Tuesday, August 26, 2025

What’s a Story? What’s a Good Story? What’s a Great Story?

 

Articulating pain, followed by a few features, and then a value statement is not a compelling story: it is simply an advantage or benefit statement. 

 

That’s like saying a human needs to move, and a few leg bones and muscles provide the ability, enabling people to cross a street. Boring and insufficient. 

 

There needs to be more to make it a compelling, resonating story that gets remembered and retold.

 

Chip and Dan Heath in their seminal work on storytelling, “Made to Stick,” identified five key attributes to make a story successfully sticky:

 

Simple Message:         The concept or message needs to be clear and easy to understand

Real Experience:         It must be believable and perceived as being true 

Element of Surprise:   An unexpected twist, event or outcome generates interest and tension

Evokes Emotion:          The best stories are those that generate an emotional response 

Relevant:                     Good stories relate directly to the subject or key point

 

The “pain, features, value” structure may satisfy three of these five, but ignore two. 

 

Is there an element of surprise? Nope.

 

Does that structure evoke an emotional response? Hardly.

 

Triggering our emotions is what makes a story great and memorable. For example:

 

   Empathy: “I’ve also been in this position!”

            Shock: “OMG – that’s terrible!”

            Surprise: “Oh no! What happened next?”

            Humorous: “Well, that’s sad, but also very funny!”

            Cleverness: “Oh wow, that’s a really elegant solution!”

 

Evaluate the stories you use – how many of these five attributes do they communicate?

 

Let’s take storytelling up a level or two!

Friday, August 22, 2025

“I Got the Job!”

 


“I got the job!” she reported, triumphantly.

 

She said, “I used the stories in ‘Suspending Disbelief’ to answer the interviewer’s questions – and after I received the job offer, they told me, ‘You nailed it!”

 

Previously an SDR/BDR, she is now about to start as a presales Solution Consultant, her goal for the past many months. After struggling in interview after interview, a colleague suggested she use the stories in “Suspending Disbelief” to broaden her skillset. She commented, “I read the entire book in just two days!”

 

When responding to the interviewer’s questions, she reported that she began her answers using the stories’ morals and then used the stories themselves when she needed more explanation. “The List of Morals in the back of the book really helped me prepare,” she added.

 

She noted, “I’ve just started reading ‘Doing Discovery’ and it is opening my eyes! I’m really excited about applying all this in my new role.”

 

This was an unexpected, delightful message to receive about my books!

 

Perhaps “Suspending Disbelief” can also help you or your colleagues land that new role, whether it is moving into presales, sales, marketing, customer success, or another customer-facing role.

 

You can find “Suspending Disbelief” here, and best of luck with your next job interview!

https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

The Important Difference Between Symptoms vs a Correct Diagnosis When Doing Discovery

 

Pain is often a symptom of a bigger issue: a Critical Business Issue.

 

Here’s a true story related to me recently:

 

A friend complained of pain in his stomach, or more accurately his lower-right side adjacent to his stomach. 

 

The pain increased dramatically over a few hours, and he went to the hospital emergency room. After waiting for a while (“What felt like forever…!”) he finally saw a doctor. At first the doctor said, “Sounds like you have gas in your bowels, but let’s do some tests…” 

 

They ran assays for C-reactive protein and complete blood count, followed by an Ultrasound and CT-scan, after which the doctor revised his diagnosis. “You’ve got appendicitis, and we’ve got to get it out of you right away!” 

 

While recovering from surgery he was informed, “Well, it was good we got that done when we did. One quarter of your appendix had burst, and the rest was ready to go!”

 

 

The moral? When doing discovery, make sure you and your prospect both understand the impact and implications of their pain!

 

 

And here are two resources to help:

 

“Uncovering Critical Business Issues – What, Why, and How”

https://greatdemo.com/uncovering-critical-business-issues-what-why-and-how/

 

Doing Discovery

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Three Thoughts on a Tuesday Morning

I rarely learn while I’m talking…

 

Knowledge is finite, ignorance infinite!

 

Some people are wise, but not decisive; 

some people are decisive, but not wise. 

Can we be both wise and decisive?

Monday, August 18, 2025

The First Demo Takes Advantage of the Anchoring Effect!

 

The anchoring effect applies to images as well as written or spoken content.

 

The first version of a solution that a prospect sees biases their impression of what is “normal” or “best” and all subsequent versions are compared to that first image.

 

This is another great reason to use Vision Generation Demos in your first live interactions and automated demos! 

 

By delivering a Vision Generation Demo in response to your prospect’s request to “see a brief demo” you can set the anchor and enjoy the advantages of being Number 1.

 

If you hold off and insist on a thirty-minute discovery call, and then schedule a demo as a follow-up meeting, you are at risk of being the second, third, or later version that your prospect sees. You are immediately placed in column “B” or worse!

 

Of course, the first demo also needs to be compelling and resonate. If your first demo is not aligned with your prospects’ interests, it will not successfully set the anchor. For example, if your demo focuses on how your software works rather than on what your software delivers or enables, it will fail to set the anchor.

 

See Vision Generation Demos (Chapter 11) in Great Demo! to execute this highly effective process and set your anchor successfully! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

Friday, August 15, 2025

Signed Copies for SKO? Book Club? Quarterly Gathering? Rewards for Great Performance? Volume Discounts?


Volume discounts? Yes!

Book club support? Yes!

Signed copies? Yes, again!

 

For those who want to provide Great Demo!, Doing Discovery, and Suspending Disbelief books to their teams, volume discounts are available. 

 

Can you get those copies signed by the author? Sure! 

(A thousand copies might take some time, however!)

 

I’d also be delighted to join a book club session or two to answer questions and provide examples.

 

All part of my desire to improve the world one discovery conversation and one demo at a time!


Thursday, August 14, 2025

More Premature Elaboration: A Competitive Oops!

 


I was the prospect listening to a vendor present their offering. The salesperson was working his way through their product presentation and entered a section on “Competitive Differentiation.”

 

One slide listed several competitors, and the salesperson began to discuss how his product was superior to the others. I perked up and made a quick note.

 

Seeing this, the salesperson asked me what I thought about the various competitors.

 

I responded, “Well, I didn’t know that [Vendor C] had an offering in this space. Many thanks for letting me know – I’ll check them out!”

 

And [Vendor C] did have an excellent product that, for our needs, was the best fit – which we purchased and enjoyed for years!

 

Moral? Beware of Premature Elaboration!

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Delight in Being Surprised


Delight in being surprised – embrace it – because it means you just learned something!

And if you’re curious, here are terrific opportunities to learn!

https://greatdemo.com/blog/ 

Monday, August 11, 2025

“We Tell Great Stories but We Lose the Business…!”

 

This lament came from a head of sales.

 

He noted that they had invested in storytelling training, thinking that storytelling skills would give his customer-facing team superior sales performance over his competition. Sadly, it didn’t!

 

In fact, he reported that win rates and sales stage conversions had decreased since the training took place.

 

We explored his situation, and I watched a number of his team’s discovery calls and demo recordings.

 

What became clear was that his team’s focus on storytelling negatively impacted their application of core discovery and demo skills: They believed that good storytelling would replace the need to execute these fundamentals well.

 

The recordings also showed that only a few team members were actually good at storytelling.

 

Worse, many of the stories employed by the team were not engaging or compelling. They were simply facts (and claims!) reset in storytelling structures. They lacked authenticity and impact.

 

Storytelling is not a replacement for core skills; storytelling supplements, enhances, supports, and entertains.

 

-       Surgeons can’t simply tell stories about successful surgeries; they must also have the necessary skills (before they open you up!)

-       Contractors can’t simply tell stories about great construction projects; they must also have the necessary skills (before they pour your new foundation!)

-       Chefs can’t simply tell stories about fabulous meals; they must also have the necessary skills (before they feed you something unpalatable!)

 

Sales, presales, and customer-success teams can’t simply tell stories about happy customers; they must also have the necessary discovery and demo skills to execute their roles successfully.

 

Establish a superior core set of skills, then add storytelling!

 

 

And here are excellent starting points!

 

Doing Discovery

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

 

Great Demo! Third Edition:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

 

Doing Discovery Workshops

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/doing-discovery/ 

 

Great Demo! Workshops

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/ 

 

Then add storytelling (here are some examples):

 

Suspending Disbelief:

https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy 

Wednesday, August 6, 2025

“Doing Discovery” SE Book Club – What’s YOUR Discovery Skills Level?

 

I joined Kintan Brahmbhatt, Co-Founder and CEO of Olto Labs, for this intriguing and enlightening discussion of discovery skills, methods, tips, and examples. We used the Seven Levels of Discovery Skills as our guide, exploring:

 

-       Uncovering Pain (the endpoint for most organizations’ discovery calls!)

-       Exploring Pain more deeply (plus a bit of tech stack)

-       Examining Impact (why is the pain important, who is impacted and how?)

-       Capturing tangible Value (value specifics, not vague generalizations)

-       Vision Reengineering (because prospects don’t know what they don’t know!)

-       Other dimensions of discovery, including “Burn Victims,” champion enablement, and the Technology Adoption Curve

 

You can find the recording here – enjoy!

https://www.linkedin.com/events/sebookclubwithpetercohan-olto7350680020169740289/ 

 

And here’s where you can find “Doing Discovery” as well as “Great Demo!” and my just-released collection of fun, engaging, life-lesson short stories “Suspending Disbelief”:

 

Doing Discovery

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

 

Great Demo! Third Edition:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

 

Suspending Disbelief:

https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy