CHAPTER 10
The “Storiable” Organization

I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a great sense of confidence about what you’re doing. You have to be a salesman, and you have to get your players, particularly your leaders, to believe in what you’re trying to accomplish.

—Phil Jackson

Helping to Make Great Salespeople

Salespeople can’t do it alone. In order to become great sellers, they need the support of their organizations, from CEOs and marketing departments down to the sales managers on the front lines. That’s who this chapter is for: CEOs, product marketers/product trainers, and sales managers—the people who exert the strongest influence over an organization’s salespeople. We’ll address each group’s role individually.

Up until now, this book has focused on influencing change in buyers by using stories to forge emotional connections and make points. But buyers aren’t the only people a leader needs to influence. As a CEO, marketer, or sales manager, you can influence your salespeople to believe what you believe, to “buy in” to your values, your beliefs, your mission, your company, and your products. Think of sales reps as internal customers. If you can effectively influence them to believe, they will in turn influence their customers to believe.

Part One: CEOs

Let’s start with CEOs. As the highest ranking corporate officers, CEOs are uniquely positioned to influence salespeople and their performance. In the following section, we’ll discuss ways in which CEOs can enable salespeople to be their best.

The CEO’s Story

Just as every person has stories to tell, every organization has stories, too. Whether these stories are known and shared throughout the organization—whether there is a “culture of story”—can have a big impact on an organization’s internal sense of identity, its public image, and its bottom-line success.

Often a business’s stories originate with the founder or top executive. “CEOs are the chief storytellers,” says Gerhard Gschwandtner, publisher of Selling Power magazine. “If they tell their stories well, and speak in an authentic voice, their stories become the DNA of their business.”

Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines

No top executive has demonstrated the power of being chief storyteller better than Herb Kelleher, cofounder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines. In the 1960s, air travel in the United States was expensive as a result of the hub-and-spoke system, and carriers generally offered poor customer service. Kelleher believed there had to be a better way. In 1967, he came up with the idea of an efficient, reliable, low-cost airline that treats its customers well. Over drinks at St. Anthony’s Club in San Antonio, Texas, Kelleher and a colleague sketched the airline’s first flight route on a cocktail napkin— the now-famous triangle drawing, with three points representing direct flights between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

When Kelleher tried to get his airline off the ground, his efforts were met by lawsuits from other carriers that were threatened by anyone who dared to think outside the box. Despite these legal challenges, Southwest Airlines was launched in 1971 with four planes and three destinations in Texas.

Recognizing that all employees—from pilots to ticketing agents to baggage handlers—contributed to the Southwest customer experience, Kelleher adopted a simple formula: Hire people with personality, share his beliefs with them, and train them well. Make sure all Southwest employees have the information they need to make decisions. Encourage and promote a fun and family-friendly environment for employees, who will in turn treat customers well.

As Kelleher put it, “We tell our people, ‘Don’t worry about profit. Think about customer service. Profit is a byproduct of customer service. It’s not an end in and of itself.’”

Kelleher also understood that the most effective way to communicate a set of beliefs and values is through a story. He made sure that every new Southwest employee, at every level—from pilots and flight attendants to baggage clerks— learned the story of why he founded the company. In building a culture around this story at Southwest—in making it the DNA of his business—Kelleher achieved several things.

First, because all Southwest employees know the company’s story, they’re more likely to embrace the values and beliefs reflected in that story. If you’ve flown on Southwest, you’ve seen it for yourself: Southwest employees treat customers well; they seem to enjoy what they do; and they seem to have a genuine emotional connection with the company.

Second, Kelleher’s story has given Southwest a clear identity among consumers. Company values are reflected in its TV ads, and the company’s story has made its way onto flights, where employees are happy to talk about Southwest’s history, and customers are served drinks with cocktail napkins that picture the airline’s route map. As a result, most Southwest customers actually know the company’s story. By comparison, how well do you know the story of Delta, United, or American Airlines?

The bottom-line result: Southwest Airlines has turned a profit for 24 consecutive years and has seen its stock soar 300 percent since 1990. Today, Southwest is the safest airline in the world and ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate. Not surprisingly, Fortune magazine has also twice ranked Southwest one of the 10 best companies to work for in America.

