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Hi there, I'm Ben Pearce and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Every episode we talk through how to thrive in the tech world, not just survive. Now, if you want me to work with your team, just give me a shout. I love to help teams be more influential, memorable and successful with their stakeholders. Head over to www.techworldhumanskills.com to book a chat.
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skills.
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Brilliant to have you with us today. And we're in the live studio so rather than being remote. I'm here with our guest today in the actual real studio so if you want to watch along with the video, you can. Well, today, we're talking about how you play, how you drive action.
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And we're going to think about that in the context of the rationale and logic is in powerful useful.
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And it's great also, emotionally and energized. Remember you, and anyway, it's true.
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Storytelling. But so that's what we're going to be thinking about today and we've got.
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So our guest today is, shall we say a bit of a veteran in the pre sales world he's worked at loads of places and lots of amazing period. So please could you welcome to the show.
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Thanks having us Ben.
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Veteran pre sales leader like that yeah I think we discuss yeah 15 years of being a nerd and a developer buried in code and architect and then 15 years of pre sales leadership as well so yeah we've had to hone some of these skills. Over the years. Yes, we get five.
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So yeah I suppose last 15 years have been pre sales so what company called that dynamics which was eventually after five years being there we got acquired by Cisco for 3.7 billion and change so not too bad on that front I ran the northern European sales engineering team and then join page duty eight years ago and gone from running a mere pre sales to run in the global pre sales team over there so. So yeah taking on that global role and I will get into some of this as we go through being very insightful when it comes to how do you motivate different parts of the world and cultures when you're a Brit to doing certain things as well so looking forward to getting into some of that Ben.
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And so what I'd love to do today. Think outright side here of maybe stories, but what I'm sort of thinking, I'm thinking a good way that we could run this run this episode together is what do we get off by that phrase. Let's talk about what we mean. Don't mean. Let's talk about why we think that's important. There's some science.
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Yeah, we'll have a little think about that. Then, I think we'll have a look at how you maybe how how yeah.
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And then this is going to fit.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Does that sound good. Sounds perfect. Let's do that. Let's start then.
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When you hear the word.
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What does that mean.
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See it can end up meaning a plethora of different things as well in some people's minds it could be Oh no it's going to be someone that's going to go on for hours and hours and bleat on to a certain degree.
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Even actually tell a little story of my last team that I work with and he won't mind me calling him out but a gentleman called Heath in a particular team actually works in North America. He was a consummate storyteller. And sometimes it was even the scenario that the team was I'm going into a meeting I'm too techy for this. I need to bring the storyteller along. So they would actually then drag Heath into conversations but one of his big roles in life was he wanted to teach others how to tell stories and he was very good and it is still very good of course at.
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Kind of really coming up with short meaningful relevant stories with a punchline sometimes with metrics and decent outcomes and they always have a nice structure to them so some really nice skills that actually aren't too hard to pick up and understand.
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Think about.
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I have to say to be be more Bambi Bambi Bambi Bambi. And this is what I mean when I think you were to take to to to side of work of writing on different ends of the emotion. Like one end.
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Alphabetical.
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If you just read the dictionary.
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Remember much.
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Then it's just.
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And then the other end you've got Bambi. Spoiler alert.
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It's famous for making people cry.
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And unless you're Phoebe from friends and habits in the end as we may recall. It's not a little overlaid story on a story. Sorry about.
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We are people often too much time in tech. Dictionary.
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Yeah. That a little.
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That's not meaning to say that every business.
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Group hugging.
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But we can move that way. And I think we'll dig into. Yeah. That there's benefit.
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I think the important thing is. Not saying.
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Get into a business.
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Or.
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And you start once a time. There was a fake.
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You know.
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There's a huge misconception isn't there about what story telling is. And even the word story is probably misuse because yeah people associate it with a 300 page novel. It's going to take a while to get through. To me. That's if you agree. We're talking about.
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Samples.
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Little anecdotes. Disasters.
