In your absence, those colleagues will ask, “What do those guys do again?” Armed with a compelling Promised Land, your prospects are more likely to supply an answer that gets others on board. Your Promised Land is also crucial for helping prospects pitch your solution to colleagues after your sales meeting ends. (Over lunch, I asked my friend Tim to articulate his Promised Land, and he said, “You’ll have the most innovative platform for _.” Nope: the Promised Land is not having your technology, but what life is like thanks to having your technology.) Note that the Promised Land is a new future state, not your product or service. Zuora neatly accomplishes this by documenting a “mass extinction” among Fortune 500 companies… That not doing so will likely result in an unacceptably negative future for the prospect.That adapting to the change you cited will likely result in a highly positive future for the prospect and.In other words, you have to show both of the following: To combat loss aversion, you must demonstrate how the change you cited above will create big winners and big losers. The way in which a story begins is a starting event that creates a moment of change.Īll prospects suffer from what economists call “loss aversion.” That is, they tend to avoid a possible loss by sticking to the status quo, rather than risk a possible gain by opting for change. …what attracts human attention is change. …if the temperature around you changes, if the phone rings - that gets your attention.
As Hollywood screenwriting guru Robert McKee says: Most importantly, you grab their attention. They may be unaware of the problem, or uncomfortable admitting they suffer from it.īut when you highlight a shift in the world, you get prospects to open up about how that shift affects them, how it scares them, and where they see opportunities. Note the subtle but important difference from what most pitch advice tells you, which is to start with “the problem.” When you assert that your prospects have a problem, you put them on the defensive. The first slide of virtually every Zuora deck-sales or otherwise-is some version of this: Instead, name the undeniable shift in the world that creates both (a) big stakes and (b) huge urgency for your prospect. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the Worldĭon't kick off a sales presentation by talking about your product, your headquarters locations, your investors, your clients, or anything about yourself. However, I found slides on Zuora’s website and SlideShare channel that exhibit nearly the same narrative flow all of the images below come from those public sources.) #1. (The ex-Zuora salesperson asked that I not share the Zuora deck publicly, and I will honor that request. Specifically, we noted how brilliantly the deck led prospects through the following five elements, in precisely this order: UPDATE: Some current Zuora employees have connected with me after reading this.)Ībandoning his naan in a puddle of curried goat, Tim grabbed pen and paper and took notes as we ran through what made the Zuora deck so effective. (I have no connection to Zuora, and no relationship with anyone who currently works there. I had received the deck from an ex-Zuora salesperson who said it helped him close the biggest deals of his career. enterprise software), there’s a good chance that Zuora facilitates those transactions. If you pay for anything on a recurring basis (e.g. The sales deck I showed Tim came from Zuora, the IPO-bound Silicon Valley company that sells a SaaS platform for subscription billing. “This,” I said, “is the greatest sales deck I have ever seen.” The 5 Elements of a Brilliant Sales Narrative When he returned, I pulled out my laptop and launched into a Powerpoint presentation. Intent on maximizing dining ROI, Tim went back to the buffet for seconds. So Tim and I met for lunch at the Amber India restaurant off San Francisco’s Market Street to review his deck.Īfter loading up on the all-you-can-eat buffet, I asked Tim, “At what point do prospects tune out?” “But my pitch falls flat at big enterprises.”Īs I’ve written before, one of my favorite things is helping teams craft the high-level strategic story that powers sales, marketing, fundraising-everything. “I’ve landed a few small accounts,” Tim said. He’s one of the best salespeople I know, but soon after starting, he emailed me to say he was struggling. Here's why.Ī few months ago, my friend Tim took a new sales job at a tech company that had raised over $60 million from A-list investors.
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