What’s Your Story, CEO?

The same story elements covered in Chapter 5 are reflected in Herb Kelleher’s Southwest Airlines story:

Setting. In the 1960s, air travel was expensive, customer service was mediocre, and the “hub-and-spoke” route system limited the number of direct flights. Enter Herb Kelleher, who envisioned a new model on his cocktail napkin.

Complication. In an effort to maintain the status quo, other airlines sued to keep Kelleher grounded.

Turning point. Overcoming the lawsuits, Kelleher launched his airline with a new routing system, cheaper fares, and a commitment to customer service.

Resolution. Southwest Airlines has turned a profit for 24 consecutive years, is the safest airline in the world, and ranks number one in the industry for service, on-time performance, and lowest employee turnover rate.

Having a company story isn’t enough; you also have to share it. During Oracle’s thirtieth anniversary celebration, cofounder and CEO Larry Ellison devoted his entire 45-minute keynote address to the Oracle story—why he founded the company, the struggles he faced, the lessons he learned, how the company ended up reinventing itself, plus all of his dumbass moments along the way. When we do workshops for Oracle and show a video of Ellison’s talk, participants inevitably come away saying, “Wow, we’re an amazing company.”

Sharing a company’s story can have a powerful impact on its salespeople:

They’ll feel a stronger emotional connection to the company.

They’ll embrace the beliefs and values reflected in the story.

They’ll spread the story within the company, strengthening the tribe.

They’ll retell the story to customers.

They’ll be inspired by the story and more passionate about their work.

Part Two: Product Marketers/Product Trainers

Now that we’ve discussed the ways in which CEOs can influence salespeople, let’s turn to a second group—the people who are responsible for product training, product marketing, and field messaging.

Marketing to Internal Customers

How salespeople learn about their company’s products (product training, product marketing, marketing communications, etc.) has a big impact on how they sell those products. Ideally, enablement efforts not only educate salespeople but also convey a company’s values and enthusiasm, influencing salespeople to believe what the organization wants them to believe about the products so they can then sell them in the field. It makes perfect sense: a salesperson who buys in will have much more success influencing his or her customers to buy in as well.

But at a lot of companies, product training is more like an initiation rite than an occasion for enthusiasm and excitement. Salespeople are subjected to hours of presentations in which they’re exposed to so much raw information that they walk out of the meetings like zombies. If you’ve been through it, you know: it’s torture. The only thing worse is to do it to customers.

Dan’s Story: How We “Enable” Our Salespeople (Part One)

As a senior product marketing executive of a large information technology company, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with our product launch process, which fails to take advantage of our innovation leadership. It’s always the same: We start with a great idea. We innovate. We get senior management excited. We invest an enormous amount of resources. Our R&D machine develops a cutting-edge product. Then, when the product is ready for launch, it’s our turn—time for product marketing to introduce the product to our sales force . . . at which point we promptly suck the life out of it.

At least that’s how it feels.

Our role is to train the sales force about new products, give them the message, and prepare them to sell effectively in the field. But you wouldn’t know that from the way we go about doing things. Basically what we do is lock the sales force in a room and overload them with garbage: multiple days of intensive product training featuring a parade of experts, each with a 300-slide PowerPoint deck, each slide with 30 bullets and graphs about those bullets. It’s all so left brain: facts, features, details, statistics, market analysis, competitive information, positioning, product performance, logistics, demo instructions, and so on. Half the time I feel like I might as well be an accountant.

During one recent “enablement” session, I remember looking out at the salespeople. They were all sitting there with their arms crossed, checking their BlackBerrys, working on their laptops. It was like a bad sales call.

It’s the same approach whether we’re rolling out a new product or introducing our line to new hires. We’ve been doing it this way for years, and it never has worked. By the time we’re done, very few of our salespeople are excited about the launch. If a few do buy in, we still manage to confuse the hell out of them. They walk out of our launch meeting asking themselves, What am I going to do with all this information they just shoved my way?