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Little anecdotes.
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Maybe study.
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That's what I'm.
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Yeah.
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It is. I think people have a tendency actually as well to put it very businessy when it comes to storytelling. I quite often have thought to. Well what do you speak to your mates down the pub about again very British on that front for those that are not British but down the. Like you've got five individuals round the table as it were. And yeah. What. Who's kind of controlling the conversation. Who do people lean in and listen to. Who's injecting elements of I quite often like humor being injected into a story because it makes things memorable as well. So who in that conversation is holding people and then who. Well dare I say it maybe even who's the one that everyone just groans when they start to talk because they're going to hear either a monologue or something that doesn't really go anywhere or something doesn't have a point. It could be an individual that just sits there silently soaking it in as they go through. So the point being.
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Whether that might be. Absolutely. Whether that might be.
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Whether that might be. Pops.
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Comes in a.
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They grow.
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That's never you don't want to be the grown up. Yeah. Well imagine imagine as a boss you're about to join a you say you've got your half hour one to one with a particular report and you are that report. And again you go back to it. Do you want your boss looking forward to doing that one to one or did they just dread doing it because come pay review times and things like that. You're going to want to be able to articulate what you can do and how well you do it. So what we've got is what it is. Ability.
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Tell.
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And engage.
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Hopefully.
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That's what we're thinking. Yeah.
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Let's think about what why that's important. Maybe I can share some.
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So.
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First time.
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Fascinating.
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Now I put myself on the spot.
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I'm going to pop it in the show.
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Not I'm not making.
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But the point is that. Now around the front here. Sadly big bold part.
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Got a rational.
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I love thinking.
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Right around the other side of the brain just above the spinal cord.
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Emotion stuff. Things that create that.
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And that's over there. Now what studies show.
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That if you can get the brain to.
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Not just. Not just rations.
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Motion.
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Happen. First thing. Problem solving.
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It's better.
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The process.
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So for example if you take those two things. And I'm now talking to somebody I need. And I managed to light up. But they're bright by.
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Logical supplement. Amazing. Motion. Well they are thinking.
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And they will remember.
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Isn't that a brilliant state to have you. That's great. To be honest on these days on back to back zoom calls and virtual everything else where every your all your 10 meetings that day just feel the same you want to be that one that stands out. What was the one that got that all flowing and. Back to that neuroscience theory. And we were talking. We got on. About.
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Technical.
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Formative.
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The person. Their arms around. I know a ton. I mean techies we have to do everything with it. As I say I work very much alongside coders. When they're putting together things you have these show and tell sessions where you need to show what you've developed why you've developed it how you went about developing it. Some of the problems and obstacles you've had to overcome so yet low level techies as it were. They have to be able to articulate this to an audience.
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And I think.
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We were also to. A cup of tea.
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Or more.
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Tied to.
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You're off learning all of that.
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Orchestrate that. And then.
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Your ideas.
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Yeah. But these days as I say it's ideas and solutions that's the thing that's holding most people back on their AI journey isn't the tech or the code now it's how do I come up with something that I'm going to play about with. I kind of articulate that to. Yeah to a vibing agent or an autonomous coding agent and that sort of stuff. That communication.
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It's not. Absolutely. Even writing the specifications.
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Yeah. That communication.
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So.
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You got an example.
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I took earlier. An example.
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Stories.
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Really light up. Well.
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So as I say so many times it can work really well and also cover the not so well later on as well.
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Definitely definitely as I say I come from a background of doing software demonstrations as well. So when you're embarking upon a you've got a 40 minute slot to take a client through a journey. You then need to think about well how am I going to construct this this story that I'm going to tell to them and show.
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So I always look for when I'm doing software demonstrations I worked we worked in incident response software and when I first joined the company there was a lot of bland kind of this is what this button does this is what that button does and one of my first thing.
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Yeah. My first thing was I'm going to tell a story of breaking something. So all of my demos for the first few years when I was in in Pager. We broke the client's Web site so we took it down obviously we didn't do it in reality it was all simulated and all that sort of stuff. So we told the story typically to executives about how the individuals that work under them what they do on a day to day basis when things go wrong when things break. And then surface that to the fore and of course you're trying to cross the chasm from this is where you are today when things break and this is where you could be in the future when things break because things will always break even in the world of a. I like we're already talking about what a.i. agents will fix things when they break so we're always trying to cross that chasm so yeah I would use that 40 minutes would be my platform to tell that story and we talked a little bit now about create catastrophe. And then kind of bring it back through I will say as well and we'll go into some of this a bit later on I create catastrophe and fix it very quickly and then go back through to explain so we do a three minutes so we won't leave any ambiguity that things are broken for much longer than than they really are. But again that that negative element to start with to kind of get someone to lean in and again I've always found when I present or tell a story you need someone to just lean forward in their chair just that little movement makes a real difference and you can even tell virtually if someone's leaning in to see what you're doing. And if you compare that to the approach that the right this is the box check.
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Thousand trams.
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You know the death by feature.
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That's a two day training course isn't it. Which even training courses you have to pepper with stories to keep people engaged for two days. Exactly exactly. Whereas what you're talking.
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You're talking about the outcome.
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Yeah.
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Relevant.
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Yeah. Behind it. Show.
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Yeah.
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The lovely way to do it. It's great. And actually I'll even say in the pre sales world as well with that always having that call to action that thinking about what are you trying to achieve and what story you trying to communicate across. So I've always thought and again in my world it's always about three things how do you how do you help the clients that you're working with make money save money and not get their backside sued effectively so here revenue cost and risk so it's always thinking about how do you tie your stories into those three elements as well make a point about them.
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Business is all down to business noise always ends up on those three bizarrely I'd love someone to tell me a fourth but I've only come up but I only ever seen the three.
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Right. So, thought about what it is about bringing to.
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Thought about what.
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I come to you and then I'll go.
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How.
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How.
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A few tips you can do let me think about I'll try and do two. I'll start with one example was there's there's a great book on the same thing as you now can't quite remember the name of the book was. I remember reading it and the gentleman there suggested capturing something every single day that was different from the norm and putting it in a spreadsheet.
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And then maybe two weeks later or three weeks later trying to look back and see if you can construct stories around those because it's sometimes it's the little things that you don't notice that can make for a great story. So my.
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The classic one I suppose that's one and that was very academic but let's look at number two so I like to try where we can and we've had a few chuckles so far so I go back to the humor element. When you look at comedians comedians and stand up comedians keep people in thralls for ages and some of them. You've got comedians that will do the very short kind of 30 second quit or you'll have.
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I actually when I grew up in Chiswick 25 years ago and on stage comedian at the local pub absolutely brilliant and turn out to be a gentleman Michael McIntyre who's very good. So yeah get to the point quickly. But he again some really good compelling stories.
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And I go back to that stupid thing observations yesterday AWS London. I got there and what did they have. They had those annoying horrible zigzag things. The cues to go pick up your ticket. Can I remember there was a there was a McIntyre sketch about how us Brits like to get in those cute and we'll walk up and walk back and walk up and walk back. And again the key thing about this sort of stuff is noticing these funny little things and patterns that stand out that you can either tell a humorous anecdote about or do anything around that. So yeah pick up those little things. So as I say pick them up think about it and then how can you articulate and think about how comedians work as well. It's probably a good way. Yeah.
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I often see them like and I love them. Yeah. I got tickets to go and see Sam Campbell.
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Nice.
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Cool.
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I think a couple of things for me.
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First thing is.
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So that's the sometimes people.
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There's a story they like. But they're going to tell that.
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Regardless of.
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Yeah they've practiced it is their face they go to story. Yeah. It's relevant.
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Yeah.
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And then that people back. So it's engaging.
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We're almost drifting into what not to do. But so to make sure I think that the school relevant.
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And so I like you right. That spreadsheet. I think having a spreadsheet or it's very technical isn't it. We go back to the how to the question is how does a techie do that. So I immediately went spreadsheet.
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But this thing all the disaster.
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And over a 30 year career. There's a.
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But when really well you know what about what. Just write down.
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Of all of those.
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Often come down to like you said those big three. Making money saving money and not getting sued. Yeah. Absolutely. And probably most stories. You could talk about making money using money. Yes.
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Losing.
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Yeah. There's loads of ways that you segue.
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Use those stories.
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So I think.
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Yeah. Yeah. A list of. Then you.
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You're not. You got.
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The other thing.
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Because we're saying this content. Of a business.
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Not three and a half hours. To go and see.
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Yeah. There's. Yeah. There's a temptation to do that as well. And I'm guilty more than many people. I think we talked about talk earlier on about talking to CROs and talking to pre sales leaders as well.
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I have lots of conversations with both both very different audiences CROs want you to get to the point about to your you got to make a story got to be incredibly short you may not even get a chance to finish the story if you go on a bit and waffle a little bit. Pre sales leaders probably some of them a little bit of a different catalafish and I think I used the quote earlier more tangents than a trigonometry conference.
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So yeah make sure you still you don't go off on a tangent and waffle into something else as well as definitely something I've still trying to learn to do in some cases. For everybody I think everybody.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah. Keep it relevant. It's sure.
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Let me give another one.
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So this is my top tip.
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Fine.
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But basically take your anecdote and you put it in a act structure. So the beginning the middle of the end. That sounds to me. What's going to be where beginning. But the set.
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Where were you. Who was there.
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Who was there. Who was there. Who was there. Who was there. Who was there. Who was there. And then you get to the middle. Is the action the outage that's asked are these things. And we were working.
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And then you get to the resolution. Did it work out and it was a triumph.
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And then you can maybe use Priam, you were trying to talk about how your solution works the way, or the tragedy of this life before your solution. Absolutely. And I think that framework running through your system, tell me what happened.
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Those are great tools to help.
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I like the idea, sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, I'd be in a 40 minutes demonstration as well. I think you can go to the scenario where you have too many of those two minute stories. So you've got to be very careful to use them when they're relevant.
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And not go, "Oh, the goodness me, not another story."
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So launch one to the next to the next. Because that's a brilliant segue. Let's get into that. But a double click on that. When do you not...
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It's always a beautiful question, isn't it? Genuinely when you need to get to the point. When you need to make some very quick one-two-three style statements of outcomes and things we need to achieve. Not go off on a tangent because you just need to, I think the phrase is get down to brass tacks. So definitely a time to just leave them to one side. I think the... It's the when do you not use them, so definitely in those scenarios. And the second scenario is just sometimes just use one or two.
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If you've engaging with someone for half an hour, you maybe want to use, as I say, one, two, maybe three. But not more than that because it's too much for someone to digest and take away. In fact, in some of the conversations, I'm... I can be very transparent. I'm personally probably guilty of having too many stories. And then at the end, I'll do two things really. I'll try lots of stories to see which one lands, which is not good. It literally is the mud at the wall syndrome.
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And then the other one is just you're by using too many. It's just overwhelming by individuals and they won't take away. They won't take away, take away literally from those sorts of things.
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There's a great... The metaphor I really like. I think a pleasant thing. Too much mud. Like if I think I'm like a ham sack, put a little bit of mustard on. Oh, that's nice. Well, that's that's elevated it up. That's a lot better. But if you put like an inch thick of mustard on the top, your head explodes. Your nose explodes terribly. For me, that's what I think about stories. You whack it in at the right place.
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Energy helps.
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Brilliant. But you do too much. Over the last people like you were saying, it's like fucking...
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So you sparingly... Would you agree with that? Totally and utterly. And actually, again, transparently, I'll share. We opened up our conversation and I jumped into it. I've had 30 years of experience. And actually, that's one of the biggest challenges for a lot of individuals is as we gain more experience, we gain more stories. There's a temptation sometimes to try and share everything that you've gained in a 30 year experience. You've got to then try and think, what do I just leave at home? And what do I make relevant to this conversation? And then when someone asks me about something, then it gives me the... It gives me the opening or the permission to jump into a story. But unless I'm asked, don't force too many onto someone. And I think...
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Like a person, different people have different tolerance.
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Some people love a great post-op. Some people hate.
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So the other thing, maybe trying to think about, right, who am I talking to? Certain personality types, I'm thinking the insights, discovery insights, or the Myers-Briggs. Certain personality types might prefer a more of an emotional... Some people might be more logically kind, exclusive.
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And still like a load, maybe different countries.
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Countries and culture have a very big impact, I've noticed, on storytelling. What do you mean by that?
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I would say, I mean, if you look at... I'd pick on the folks in the US. It's the home of Hollywood. Love a good story and definitely can get into it. In fact, I had an individual that worked down in the US, worked over in California. It was a company we just acquired. They were the guru, technical guru of that particular product. But very used to working in California and West Coast America. So it was that individual, "Can you come over to Europe for four weeks? I haven't got any staff that are aware of the product. I want you to work and sell here to a European audience."
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And after those few weeks, I can call him out, Craig, if he does listen to this. And Craig was like, "I can't get over this." So I said, "What's up, Craig?" Where I'm from, you ask someone about their pain and they'll tell you everything. And we're talking not just business. We're talking about mortgage and the kids' school and other challenges they've got through life and everything else. And then they might tell you about 20 minutes and the 40 minutes of business-related pain. He says, "Over here in Europe, I ask someone their pain and I think the answer I get is, why do you want to know?"
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Okay. We're trying to talk business here. So what doesn't work? Everything works fine. Why are you asking these questions? Why are you asking these questions? Because I'm in a sales role. And so a very different culture. So you need to understand that cultural gap when stories do and don't work and when you need to get to the point as well as... And as I say, I'm going through some scenarios at the moment where I'm finding,
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if you're having an executive conversation, back channel first. Do they like stories? Do I need to get to the point so that when I meet that individual,
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am I meeting them on the level that they want to communicate at as well? Brilliant.
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I noticed there was anything else that we wanted to talk about. So we talked about what we need by storytelling. We've talked about why that's important.
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About some hips on.
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Yeah. We talked about when you don't want a hip. Maybe one final bit that we...
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And just... Oh. ...how actually you reduce clarity by telling off a story, then digressing off a path of that story, and you just really muddy the water. Yeah. I'm very guilty of doing this as well.
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And for a podcast, this is the sort of scenario where you have a stage, and we can talk about things probably longer potentially in some areas than you would do otherwise.
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I've been looking at changing roles recently as well, so that's well known. So I have been doing some interviews with various individuals. And again, you can be very guilty of having so many stories that you end up thinking... You get halfway through one, and then you think of another thing comes into your head, and you end up going on a tangent on that and another tangent on another tangent. I've had scenarios where with permission of people I was speaking to, I'll use an AI note taker. And then afterwards, I'll ask, "How did that interview go?" And it will quite often be used a lot of stories. Interview, not a podcast.
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Podcast would have been great. Interview not so great. So yeah, as I say, learn to rein some of these things in as well. Definitely helps. So I need to go back to that too much. Too much. They're there to energise. They're there to amplify.
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Not there to frustrate. Or frustrate whatever we can do. Or negative words with people. Yeah.
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Too many stories.
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And the bit I like that we discussed earlier as well was about the... If you've got an exec in the room, and you're going to do... Maybe go back to the scenarios of doing a demonstration. 40-minute demonstration. Don't assume they're going to be in the room for the full 40 minutes. So you mentioned this earlier as well. If you're doing some sort of disaster thing, you know, we broke your website and the exec gets a call on us to leave the room. The only thing they remember of you is all the stuff that was going wrong and you never got a chance to get around to the "ahh" moment. Everything being soul sort of moment. So they leave with that negative... Yeah. Never a good thing. Do you know what? You're so right. And I know that there are some techniques where they will try and take like a story now, journey.
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Yeah. I'm trying to say, right, if you've got ultimate discussion, this is the arc. We're going to go through it. We're going to start off with there's a likeable throw and you go...
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A meet and vent or night at the dark. So this sort of story...
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And I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of that.
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It works well in Star Wars.
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I hope when you've got three hours, sit in the dark room.
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But do you? In today's surprise, when we're having Bobby online,
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people get called out, they get distracted,
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going off, blacks, you know, ding in the background. And so nobody can give you that level of...
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So if you're going for a punch line,
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people reveal that they've all been called out in a meeting, after five minutes. So the way I like to think of it...
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Is how are we going to... How are we going to...
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Wow.
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Actually, in my opening...
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Quite simple.
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I might lose control of the narrative. But at the first two minutes, I'm going to survive the first two minutes. So I'm going to try and get everything out. Yeah.
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Which could be even a nice little headline about, I'm going to show you how 15,000 customers save money using our solution or how 15,000 customers drive revenue, so at least you know the point that someone's going to get to. I think Peter A. Cohen does a great element on showing the last thing first. So this is years ago, 25 years ago, I was told about... Rather than, if you're going to show someone how to print a document, just hand them the printed document and say, "I'm going to show you how I got this." Rather than fire up Microsoft Word, type some stuff in, do something else, go file, print, and then wait a few minutes. And if you go through all that stuff, you would have lost their attention. So last thing first, TLDR, isn't it? Yeah, TLDR, TLDR. It's the trend. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Tim, I think we've run out of time.
[00:36:05:10 - 00:36:34:20]
So let's just... I think I'm going to focus on two. So let's start with a library of stories, things through your experience, you might be five years into your journey or 30 years into your journey. What are the interesting stories that you feel are relevant to yourself that you can use to relay a point to others? So have that bank anyway and get ready to use it.
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And then the second one is know when to use them. So think appropriate and start practicing bringing out those stories as well. That would really help.
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And I think...
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The making of the emotional story isn't what people are...
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...and actually get that brain that you have, all of the brain...
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...and try and walk.
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So you have to take in ownership of your own career. That is a good skill.
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Roll your wrist. And so these little...
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So that's a good...
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One can do that.
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You're born with. That's with... I listed a load of stories in a spreadsheet. I thought about how I gave them a little bit of structure. But what they were relevant for. And I tried using them...
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And they call corrected when they went well. And yeah, be rest assured some can fall very flat on their faces. And you know half... Sometimes actually you know halfway through, yeah, this ain't landing. I need to figure out, do I finish this off or do I just bail and give on up as well? So again, I said I'm 30 years and I'm still practicing. I tell some absolute humdings and sometimes I think, yeah, I need to do that. Sometimes I think, yeah, I need to get out of this quickly. Or maybe rap and get to the point.
[00:38:10:03 - 00:38:36:05]
Now if people have loved what you've been talking about, how can people... Good stuff. Best bet, LinkedIn. So yeah, LinkedIn.com, my, Tim, Chin-Chin. I'm quite easy to find generally on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, feel free to link in. And from my perspective, what I will say is I spend day every day working with people and how they do exactly this. So if this is something that you're interested in, shout.
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Help you with some really cool stuff. Help your team. Looking to make your team.
[00:38:43:10 - 00:38:45:13]
So I'm going to say the final thing.
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It's always a pleasure to speak to you. Always a pleasure, Ben. Thank
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Don't go yet. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and rate the show. It really helps us grow and book new great guests. And remember, if the podcast isn't enough for you and you want weekly micro-learning delivered straight to your inbox, sign up to the TechWorld Human Skills Weekly. Head over to www.techworldhumanskills.com to sign up.
