If you can't tell a story, you can't sell.
Salespeople spend hours worrying about discovery questions, demonstrations and business cases. All important. But buyers rarely remember the feature matrix.
They remember the story that made the problem feel real, and the person telling it feel believable.
Stories work beneath the buyer's conscious checklist. Every story worth remembering has a hero, a struggle that stands in their way and some kind of change at the end.
That struggle is what makes it relatable.
Relatability matters because you cannot build trust with somebody who can't recognise anything human in you.
A flawless hero feels manufactured, but the person who struggled, made imperfect choices and carried on feels real - they feel like you!
So, if you've polished every rough edge out of your sales story, you've probably polished the trust out of it too.
The attractive character
Russell Brunson calls this the Attractive Character in DotCom Secrets. The name sounds as if he's talking about looks, but it’s actually talking about the human traits that draw us to people.
An attractive character is a person, founder or brand people can relate to and want to follow.
The current version still needs to be aspirational. Nobody wants Clark Kent to stay Clark Kent forever. We want to see Superman.
But Superman without Clark Kent is bloody boring.
I had seen the principle work before I knew it had a name. Here’s how I used it to build a top-performing team in a unicorn.
The polished version of the Mambu naming story was excellent. The founders had taken inspiration from a Malay word connected to bamboo: fast-growing and strong. Clever, relevant and ready for the press release.
Then Eugene added the real ending.
"We also didn't have much money, and it was the only five-letter domain we could afford."
That was the bit I remembered, and it became part of every pitch my team delivered.
The first version gave the company stature, but the second gave it a soul.
It showed a scrappy young company doing the best it could with limited resources. And customers absolutely loved it!
Mambu had another story I used constantly when I was pitching.
Fred, another of the co-founders, was travelling to meet one of the company's earliest prospects, an obscure financial-services business in a tax haven. Reaching them required a flight in a single-engine aircraft.
During take-off, the aircraft door wouldn't close.
So Fred sat there, terrified, holding the door shut with his hand.
You can picture it immediately. A founder, a tiny company, an awkward journey and a sales meeting important enough to get on that aircraft anyway.
Scrappy founders willing their vision into existence.
Together, they positioned us beautifully against the established legacy vendors. They were Goliath: safe, polished and institutional. We were David, still carrying the scars from doing whatever it took to get into the room.
Prospects weren't just choosing between two sets of features. They were choosing which character they wanted to believe in.
Most companies murder that advantage with PR.
They remove the embarrassing detail. They tidy the false start. They replace the founder's actual words with something about innovation, purpose and changing the world.
If you’re lucky enough to work for a founder-led business, go and find them. Get them to tell you these stories, and give them a new audience.
The attractive character is already in your story. Don’t hide it!