Not only are they confused; they’re also ill-equipped to sell the product effectively. It’s little wonder a lot of them approach buyers with a “superseller” attitude: “I have all the answers. Let me show you why you’re making a mistake.” Our product marketing actually encourages that sort of behavior, because it’s exactly what we do to our salespeople: “Field, here’s the latest, greatest product. We’ll tell you everything you need to know. . . .” We get our sellers to cross their arms and disengage, then they go out into the field and do the same thing to customers.

Sal’s Story: This Is Enabling?

I’m a senior sales executive at an IT integrator. In January, I went to Austin, Texas, for a two-day enablement session hosted by my vendor partner, who was rolling out a new cloud offering to companies like ours that function as value-added resellers for them. In essence, we’re their sales force, and they wanted to train us on this new product.

The session kicked off at 8:30 a.m. after a group breakfast. By 10 a.m., I found myself texting my marketing guy, telling him that we were already on slide number 149 and the day had hardly started. The rest of the morning was more of the same, but I sucked it up because I was excited about a presentation on the new cloud offering that was scheduled for midafternoon. My company was 90 percent done building its own cloud solution, and I’d played a big role in the planning and execution. I was excited to learn more about the cloud market and clarify that we were on the right path.

That’s not what happened, though. After lunch, the executive responsible for her organization’s cloud offering started her presentation, which involved about 100 slides of market data, technical terms, and abstract concepts. I had no idea what she was talking about or how she wanted my company, as a reseller, to execute. In fact, by the time she was done, I was confused about what cloud even meant. As soon as I got in my car, I called my office to tell them how the day had gone. “These damn PowerPoint presentations,” I said. “They just confuse me.”

Make the Message “Storiable”

Product training doesn’t have to be torture. It’s all a matter of how information is presented. “Marketing,” writes Seth Godin, “is the orchestration of stories shared through social networks.” If you want to enable your sellers, articulate your company’s message about a product in storiable terms.

We already know that stories are our most powerful tool to influence buyers to believe what we believe. Product trainers would do well to think of their company’s salespeople as internal customers. Sell to them in the same way you would have them sell to customers in the field. Model it for them. Tell them stories, inspire them, get them to open up, and build tribes. They can then retell those stories when it’s their turn to sell.

Just as individuals and businesses have stories, so do products. Think about the birth of your product as a journey with an arc: Whose idea was it? What’s interesting about that person? What (and whose) need was it designed to address? What were the dumbass moments in the development of the product? What lessons did you learn along the way? How could a customer be helped by the product? Instead of talking about product specs, talk about how a real human being can use it, in specific terms. These are the stories that will get your sellers to buy in. They’re also the stories that will enable them to connect with and influence customers in the field. Think about the storiable messages you want in the public domain. Because stories get retold, sellers listening to marketing’s stories will pass those along to their customers. It’s the same approach Steve Jobs used so effectively when Apple rolled out a new product such as the iPhone or iPad. He told the product’s story and didn’t clutter the mind with bullets.

Dan’s Story: How We Enable Our Salespeople (Part Two)

In our latest launch, we tried doing things differently. Traditionally, our messaging was all whats and hows— no whys and no stories. We realized that we needed to treat our salespeople as internal customers. We needed to connect with them, inspire them, and influence them to share the stories of our products.

This time, instead of burying them in data from the get-go, we hosted a custom Story Leaders workshop and started by sharing the story of our offering—why and how we developed it, our mistakes and hiccups along the way, and so on. We dropped the Superman act. We connected with our constituents.

The reaction from the salespeople was like night and day. Looking out at the audience, I could tell they were more engaged, buying in. They left the training session motivated and inspired. We succeeded in creating a tribe that has a story it can retell, creating other tribes who’ll share a passion for the story of our new product.

PowerPoint Isn’t the Problem

In criticizing traditional sales training and enablement presentations, we don’t mean to demonize PowerPoint. PowerPoint isn’t the problem; it’s how we use it.

Product marketers often think their job is to educate salespeople by providing them with information—everything about how a product works—but they essentially end up doing what Zoe’s teacher did with history. Take one of our clients, for example. They were introducing a product designed to integrate and streamline IT silos. Their tagline was “Making IT Easier.” They then proceeded to roll out the product to their salespeople using more than 250 slides of graphs, charts, and bullet lists!

Imagine being a salesperson sitting in such a product meeting. What are you going to do when it’s time to go on a sales call? Probably you’ll end up regurgitating that same presentation to a prospect, who won’t enjoy it any more than you did.

Bullet lists and other text-heavy presentations activate the left brain. When the left brain is overstimulated, it sabotages the participation of the right brain. Visual stimuli can, however, activate the right brain. When we show a slide with text, the listener stops listening and begins to read. An alternative approach is to present slides with visual images that represent ideas. If a slide needs explanation—say, to convey a point to a salesperson who is going to repurpose the presentation—use speaker notes at the bottom for your private reference rather than text that will be visible to the audience. Think of a presentation not as a body of information but as a story. Make a storyboard with the setting, complication, turning point, and resolution. Tell stories throughout your presentation as well.

Author Scott Young discusses the concept of “visceralization” (visceral plus visualization) in Learn More, Study Less: “This is the process of creating a mental image. Visceralization is my word to describe imagining not only a mental picture, but sounds, sensations, and emotions. Often a mental image will work, but connecting an idea to several senses and even emotional states can create a stronger link than a picture.”

For example, let’s say that during a presentation you want to make the point that most companies’ IT departments are in disarray. Instead of showing a bulleted list detailing the problems, you could show a photo of a train wreck while you talk about the problems. Such visual metaphors are more memorable and have more impact than a bulleted list because they evoke a visceral, emotional response.

Presentations can tell stories; so can visuals on slides. Once you start thinking of your presentations as stories, building them can be easy and less “slidey.” Use storyboards. Insert visuals that create a visceral, lasting impression of the points you want to make. Use bullet points, lists, and statistics to activate the left brain, but do so sparingly. Use images to activate the right brain. And avoid tedious explanations on the slides, thereby limiting the amount of text for the concepts you plan to cover verbally.

Ben’s Story: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

A couple of years ago, my family and I were in New York City having breakfast at a diner on the Upper East Side when I got distracted by a loud conversation at the next table. It was an odd scene. A slightly disheveled-looking older woman was aggressively lecturing two young men in nice suits.

“Look at this picture,” she said to the men, pointing to one of several photographs spread across the table. “What do you see? Come on. What do you see?”

I admit, I was annoyed—I just wanted to have a peaceful breakfast. At the same time, though, I was intrigued. How did this cranky old lady come to be berating these two Madison Avenue types? I was still trying to get a read on the situation when my wife, an artist, leaned over and whispered to me.

“Don’t look now,” she said, “but that’s Annie Leibovitz.”

Annie Leibovitz, as in one of my wife’s idols, the most influential American portrait photographer of our time, the last person to photograph John Lennon, the woman whose now-famous portrait of Demi Moore, naked and pregnant, graced the cover of Vanity Fair.

At first, I didn’t believe it. So I Googled “Leibovitz” on my iPhone. Sure enough, it was her. By now, my wife and I were both listening to the conversation. Leibovitz was pointing to yet another photograph.

“How about this one?” she asked the two men. “What’s the story here? How does it make you feel?”

I often think back to that breakfast when I’m considering how we as humans respond to visual stimuli. Leibovitz clearly understood that emotive images can tell whole stories that we process in the blink of an eye. It’s an idea totally in keeping with neuroscience, which tells us that all of our senses are kinesthetically connected to our limbic brains. By studying chemical flows, researchers know that all sensory input is initially processed in the limbic brain, before signals are then sent to various parts of the outer brain. So in the case of a photo, the signal goes directly from our eyes to the limbic brain. The same thing happens when we experience any visual stimuli: the limbic brain says, “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” It’s an emotional decision.

Since that breakfast, I’ve realized two things. First, PowerPoint slides can be used to convey a scene in a story in the same way a good photographer conveys a story through pictures. Second, an emotive image on a PowerPoint slide can be an effective way of achieving “visceralization.” We believe marketing departments should keep in mind the power of emotive images when they “sell” to the field just as salespeople should when making presentations to buyers.

