How to Create Powerful Sales Narratives That Drive Growth And Success

In a fiercely competitive B2B landscape, sales narratives can change the odds and drive exponential growth and success. In this episode of Predictable B2B Success, we sit down with Bruce Scheer, a master of market narratives and the CEO of Inspire Your Buyers. With a proven track record of transforming top-tier companies like IBM and Microsoft, Bruce dives deep into the art of crafting compelling sales stories that resonate with decision-makers. From Chevron’s strategic branding of Techron to LinkedIn’s groundbreaking “deep sales” campaign, Bruce unveils the secrets behind these powerful narratives.

He emphasizes the importance of intimately understanding customer struggles, having a cohesive core narrative, and validating stories with the target audience. Get ready to elevate your sales strategies by learning to spotlight big problems, frame solutions compellingly, and ensure your message hits the mark every time. Don’t miss these invaluable insights on making your sales narratives memorable and irresistibly effective.

Watch the episode

About Bruce Scheer

Bruce Scheer’s career journey started in service quality improvement, where he honed his expertise for several years. Transitioning into the field of technology marketing, Bruce discovered his true passion. As the industry evolved, so did Bruce’s focus, leading him to the specialization now known as revenue enablement. Initially referred to as field marketing and later sales enablement, his work in this area has been pivotal. Bruce has been fortunate to collaborate with remarkable clients throughout his career, contributing to his continuous growth and success in the business world.

The Secret to Accelerating Revenue Growth: Crafting Compelling Sales Narratives

Sales narratives are a powerful tool that every B2B company should leverage to accelerate revenue growth. A well-crafted sales narrative helps align your go-to-market efforts, differentiate your solution, and inspire buyers to take action. As Bruce Scheer, CEO of Inspire Your Buyers and co-founder of Value Pros, explains:

“Very few [companies] have something like [a sales narrative]. I call it the narrative blind spot, and I try to remove that.”

What is a Sales Narrative?

A sales narrative is a strategic messaging framework that guides sales conversations and positions your solution in the most compelling way for your target buyers. It goes beyond typical sales messaging or product marketing content.

“Very often, I’ll ask for the narrative and I’ll get a message map or a brochure,”

says Scheer.

“I won’t get a core narrative, a central narrative. It just doesn’t exist most often.”

An effective sales narrative has five key components according to Scheer’s model:

1. Target the right buyer persona: Focus on the decision makers with budget and authority. “The big question is, who are we selling to? Who’s going to be involved in the decision making?”
2. Spotlight the big problem: Shine a light on the critical issues your buyers face that your solution addresses. “Last thing you do is talk about yourself. Talk about their problem and help them see their problem in a new light.”
3. Envision the desired outcome: Paint a picture of the results and benefits buyers can achieve. “What’s life on the beach like once that problem goes away and you’re realizing the outcomes that solution would provide?”
4. Showcase the solution: Explain your differentiated solution and capabilities at a high level. “You’re just talking about the big solution, not all the nitty gritty.”
5. Prescribe next steps: Provide clear guidance on how to move forward in the buying process. “Lay out that journey step by step so then that buyer can buy.”

Why Sales Narratives Matter

Investing in developing a sales narrative delivers significant returns. “The power of a great narrative, it is a great revenue growth enhancer,” Scheer emphasizes.

“You don’t have to invest $1,000,000 like you would in the product. But you should invest something and get it right because it makes it a party for everyone.”

Consider this example Scheer shares about Concur, an expense management software company:

“I’m out in the UK introducing their new narrative… 1 week later, the head of the UK office shoots me a note of thanks, tells me the story about he and one of the reps that was in my training. She managed to get another meeting with a prospect and gave the new narrative. She was told not to even show up, that they were on the shortlist, but now they’re off. They’re going to go with another vendor. But she begged and they allowed her to go out… Long story short, they closed the deal immediately with the new narrative.”

A consistent, compelling sales narrative ensures your entire revenue team can tell a unified story that resonates with buyers. Scheer says,

“When you haven’t established a big problem, then you’re typically wasting both your and the buyer’s time.”

How to Develop Your Sales Narrative

Scheer recommends following a rigorous “north star model” to craft your sales narrative:

1. Scan: Analyze your competitors’ messaging to identify patterns and opportunities to differentiate. “You just need to understand that whole sphere that would be impacting how your target customers think.”
2. Develop: Synthesize unique insights about your buyers, their big problems, desired outcomes, and your differentiated solution. Ask “What’s a keen customer insight that we see that nobody else sees where we should hang our narrative?”
3. Test: Validate the narrative with your target buyers, sellers, advisors and analysts. “We do all that testing and get feedback, and then we move into refining that narrative after that.”
4. Refine: Incorporate the feedback to optimize the narrative. Focus especially on quantifying your differentiated value.
5. Launch and Learn: Roll out the narrative, measure results, and continuously improve it. “We launch it, make sure it works, and make some adjustments if it’s not getting the results that we want.”

Scheer advises relentlessly focusing on a single big problem throughout the development process.

“So many people show up and let me talk about me. Here’s what we do. Here’s what we have… You need to really start with the customer and the problem domain. And don’t leave that domain until you have a firm agreement.”

