⚡️ Today’s level up ⚡️

Today’s edition dives deeper into an area I see missing from a lot of sellers’ toolkits, which was immensely beneficial throughout my career - being able to convey a point of view like a founder CEO.

Let’s go!

Who do you sound like?

People think I’m crazy when I say sales is a creative role.

Yet, I benefited immensely from being creative in sales, and I continuously see the top voices in sales sharing powerful benefits of being creative in their roles too.

But creativity is often mistaken as something you’re born with or it has to be flashy or complicated. That’s not the case at all. Sometimes it simply comes down to how you communicate. And the best way to communicate is through stories.

No one, in my experience, does this better than founder CEOs. These are the mavericks that saw a solution when there was a problem and had the gusto to make it come to life.

Learning to talk like these folks can be a massive upgrade to your sales career (and add an extra comma to your commission checks).

In today’s edition, I’ll point out some simple examples and an exercise you can do to elevate your ability to communicate big ideas to important executives like a founder CEO.

Find a few founders you resonate with

When I entered the enterprise space with ​Revel (now Shift4)​, I was starting to come into my own as far as having a voice that could drive interest and action amongst a group of executive stakeholders.

I credit this to being able to talk and present differently than my peers and competitors. When I was speaking to others, I was trying to speak with a distinct point of view about our product. It was less about positioning solutions (a mobile, cloud-based point of sale) and it was more about communicating a bold vision for the future of commerce in hospitality.

One of our partners, ​Olo​, were masters of communicating this vision. In fact, their CEO ​Noah Glass​, was one of the best at articulating this future.

Noah never led with Olo. He always led to Olo by describing in very simple, yet powerful terms what the future of hospitality holds. In fact, here’s a 55 second clip of him doing so:

Notice Noah’s tone (calm but passionate), his demeanor (alive but not overly energetic), his confidence (clear but not complicated with jargon), and his story arc (brief but connected to what they do at Olo).

Let’s look at another example from a founder CEO I admire, Aaron Levie of Box. Here he is recently on CNBC talking about the power of AI in Enterprise.

Like Noah, Aaron does well to articulate the vision of what’s possible while leading to Box, not leading with Box. Notice the absence of any complicated language or jargon? It’s simplistic, clear, and inspiring.

Last example. Listen to how Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, addresses Andres Sorkin’s question around AGI (2:02) and how he reframes “AGI” in terms of a marketing term, and how it positions to a term through the way Anthropic views the world. In another masterclass move, listen to his explanation of the first step toward the broad vision of “The Virtual Collaborator.” He walks Andrew and the audience through what the future holds, how it will shape up (based on being the best AI model that can train a computer to complete tasks), and subtly invites you in to be a part of this journey.

This is a perfect example of being able to demonstrate a “maturity model,” something I talk about a lot and changed the game for me in positioning broad transformations for Fortune 500 companies. It works really well because you anchor to a starting point (something your company is really good at today), but you demonstrate that’s not the real prize—the real fun is what’s coming next, and wouldn’t it be nice to be a part of that?

Who are the brands or companies you admire the most? Is a founder CEO still in charge? If so, start following them and bookmark their interviews on YouTube and watch (and re-watch) them while you’re on a plane, sipping on your coffee in the morning, or during quiet time on a Saturday morning.

This repetition will serve you well.

You’ll also notice there is a similar blueprint in how they communicate:

• Speak simply

• Be natural and organic

• Don’t be afraid to talk with your hands

• Paint a vision that is bigger than features

• Communicate ideas through stories

• Lead to, not with your company

A simple exercise to upgrade your talk track

Imagine you’ve become CEO for the day and have to do a five minute exclusive interview on CNBC.

Pull out a journal or hop onto ChatGPT and pretend you have to go on CNBC’s Mad Money and talk to millions of people about:

• A big idea

• What you do

• How it got started

• What you’ve overcome

• What’s happening right now

• What’s exciting on the roadmap

​Write​, edit, then practice. Use an AI model, like Claude or ChatGPT to assist you using this prompt:

“I have to go on CNBC’s MadMoney to do an interview with Jim Cramer. I work at <your company> and I want to speak more like a founder CEO, like Aaron Levie at Box or Noah Glass at Olo <or your founder CEOs of choice> about the following 6 things:

1. Big idea

2. What we do

3. How it got started

4. What we’ve overcome

5. What’s happening right now

6. What’s exciting on the roadmap

Write this summary in the form of a natural script that I can practice regularly so that I am prepared for the interview. I want to sound natural, so be sure to incorporate these 5 key restraints:

1. Speak simply as if I am talking to a 6th grader

2. Do not use buzzwords or jargon

3. Paint a vision that is bigger than features

4. Communicate ideas through proven customer success stories

5. Lead to, not with my company

Don’t talk about our company in the big idea and be sure to give me at least one customer success story to share.”

Note: If your company is small or unknown, you may have to teach ChatGPT about it by pointing it to specific areas on your website before trying this prompt.

It won’t be perfect. Tweak, adapt, and try a few different versions. Then practice, and then practice some more. Make the entry, and then the talk track, sound and feel natural. Be able to tell a story rather than sound like you’re reading from a script.

This will force you to understand your company’s history and product suite in less than 24 hours and give you a natural talk track that you can use on-demand (at events, in meetings, sitting on a plane next to an SVP of your top prospect).

That’s a wrap! See you next time.