Part Three: Sales Managers

Unlike CEOs and product marketers, sales managers are on the front lines every day, shouldering direct responsibility for their teams. Perhaps no one else exerts a stronger influence on salespeople. In this third section, we’ll discuss the role sales management plays in helping sellers succeed.

The Front Line: Managing Sellers to Be Their Best

Most sales managers were once sales representatives themselves—and very good ones. The best typically get promoted to management. Unfortunately, a lot of successful salespeople crash and burn once they become managers. The conventional wisdom says this happens because selling and managing involve different skills, but the conventional wisdom is wrong. Selling and managing are both all about influencing people to change. Just as selling requires getting buyers to open up and believe what you believe, managing requires getting reps to open up and buy into your company’s products and sales approach.

So why do so many top sellers make poor managers? It’s not the difference in the jobs; it’s the difference in the way they approach those jobs. When sellers become managers, a lot of them stop selling. They stop connecting with people and developing the kind of interpersonal relationships that were the foundation of their success in the field. They abandon the very things that got them where they are because they hold the misguided belief that managing calls for something else: control. And so they turn to spreadsheets, plans, forecasts, and expense reports—the province of the left brain.

Ben’s Story: We Do What We Know

When I was a rep, I hated weekly sales meetings. My manager would have us come into the office early on Monday mornings so he could ask us about our pipelines, our forecasts, our appointments, our “commits.” Basically, it was a watchdog exercise, a total waste of time, and everybody knew it. I think even my manager hated those meetings.

But as soon as I was promoted to management, I did the same thing. I’d call in my reps and interrogate them the same way I’d been interrogated. What do you have this week? What’s on your forecast? What’s going to close? Not surprisingly, I didn’t get straight answers. My reps were just like I’d been: their number-one goal was to get me off their backs.

As a manager, I hated those meetings even more than before, but I didn’t know a better way. I was doing what I’d been taught. The meetings were all about what we needed to do to “get the deal.” We never talked about lessons learned. There was no self-reflection. Being vulnerable wasn’t an option. It’s little wonder I never really connected with my reps.

Know Your Horses

Interpersonal relationships can be one of the most important parts of a sales manager’s job. In order to build a winning team, you’ve got to “know your horses.” Such was the case, literally, with the racehorse Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit’s first trainer, James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons, had trained horses for years. Early on, he saw potential in two-year-old Seabiscuit. But under Fitzsimmons, Seabiscuit didn’t perform to expectations. “The horse is too lazy,” Fitzsimmons said. (Funny, we hear the same thing from sales managers about their lower-performing reps.)

Fitzsimmons’s strategy was to break down Seabiscuit and beat the laziness out of him. It didn’t work. Seabiscuit finished last or in the back of the pack for his first 10 races. With nothing to lose, Seabiscuit’s owners turned to a washed-up old “horse whisperer” named Tom Smith. Tom’s unorthodox training methods brought Seabiscuit out of his lethargy. Seabiscuit started winning virtually every race, becoming the number-one racehorse in the country. Same horse, same potential, different result. The only difference was a new trainer (“manager”) who put in the time and effort to actually get to know his horse. (By the way, do you think motivation comes from the emotional brain or thinking brain? Hint: Seabiscuit didn’t have a thinking brain.)

Or consider the Chicago Bulls between 1984 and 1989. Despite having an amazing young talent in Michael Jordan, as well as future Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen and All-Star Horace Grant, the Bulls weren’t anywhere close to being a championship team. It’s easy to forget, but before MJ was MJ, he was widely criticized as being selfish, a prolific scorer with unbelievable athletic ability who couldn’t and didn’t win. In the 1986–1987 season, he led the league in scoring with 37 points per game; however, the Bulls were swept in the first round of the playoffs, just as they had been the previous year. In fact, through Jordan’s first six seasons, the Bulls made it past the first round of playoffs only once.

