So how do you? What is the secret source here? Of course, on a high level, of course. 

0:15:08 - Bruce
No, and I've got another story I could tell you about this. It's really fun. And turn to how you get alignment. Let me tell you the story first and then I'll move into a model of how to get that alignment. And just you can keep me honest, mehmet, and make sure everything's clear. 

So another big company and I'll go ahead and call them out by name Unisys, another couple of billion dollar company who had transitioned from being a hardware company to services and almost purely services but then started to become kind of a hybrid services plus software together. But wonderful, transformative stories about that organization. It's been around for years and years and years, very powerful, but with that organization their managed services unit, they brought in kind of a big gun marketing guy to help really grow that aspect of their businesses and those were kind of large outsourced IT services contracts. And so thank God I knew him from another company called CSC that was acquired by another or merged with HP services to become DXC. But anyways, my former client went over to Unisys, said Bruce, come on over, we need your help. So my team and I we went to work with them and one of my team members kind of came up with an insight for them around their new story and it was so cool we all fell in love with it. Of course, that man, we just nailed it, including my sponsor and so he took it in front of the CEO of Unisys. It was pretty interesting, but the CEO didn't like it and so and this is the guy at the top of the whole $2 billion organization so my client came back to me and just said, bruce CEO doesn't like it, we're gonna have to find something else. And he's just fundamentally depressed and I'm like just going whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, and I kind of get alarmed too and I'm like going wait a second, I wanna dig into that meeting a little bit more. 

Did you talk to him about how we tested the story with the analyst community and third party advisors that advise organizations on these huge multi-year outsourcing types of contracts? Did you tell him how the analysts and the third party advisors really liked it and thought it was cool and helped Unisys sound and look different than all the rest of the competitive pack? He goes no, we didn't really push into that. I go okay, good, good, good. Did you tell him how we tested it with his target customers and how they really liked it. He goes, no, no, didn't really talk about that either. And I go what about did you tell him how we tested it internally with your sellers and how they were really digging it too? He goes, no, no, bruce, honestly, I didn't tell him any of that stuff. I'm like going, thank God, let's go get another meeting with him and tell him this you know everything how we tested it, how we validated it and then also, most importantly, how we didn't design it for him, what you know. And yeah, he's not the target buyer that we're going after. He's CEO of Unisys. It's not designed for him at all. But if you let him know the other stuff, he'll probably appreciate it. Let him know how much gold there is in this new story. 

And so you know, my client, bob, went and did that and, lo and behold, the CEO got on board. And he got on board so much that he started to love it after he saw the impact of that story. And then he promoted it to the whole company of Unisys and they ran for it with it for about eight years. And I even have some newspaper articles where the client bought the solution from Unisys. 

These big outsourcing contracts based on the big idea, the big theme that was part of that story and it was a theme the storyline goes around people computing. And Unisys had a unique point of view and created this new category around people computing that the IT world hadn't seen before and they made meaning around that and people kind of fell in love with it and it influenced the product direction as well. You know, for IT services Unisys was serving Microsoft. They even put in Espresso cafes in Microsoft so people if they had computer issues they could bring them to a cafe and be served Espresso as they got their computer worked upon. Who would ever have thought about being so nice to employees as they're going through their trauma of not having a computer working? 

You know we'll make it all better, you know, and Unisys just took this people-centric approach and it was just fricking awesome. But it's kind of funny, you know, when you're trying to be successful in driving alignment internally within an organization, I typically say, hey, you're gonna go into battle and there's lots of opinions about what's good and why they like it and why they don't, and how to change it and everything else. There'll be tons and tons of opinions and my argument always is whose opinion matters the most? Who would you think? Whose opinion matters the most if you're trying to drive alignment within the organization? The customer, absolutely, I say the buyer, the target buyer. You know, getting real specific, who's making decisions around our solution? You know who's signing those contracts and do they, you know, does this story resonate with them? That's the opinion that matters the most, because they're the ones that are creating the party for all of us. We need to get it. 

0:21:15 - Mehmet
Yeah, the one who holds the money right, the one who holds the change. 

0:21:18 - Bruce
They make the party happen. You know the people paying for the party is who matters the most. And hey, I did talk about a model. Let me share that with you real fast. Sure, yeah, so for people who are listening, what I'm doing is I'm showing a star. So in your mind, if you could just draw a star in your mind there's five key elements that help really drive for the alignment and also just how to build a great story that sizzles. And it starts with scan. That's the tip of the star and it all starts there. So that's where you're kind of using chat, gpd, all these generative eye technology to see what's the thinking, what's being talked about out there in the world around your narrative, so around the potential story. 

You want to tell what are people saying? I call that kind of the noise, what's everybody talking about? We want to be aware of that and then we can work on our own position. And how do we stand apart from the pack? That's where we move into. Develop. That's kind of, if you're going around clockwise with me around that star. The second element of the star is develop. That phase, that step. That's where we develop our hypothesis and our differentiation. How are we going to look and sound different than the competitive alternatives out there. And really answering the operative question how does our solution really help our customers do something different? How does that capability really help them in unique ways to drive that differentiation? Not just, hey, what do we say about ourselves, but how does the attribute of what we have to offer really impact that customer and deliver unique value? 

Then we move into testing. That's the third going around the horn of the star. That's a third element. Here we test it. We do this validation that I just talked about with third party advisors, analysts, sellers, customers, target buyers. We test with them making sure it's resonating, and sometimes strategic partners as well, if it's a joint, go to market, like very often I'll work between, like Microsoft and HP on a joint solution and make sure that the partners vote in on it as well and give all their opinions and ideas. Then we take it back and then we refine our story fundamentally, change it or refine it, and after all these years of doing this, I never get burned by testing that validation. 

Testing always brings up new ideas and the refined stage. So we refine it and then to give that startup maximum launch and learn. We do launch. But if we did enough validation testing, that testing went very well, we were able to refine and we're really confident about launching. So we load up all the sellers and make sure, and the marketers make sure, we have that unification of message and then we launch. But through experience, a month or two, of that in-market communication, the selling conversations, marketing, content, marketing, et cetera, we get feedback that we can apply to update that narrative and make sure it's landing really well with that target audience. So that's the process of how to get great alignment. If we follow this North Star or this Compass, it's gonna help everybody get aligned, especially when they learned hey, we did test this with multiple factions and it works and that gives us all confidence. The other thing I'd say is it is critical to get the leadership, just like that CEO at Unisys that we turned from the tractor. 

We made him a fan. That was super helpful for our whole go-to-market campaign and making sure everybody was successful, so hopefully that works there that whole. I like to call that the North Star model making sure we all apply that. 

0:25:36 - Mehmet
I like it, bruce. But something came to my mind like in a crowded market right, and where everyone claim that they do what you do, how you differentiate really. 

Oh, even on my own in terms of crafting a narrative Is that I'm saying in general, like if someone like, am I scale up, right, and I come to you, but I am kind into a crowded space, right? So you know, let me ask you in the different way, like, what are the characteristics? Or let's say, what are the main points like you would like to hear from your client, which are like the scale ups or any company that will help you in putting this narrative altogether, because I'll give you an example. So I come to you now, bruce, and I tell you, hey, I have best in breed technology. You know like I am using cutting edge AI. Let's say, right, so, and I tell you okay, help me making a story around it. Bye, I'm sure like you need like more information from me. You need like something else from me, right? 

0:27:00 - Bruce
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely Just to anchor again on that Northstar model. What I'll do is I'll show that and then I'll move into some more concerted questions that I'd be asking to try to help that client stand apart. So again back to that Northstar model. It really starts with that scan phase and we need to figure out again what are all the competitive alternatives in that buyer's mind. And so we first think about who's our the target ideal client profile, ie what kind of organizations do we wanna focus on? And then one distinction further, one drill down who in that organization is our target buyer? 

Most often right now, in the complex B2B world I live in, there's typically six to eight, sometimes even more, people as part of that buying committee. You'll very often it even goes to the XCO and sometimes to the board. It depends on how big a bet, how big of an investment they're making. But very often there's a couple of roles within that organization who get final decision rights. Another consultant named Steve Martin coined this and he calls it the bully with the juice. Who most often is that bully with the juice? And we need to think about that target buyer. So it kind of starts with that thinking. Then I wanna look at who are all the competitive alternatives from that buyer back perspective, what are their choices and who to work with to solve the problem they need to solve. And then I'm just looking at what's being said out there and then how do we position against that? How can we have a unique story? So is that clear so far? Yes, and if it is, what I do next is I'll just talk about a model that's in the book that I take people through and let me share with that. If that makes sense, I'll walk through that model. Okay, so that model starts with targeting that I talked about. 