Identifying Your Differentiated Value

A critical aspect of an effective sales narrative is clearly articulating how your solution is uniquely valuable. Scheer recommends looking for your “ace, king, queen” – the top three differentiated capabilities competitors can’t match.

“What’s the differentiating attribute that we have that they can’t find anywhere else that creates differentiated value?” poses Scheer. “It’s not just a unique attribute. It’s a unique attribute that brings a capability to that client, so they can do something differently. That’s the operative question.”

For example, Fastly, an edge computing provider, differentiated through their exceptional customer support via client-specific Slack channels. “Fastly was able to supply that by building a customer specific Slack channel for every client and just giving them really tight response times for doing things at the edge. And that became an advantage point that we could really showcase,” explains Scheer.

Quantifying your differentiated value in hard metrics is key, especially for B2B procurement. “Very often, I’m also looking for hard value and something that we could even quantify,” notes Scheer. “How can you prove the value?”

Making Your Narrative Memorable

In addition to the messaging, how you deliver your sales narrative makes a huge difference in its impact. “A great narrative is also a visual narrative,” Scheer emphasizes. “For memorability, making sure your message and your narrative sticks helps your customer visualize it.”

He shares an example of a client who still remembered a whiteboard story Scheer created for them years ago:

“A guy just shot me a note today from a company called Workfront that was acquired by Adobe… I congratulated him on his position and said, hey, when you were at Workfront, I created a whiteboard story for you, and I hope you found that helpful. And he, in his LinkedIn note to me today, just said, oh, yeah, the one around DX equals this. And I had created a whole visual picture for them to use with their buyers. And just incredibly memorable for him. He’ll never forget it.”

Scheer also recommends incorporating analogies and “day in the life” stories to make the emotional impact of your buyers’ problems and your solution come to life.

“Where’s the emotional pain? Where’s the operational pain? And then where’s the financial pain in that buyer’s universe?”

Enabling Your Revenue Team

Once you’ve developed your sales narrative, enabling your entire revenue team to internalize and deliver it is critical. “The worst thing you wanna do when you’re in a selling conversation, go, hey, this has been a great conversation. What do you think are the next steps?” cautions Scheer. “What you wanna do is instead… say, hey, this has been a great conversation. Based on our conversation and my experience, here’s what I’d like to recommend as next steps for us.”

He suggests hard-coding the prescribed next steps in your sales narrative to make it easy for reps to guide buyers consistently. Lay out the journey, including an assessment, proof of concept, business case, and launch plan.

Ongoing training and feedback loops are also important to keep the narrative fresh and effective. “We’ll validate it, launch it, and fine tune it,” says Scheer. “And then change happens, new functionality, new competitors, a merger, the capability set changes, and hopefully for good reason. And then we need to recalibrate that narrative yet again very often and make it more relevant for today.”

Key Takeaways

In summary, to harness sales narratives to drive growth in your B2B business:

• Develop a core sales narrative following the five-part framework: target buyer, big problem, desired outcome, solution, and next steps
• Identify and quantify your top 3 differentiated capabilities that deliver unique value to buyers
• Make your narrative visual and memorable with whiteboard stories, analogies, and “day in the life” examples
• Enable your revenue team with training and hard-coded next steps to deliver the narrative consistently
• Continuously test, measure, and refine your narrative as your solutions and market evolve

As Scheer puts it:

“The power of a great narrative, it is a great revenue growth enhancer… get it right because it makes it a party for everyone.”

Investing in a strategic sales narrative is one of the highest ROI initiatives for accelerating growth – and eliminating your narrative blind spot.

Some areas we explore in this episode include:

• Transition from Founder-Led Sales to a Sales Team: Strategies for implementing a sales system to facilitate this transition.
• Alignment with Chief Sales Officer’s Goals: The importance of syncing sales strategies and goals with top-level management.
• Building Trusting Business Relationships: Methods to ensure customers get to know, trust, and become comfortable with the salesperson and the company.
• Key Metrics and Leading Indicators: Discussion on critical metrics like penetration of high potential accounts and how CEOs can track sales system effectiveness.
• Sales Compensation Plans: Addressing the misalignment of sales behaviors with compensation, proposing a salary plus incentives model.
• Sales Training Approach: Insights into Dave Kahle’s training methods, focusing on practical, interactive sessions with a strong emphasis on application and peer feedback.
• Sales Process Overview: The “big picture sales process” from identifying suspects to transforming them into trusted partners.
• Emotional Aspects of Sales: Addressing often overlooked emotional challenges like rejection, isolation, and time management in sales training.
• Importance of Investing in Sales Force Development: Emphasis on making learning and development a strategic initiative for businesses.
• Effective Use of Customer Feedback: Discussion on why the focus might be less on customer feedback and more on sales figures to gauge customer satisfaction.
• And much, much more…

Listen to the episode.

Related links and resources

Connect with Bruce Scheer

• LinkedIn

Subscribe to & Review the Predictable B2B Success Podcast

Thanks for tuning into this week’s Predictable B2B Podcast episode! If the information in our interviews has helped your business journey, please head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review.

Your reviews and feedback will not only help me continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help reach even more amazing founders and executives just like you!