Then everything changed. Phil Jackson replaced Doug Collins as the Bulls’ head coach for the 1989–1990 season. Fans had their doubts. An NBA journeyman, Jackson had never been an NBA head coach. “My goal,” Jackson told a crowd at Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago, “is to find a structure that will empower everybody on the team, not just the stars, and allow the players to grow as individuals as they surrender themselves to the group effort.”

In addition to changing the Bull’s playing strategy and laboriously training them in the triangle offense, Jackson incorporated a holistic approach, asking his players for full commitment to his values and his moral “system,” which was influenced by Eastern philosophy (and earned him the nickname “Zen Master”). Keep in mind that Jackson was born to two Christian ministers, so he knew something about communicating his beliefs. He knew how to inspire others to believe what he believed. He employed unconventional coaching methods. Sometimes when he wanted to make a point, he’d have his players watch a movie. He gave homework in the form of reading assignments, novels and essays that he felt fit the personalities of his players. Most of all, he got to know his players—where they were coming from and what made them tick.

The following year, with no major roster changes, the Bulls won the NBA championship. The main difference was Jackson. By 1998, with Jackson at the helm, the Bulls had won six NBA championships, making the playoffs every year and failing to win the title only three times. Jordan was no longer known as a selfish scorer. He had become one of the best defensive players in the league, named First Team All-NBA Defensive Team in each of his eight years under Jackson. How did Jackson change MJ and turn the Bulls around? He got MJ to buy in.

Jackson proved his success in Chicago was no fluke. In 2000, he was hired to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. Despite having two of the game’s top stars in Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, the Lakers hadn’t won a championship in years. As with the young Michael Jordan, O’Neal and Bryant were criticized for not being team players. But once again, with no major roster moves, Jackson was able to guide the Lakers to the championship in his first year as coach. By 2010, the Lakers had five titles.

Jackson retired with 11 titles as head coach, more than any head coach or manager in U.S. professional sports. Sure, he had great players on his teams—MJ, Pippen, Shaq, and Kobe—but they didn’t win until Phil came along. His leadership was what made the difference.

How did Jackson do it? “He spent time with his players,” said Steve Kerr, who played for three of Jackson’s championship teams in Chicago, in a story for ESPN Magazine. “He thought about what made them tick. He connected with them, sold them on his concept, stuck up for them when they needed him. His actual coaching—calling plays, working refs, figuring out lineups, and everything else that we see—was a smaller piece of a much bigger picture. His players competed for him for many reasons, but mainly because they truly believed Jackson cared about them. Which he definitely did.”

Kobe Bryant, interviewed for the same ESPN Magazine story, agreed: “He’s absolutely brilliant in bringing a group together to accomplish one common goal.”

But let’s give the final word to the NBA’s greatest player of all time. After his last game with the Bulls, Jordan was asked about playing for another coach. “How many times do you want me to say it?” Jordan replied. “If Phil’s not in Chicago, I’m not playing—anywhere.”

Leading Is Selling, Selling Is Leading

It’s not always easy getting someone to open up, especially salespeople in a corporate setting. A sales manager can be a leader by going first. In Chapter 6 we presented Ben’s story about Clear Technology’s vice president of sales Phil Godwin, who tried Story Leaders as a last resort to help his sellers. Here’s a story from Phil himself.

Phil Godwin’s Story: Connecting with My Rep

After the Story Leaders workshop, I started using what I’d learned to connect with clients, and it was working well. But I was having less luck managing some of my reps. Last fall, I started noticing a morale problem with one in particular.

Steve was an average rep who typically followed directions well, but he was starting to get very negative. I could feel him drifting away, not doing the things that he needed to get done. I addressed the problem in my usual way, talking to him, asking questions to find out what the problem was. But in this case, I already had a pretty good idea of what the problem was. Steve wasn’t making enough money, and his bills were piling up. On the positive side, his pipeline was full, and he was set to make a lot of money in the next four months. But he was so stressed out he couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Around the same time, I was having a struggle with my middle son. He’d started fifth grade full of excitement. All his friends were in the same class. They felt like kings of the hill, their last year of elementary school. But a few weeks into the year, things started going downhill. My son’s teacher started riding him. He’d always struggled with schoolwork, and her approach was only making him feel worse.

Every day was a battle for my son, and every evening was a battle for us, trying to get him to do his homework. He felt that no matter what he did, his teacher was going to tell him it was wrong. In the mornings, he didn’t want to get out of bed. “I’m not going back to that place,” he’d say. Around the same time, we were having some testing done, and the doctors determined that he had dyslexia. It was exciting to know the root cause of his problems and shift attention to getting him help. We still had the teacher problem, though. I found myself having to explain to a fifth-grade boy that he’d have to be the bigger person when dealing with this adult.

One afternoon, after I’d spent hours on the phone with school administrators, I had another meeting with my struggling rep, Steve, and I couldn’t seem to get through to him. How am I supposed to help this guy if he won’t open up? I thought. And that’s when it finally hit me: I’d been using what I learned in the Story Leaders workshop to connect with customers, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I could and should be doing the same thing with my people. I hadn’t been leading the way I’d been selling. In order to motivate Steve, I needed to connect with him.

And so I told him the story of what I’d been going through with my son, how his teacher had broken his spirit.

“I hear you,” Steve said with a laugh. “I know all about being broke.”

He then proceeded to tell me about some of his financial problems. By the time he left my office, he was in better spirits. I hadn’t solved his problem, but I’d shown that I understood; I’d connected with him. And that was enough. His attitude changed. He went on to close the big deals in his pipeline and ended up having his best year ever. I hate to think what would have happened if I had started “managing” him instead of connecting with him. I learned two things from that experience. First, to get my reps to really open up and let me in, I need to go first and let them into my life. Second, I can draw on my own experiences to tell stories that convey the points I want to make.

Stories Are Our Most Powerful Tool

Remember Ben’s story about his therapist Alana in Chapter 3? Ben’s mistake as a salesperson was in thinking he had to be perceived as Superman in order to succeed. A lot of sales managers make the same mistake. The result is that they fail to connect emotionally with their salespeople.

Who are your reps? What makes them tick? Where do they come from? Why do they do what they do? In order to influence change in your reps, try opening up and inspiring them with stories of your own lessons learned and how you fumbled along the way. In doing so, not only will you connect with your reps but you’ll also be modeling effective selling behaviors and building a culture of story. As Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at Harvard University, puts it, “Stories are the single most powerful tool in a leader’s toolkit.”

But leaders aren’t the only people with important stories to tell. Sales reps can learn a lot from each other’s stories as well. Firefighters have long understood the value of such peer-to-peer story sharing. Every night, in firehouses across the country, firefighters take part in a tradition where they share stories about their day. It’s more than just a social ritual; it’s a means by which firefighters learn from one another’s successes and failures and build institutional memory within their departments. The goal: to make sure every single member of the firehouse has the same level of situational knowledge. With lives at stake, the 87/13 rule simply is not an option in the firefighting profession.

Sales managers can foster similar peer-to-peer learning by encouraging reps to share stories (including dumbass selling moments) with each other. One of our clients actually replaced his weekly sales meeting with what he calls “The Monday Morning Campfire.” Instead of focusing on forecasts and pipelines, he goes around the horn and has each of his team members share a story about a recent selling experience. The young reps learn from the old reps, the old reps learn from the young reps, and because the lessons come through storytelling, they’re much more likely to be remembered and taken to heart than anything learned from a sales manual. Since our client implemented the campfire meetings, attendance is up, morale is up, and his salespeople are more engaged. The meetings also promote a culture of story and reinforce the way he wants his sellers to communicate with buyers.

Personal Connection Is What Matters Most

We all like to feel we are part of something bigger than ourselves. None of us wants to feel like a cog in a machine. The company provides the paycheck, but employees work for people. Personal relationships and interactions are much more important than staff meetings or formal performance evaluations. Lead by example. Treat your salespeople the way you want them to treat your customers.

In the end, whether you’re a manager, marketer, or CEO, one of the goals is to enable your reps to become better salespeople. As Herb Kelleher demonstrated at Southwest Airlines, if you focus on helping your people become better at what they do, everything else will fall into place.