But one thing that we do that others don't do is it's targeting the right buyer, and I hope you like my wife's illustrations. I'm a horrible husband. I make my wife really work for a living and she's so good at this. I just absolutely love it. It just brings me joy when I look at her artwork, but so she helped me create this. 

But it's targeting the right buyer and from there we're trying to figure out can we showcase a unique problem that they have? So that's the problem domain and it's a big hairy problem if you look at this visual here Big hairy problem, and I wanna put a spotlight on that problem. So, just like at night, mehmet, when you have a spotlight, you create focus on whatever that light shines upon and then you ignore the rest. So what I'm trying to do is spotlight a problem that the buyer has, or maybe they don't even know they have, but it could be completely a blind spot that they have, hopefully so, cause then we're really gonna sound unique. It's a problem they haven't even really thought about or not thought that much about, especially in terms of how to resolve it. So we spotlight the problem. So that's what I'm working with my team on and the client partners that we work with and getting outside input what's unique about the problem space that our solution could help uniquely resolve? And then that gives us a unique point of view around the problem domain that we can go and help incite some action around, if you would. 

What's the problem space? And so that's a lot of the thinking that we do and research is around how do we define the problem in a really compelling way that sounds different, where we bring a different point of view. Our competitors aren't speaking about the problem in the same way and then from there I work and I help help the buyer. Think about what happens when that problem goes away. As one of my clients at Alcatel Lucent taught me what's life on the beach look like and you can see my wife drew for us rainbows and unicorns. What's beautiful when everything goes right? The problem goes away and we achieve more or achieve different. What's that look like? And then, and only then, we talk about well, how do we get there? How do we? 

I talk about showcasing the solution. So how can we help that buyer see the solution that helps you get out of the problem. Dimension helps you achieve the outcome. What's that solution look like? I call it showcasing the solution. Could we wanna stick it on a showcase, just like the award that we won you know, the Oscar, if you would, you know we wanna put that on a shelf and we want it to be shiny. I wanna dust it off and make sure it looks great and it's really simple and easy to understand. So how do we characterize the solution and that one European based company that I talked about earlier in this episode? That's what I did and they did their reorg around the new solution, how we characterize that. So we wanna characterize that solution. We wanna showcase it in all its beauty. 

And then I work with my client as part of the narrative to characterize next steps. 

So, in being prescriptive in that narrative around, how do I as a buyer, how do I buy from you? 

What do we do first, second and third, because if I'm gonna sign my organization up to give you several hundred thousands of dollars per year, you know, especially if it's a SaaS solution, if per head and how many heads, and if I'm gonna make this investment, what are the steps that I need to see to buy? 

Do I need to get other people in my buying committee involved? 

Is that an alignment meeting? 

Do you guys need to do an assessment to figure things out? 

Does there need to be a business case? Does there need to be a proof of concept? Do I need to talk to multiple references? What are those steps in the process that are gonna help me buy as a buyer? And you would be amazed how often those aren't articulated, not clear. So I make sure that's part of our narrative as part of these early stage dialogues that we have with our target buyer how do they buy, how do they go through that process, how do we help them buy? So those are kind of five key elements that I like to talk about in terms of how to set up that narrative structure, and through each one of those we're really thinking about what makes us sound differently, especially around the problem, the outcome and the solution. How do we characterize that in a way that each one of these sounds unique, based on how we can uniquely help them solve their problem, how we can uniquely help them achieve a different outcome, and how we can uniquely bring our solution to bear to help them overcome their problem, achieve their outcome. 

0:35:03 - Mehmet
That's fantastic, ruth, and now I got it. I hope that the audience they got it as well. So basically, it's kind of framing the problem based on the customer need and also not only the customer, the buyer pain. So you frame that in the form of a story that is compelling and you feed that with the core element that you just mentioned so it becomes more compelling. So at least I would, as I buy it, I would say, hey, ruth, tell me more, tell me more how you are doing it, right, yeah, absolutely. 

0:35:43 - Bruce
Yeah, yeah, and just to anchor on that whole model, it starts with the one of my clients taught me this. He was ahead of a sales enablement at a company called InfoMattica at the time, if you've heard of them, but he talked about the big ugly. How do we help paint a picture for our client around the big ugly? And that's really powerful in terms of helping people really think about that pain that you've mentioned and how do they overcome it. What's the picture of the big ugly? So a great narrative. We haven't talked about it yet, mehmet. It's in the book big time. But how do you visualize the narrative? A lot of people need to see, versus just hear, what's that look like. And I'm not talking about the typical 50 PowerPoint deck. I'm talking about one visual that really helps your buyer, your target buyer, see their big ugly in a way that they want to move away from that and they're really looking for an answer based on how you characterize that visually. Very important. 

