Lessons - Unlocking the Power of Storytelling | Rajiv Nathan - Founder of The Startup Hypeman

In this episode, you'll learn how storytelling and clear messaging are key to business success. Discover how entrepreneurs can simplify their communication to stand out, close more deals, and raise their company's value. With a process-driven approach, you'll hear insights on why storytelling is often overlooked in-house and how to effectively capture and share your brand's narrative to connect with customers on a deeper level. So now you're you are you know startup hype man. What are you what are you doing for company? You're doing you're basically building out models for helping them in situations like you dealt with as you know a younger sales rep. So walk me through you know the business model and what you do with startup hype. Yeah so it's it's you know what you said in the beginning I think was a good encapsulation of it but it is really like I'm helping some companies not suck at how they communicate there themselves so that they can close more deals really like breakthrough in their category and that I think some of the long-term ramifications your valuation increases maybe raise money along the way as well right so in the sales and marketing setting by approach there is this story stack process so I'm sure you've heard of the stories tech stack before every company has their tech stack well very few companies have a story stack and the story stack is the different layers of messaging that weave in and out of your sales process and that your marketing team uses as well and in the story stack what we focus on is your elevator pitch we craft your companies manifesto we look at your demo and we audit the demo to see how does this need to be reframed or re-delivered to have more impact we create your pitch deck and we look at where do we where do we leverage that in the sales process and we and we really let the pitch deck be like the defining representation of your story and then there's some other there's some other elements as well that are added in there like talking about customer success things of that nature but but the idea is that the story stack then is the thing that your team gets trained up on but then they go back and reference whenever they need to say okay what do I do in this situation or how do I think in this situation it's what the marketing team is able to go and leverage to say okay what's our content strategy going to be well let's let's start with the story stack and see what's the base message we're trying to get across in the first place hey if we're going to put an ad out on social media let's go back to the story stack and just look at what is that like lead message that we know we're going for here can I can I ask you something we why would can I ask you something literature yeah I lost my dream I thought why would why would a CEO or CMO VP marketing VP sales not be doing this in house why would they bring your question yeah it's a really good question and sometimes the hesitation I'll face is oh we have a product marketer who's working on this stuff here's the challenge with doing it in house it's not impossible but it's a really to really high uphill climb for most companies because they don't have a process for creating this stuff they may hack it together over time incidentally but they don't have a concrete step-by-step process to work through it oftentimes the internal resources are tied up with other things so like if you think about a sales leader are they going to commit the time to like figuring out the company's story when they have to get on and help close deals and manage reps pipes pipeline thing like that the product marketer which I would often say is like my probably like my biggest like competitor loan unquote is the internal product marketer or them thinking the internal product market and I got a lot of love for the product marketers and I love to work in collaboration I think the challenge with them doing it on their own is their work is also pulled away from like figuring out like demand gen with webinars right and just like creating collateral and overall I would say most times people at the company the CEO if it's the product market if they had a sales if it's the rep they're so close to their own thing that they have forgotten what it's like to be the person who's coming to this fresh and their customers are the people who are coming to it fresh maybe they're a little bit educated because they've done some research online but they are like you know it's really tough when you're so in the weeds yeah and I call it the messaging treadmill actually I probably should have led with that but the idea is like like all these companies know it's important but when anytime they make an effort for it they take two steps back like they're on a treadmill or I just running in place and yeah in my conversations with probably say at this point over the years like four or five hundred entrepreneurs the three most prevailing reasons for why it's difficult is their either as I said two in the weeds to really get a clear look at this thing perhaps they're too technical minded especially like you know if the CEO created the company and created the product they know product within necessarily no communication or they're just too distracted by the the other day-to-day responsibilities it's interesting because storytelling messaging is probably one of the most important my background is in sales and marketing but heavily in sales so one of the most important tools that you can use sell a product the demo product if you're like you know this is your this is your bread and butter but if you're not telling the story it's very hard to properly demo and pitch and eventually it negotiate and close but it seems that it's useful for sales but sales thinks it should be coming from marketing and nobody's really picking up that mantle and like running with it but it's probably one of the most important things you could do as a business and then like I like your point too it's like it's in the CEO's head but the CEO doesn't you know step out you know can't see the force of the trees and and understand that it's not what's in his or her head is not apparent to the people that are hitting that landing page jumping on a call with a rep like it doesn't translate because you'll never tell the story as well the CEO unless you codify it and put it into a playbook and and and sort of write it down right so that's the very good point um uh now well and with that you know I could you jump in versus yeah like yeah I'm most frequently prospected the CEO like him or her that's who I'm prospecting is the CEO as opposed to like you know head of marketing or head of sales and the message I give to that person the CEO is like look you've got to you have a vision in your head for what this brand is supposed to represent but what's happening is that vision is not being articulated in your team's day-to-day boots on the ground interactions with messaging and the demos and the marketing and so where I can come in is developing a scalable narrative that maps your vision to what's being said in that boots on the ground effort let's so there's a couple things that I want to touch on so the premise makes sense why companies aren't doing it makes sense I want to touch on like best practices for building out this story so what you know what's your process at a high level um and then I also want to touch on like how to get people to adopt it and really buy into it but you gave me some good points to run with that I want to bring up so one of your points was don't think like an entrepreneur or executive think like an entertainer explain what that means for people that that don't understand the value of storytelling or or even just just break that them yeah of course that's and that's really like the startup hype man like guiding monthra is think like an entertainer the idea behind that is the entertainer is solely concerned with their audience right they they have one goal in mind enlist it in emotional reaction from the crowd get them to feel something get them to leave the arena buzzing about something and it's that that's actually why when you know it was so Scott who who's like your favorite music artist favorite music artists who that's a good one which which genre oh I'll go with I'll go with I'll go with somebody um who who can't be controversial anymore I like a beachy the beachy is a great artist sure rest in peace right rest in peace exactly yeah I'm not gonna name any power that are still around because I might I might uh I might search the feelings whatever but a beachy everybody like the beachy okay so levels of eachy right so um when a beachy hits the stage or when he he did hit the stage here's what would happen right he come out be like how's everyone doing tonight everyone's like yeah we're doing great and it's like all right let's do this okay what did not happen with a beachy or any artist for that they do not hit the stage and go how's everyone doing tonight yeah we're great okay great so check it out here's what's gonna happen um I'm gonna play every song in my catalog that I've ever come out with it's like you know nine albums deep but I'm not just gonna play those songs you've heard I'm also gonna go through the b-sides and the draft versions and some things that I've just been working on in the garage recently uh because and I don't really care that you you don't care about all those but I they really mean a lot to me and it's important to me uh it's gonna take about like 12 hours to get through it all who's with me you know even like the biggest of itchy fan is gonna be like all right we gotta get hold of it some right um they think about like what's their set list and they say we're gonna compose this set list based on a take home feeling that we want them to have and we want them buzzing with something and that set list is constructed very carefully now it doesn't mean you don't get the guitar solo or the rapper doesn't go into like that you know that off script freestyle but the the idea is that they're working within a construct within a set list which allows them the ability to go off script momentarily but then come back to something they they you know they didn't just like go and blind and be like well it's you know it's a three hour long freestyle I don't know what I'm doing today yeah right so they have that set list and and again you know the actor will go off script if the scene demands it but it's because of the scene demands it not because the actor demands it that's a that's a really great analogy that's a really really good analogy it really it really frames up what's wrong with demos but when you put it like that it's almost ridiculous why would you just like vomit verbally vomit like somebody everything you know if they don't need it or they don't care about it right how how like first of all there's different you know of course the ideal is to walk away from a demo with positive impression of the person is pitching but you know maybe maybe you you're looking at other vendors you have a neutral impression because they you know hit all the nails on the head and you just want to shop around but if you're going to start pitching things then I've seen this before they open up like the feature brochure now virtually feature brochure and it's like like like just like go like through everything and the person's like man I need like like a tenth of what you just showed me like chill out like let's let's let's like mean shelve that for later but if you do that like and you're taking up somebody's hour hour and a half that's a negative they walk away with a negative impression not only could you not sell but you could like jeopardize like your reputation as a sales rep as a company and and really really hurt chances of even you know selling in the future to that person or that organization so that's that's very important so entertain tailor the pitch tailor the stuff that you're giving over and and like hyper personalized so that it's like specific for them and that's it thanks for tuning in if you found this valuable don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode and if you want to dive deeper into this conversation check out the links in the description to watch the full episode see you in the next one