0:37:00 - Mehmet
Can you dig more into this if possible? I got curious myself. 

0:37:07 - Bruce
How could you? Yeah, let me see if I've got something in here that I can reference. Give me one second here. Oh yeah, I talked about doing some not-for-profit work, if you can see this visual. So this is that organization that was training 10,000 kids a year down in the Los Angeles area and, trying to keep kids out of gangs, helped them stay in school. So they would use this to go out and recruit donors to really contribute to their cause. And some very wealthy donors one of their board members was chairman of AT&T, so really high net worth, very impactful people bringing them into the fold to help out on this initiative. 

They needed funding to do it, because a lot of schools that they were approaching didn't have budget for anything like this, so they needed to fund it and so they needed to bring the school's money. They needed to convince the school administrators that this was very worthy. They needed to convince teachers that it was worth their time to support it, and they needed to recruit volunteers to make this whole model work, this whole solution, to work. So the story we invented for them was hey, on the left side here you've got at-risk kids, and we just painted four kids and saying hey, especially the one as of a low socioeconomic variable, very susceptible to move into gangs and get into trouble and drop out of school. But we said, hey, because of all the anxiety, all the kids doing gaming and on-screen time, all the online bullying and everything else. It's not just low socioeconomic variable. Literally right now, in high schools, all kids are at risk, or secondary school for people across the globe. All kids are at risk for these different reasons. So what happens is they get into school and they drop out, and that impacts the student directly. So these are the kind of little stick figures heading downwards with the little waves. The student suffers when they drop out of school. They have a tough time finding their way, the school suffers, they lose funding and have a bad reputation and the community at large suffers immensely because gosh, a huge percentage of those students that drop out are incarcerated. They go to jail and prison within years. So the writing's on the wall they're going to spend time in jail and they're going to be a huge goss to the community. 

So the storyline goes hey, we can make that problem go away if you adopt this program. We can have a serious impact so we can keep kids in school and bring them out of school, and what we do is we close what we coined as the life-ready gap that you're seeing in this visual. So with our content, our coaches and mentors and services, we can drive resiliency, and we have statistics around that where your students and your school, your reputation, will be impacted by having more resilient students who go on to college and successful careers, and that's something you can do. That's different. Along with the typical stems and other things that you're teaching in school, you'll be teaching your students how to be more resilient with this program and, as a result of that, your reputation will improve and those students who we exist to serve they'll get better results in life. So that's the storyline of how to paint that visual narrative, if you would, and then you'll see here signature next steps. That's part of the process. 

0:41:09 - Mehmet
Fantastic. I loved it, bruce. Really it's to the point. 

0:41:15 - Bruce
It's not 50 slides, it's literally one visual that helps, and normally we'll animate the visuals and make sure it builds, so it's not confusing, not too much at once, but you've got one visual around the problem, the outcome. You're promising the solution and the next steps. It's powerful. 

0:41:35 - Mehmet
I loved it. I loved it, I fell in love and I loved usually the messages which are to the point and powered by visuals. So, yeah, this made a lot of sense for me. Honestly, I can tell you this Awesome, Bruce, just as we discussed a lot today, now, as my podcast, I told you, focus on tech, startups, entrepreneurship, Any advice you want to give for people who want to accelerate their revenue growth and maybe scale up also as well. 

0:42:17 - Bruce
General advice, absolutely. I mean, I like to tell people. Even right now I'm showing for the viewing audience this logo up here. It says inspire buyers with Bruce Shearer. And then it's got an arrowhead and the arrowhead here. So think of the arrowhead as the tip of the spear. So if I want to grow, if I want to go hunting, I want to grow revenue with new buyers, new prospects, I say you've got to get that tip of the spear, you've got to sharpen that thing and make sure it really works well for you. 

And I often say the sharpest edge of that spear would be the story that you tell. And that's why I wrote my first book and now that that's a bestseller, I'll promise you book number two and book number three are already in the works. Man, I've got to be a repeat bestselling author at this point, mehmet, it's got to happen with your help. So, anyways, the sharpest edge of the spear is that story. The second sharpest edge of that spear is the selling conversation. So my placeholder book title for book number two that I'm starting to work on now is how to have a sales conversation that sizzles, and sizzles is a framework. We don't have time to dig into that right now. But you've got to get that selling conversation right. And every selling conversation of course needs that core narrative, that thematic core narrative, that story that sizzles, to have a sales conversation that sizzles. But having a sales conversation that sizzles has many different attributes. So that's second side of that arrowhead. 

If you would the tip of the spear Kind of the back edge of that arrowhead would be the business case. Especially in both internal like you talked about, startup, especially startup and in this competitive climate for established businesses you need to have a solid business case. There needs to be an economic underpinning, a financial underpinning, because very often the CFO has a seat as part of that buying committee. So they don't often say yes as a buyer they're not your target buyer very often but they often say no as part of the buying committee, saying nope, I'm not seeing the business value, we're not moving forward. No, bad business case not going forward. So you need that business case first. So how do you sell that business value? How do you help your buyer quantify the business case so that CFO doesn't come out from behind the curtain and say no, so you get everybody on board so you can move forward. 

So that's kind of book number three and one of the focus areas of my firm, inspireyourbuyerscom. So get the story straight, get a better selling conversation and then land that deal, close the deal with a solid business case. I see that as critical. The InspireYourBuyers part of the visual we're looking at. I see that all the wood as the wood behind that arrowhead. We need to get everybody unified and consistent across that story, across the conversation, across the business case. That's all the people who are involved in really making it all happen to grow revenue. 

0:45:38 - Mehmet
That's great, Founders. You heard it from Bruce. You need to have the story and try to think it's something that inspired me actually into something and you inspire your buyers, Bruce. So I'm inspiring my audience. Guys, especially founders, try to think about your service product, whatever it is. Of course, you have a problem because you are solving a problem. So see how you can inspire your ultimate buyers into a compelling story and you can get help from Bruce, of course. 

0:46:15 - Bruce
Right, well, absolutely. Or if you don't have you know thousands of dollars to spend with Bruce and his team, please spend a couple of dollars and go grab the book. You know it's kind of funny. One of my biggest motivating factors to write that for us, mehmet, was people asking for help, especially founders who are kind of rating their kids college funds for the next round. You know, if you don't have a lot of money to invest, at least this book, inspire your buyers. Go to market with the story that sizzles. It's on Amazon, audible, kindle, download Paperback, hardcover, etc. But definitely take advantage of that. Come to our website at inspireyourbuyerscom. There's a lot of resources there for you and Mehmet. We talked about the Inspire your Buyers podcast briefly before this show, but you'll get more wisdom, ideas for how to help your startup be successful and become a scale up and that scale up become an enterprise. You know, I definitely in the story we'll pave that path. 

0:47:20 - Mehmet
I'm 100% sure there's tons of information out there, and you know like I learned a lot from you, bruce, today also as well. Now, before we end and close, I have a very famous kind of question Is there anything you wished I would? I had asked you and I didn't, and how you'd answer this. 

0:47:40 - Bruce
Yeah, I love that question. Even when I'm validating the narratives, mehmet, I often ask that question hey, what did I say? Didn't say that I should have said on that, no, honestly this. I think this has been very complete. I have no regrets over what we discussed. 

0:47:59 - Mehmet
This is good, oh thank you very much for this feedback, bruce. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you know you've put all these materials together and this is, you know, one of the things that I wish we could do more. But as the format is podcast, of course you can watch this on YouTube if you are listening this. So if you are driving, don't watch while you're driving. So once you reach your home, you can tune to the YouTube channel and you can watch all the illustrations that Bruce showed us today. 

And again, bruce, thank you very much for the time and for my audience. Please let me know, you know, your feedback. If you have any questions, I can pass them to Bruce also as well, so we'll try to answer you. And if you are interested to be guest I know I repeat this every time, but don't be shy reach out to me. Geography is not problem. Time zones is not a problem I would love to listen and to inspiring story, and you know Bruce had an inspiring story actually, actually his knowledge in inspiring stories actually. So this is what he exactly does. So this is why I wanted him to be on the show and thank you for your time. As I said, if you are interested to watch and you are listening through the podcast. You can tune into the CTO show with Mehmet at YouTube. And until we meet next time, thank you very much. See you soon. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet