Better Selling Through Storytelling: The Essential Roadmap to Becoming a Revenue Rockstar

By John Livesay and Tim Sanders

“John Livesay creates a compelling connection between revenue, reviews, and influence and our ability to tell brand and personal stories.” —Tracy Leigh Hazzard, INC. columnist, brandcaster, product strategist
 
The old way of selling is to push a message or product. The new way of selling is to pull people in with a compelling story—one that is magnetic to clients.
 
Better Selling Through Storytelling helps people become master storytellers so they can truly love what they do and get off the self-esteem roller coaster of only feeling good if their numbers are up. John Livesay encourages readers to give up selling—and become storytellers instead! He teaches sales representatives and entrepreneurs alike how to become irresistible to their clients and what the best storytelling strategy is to get a yes. From learning how not to take rejection personally to overcoming the three faces of fear, readers learn to embrace disruption with new tools that prepare them for any unexpected waves that come their way and get the sale.
 
“If you want to reinvent how you sell, let John Livesay show you how . . . [He] holds nothing back and fills his pages with new ideas, tips, information, and steps to becoming your own Revenue Rockstar.” —Josh Linkner, New York Times–bestselling author of Big Little Breakthroughs
 
“Not your grandparent’s sales manual; it’s where the storytelling rubber and results hit the road. If you think it’s too soft for your ROI brain, you’re missing the whole story, which is why you need it.” —Dr. Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642793734

Book preview

Introduction

DISRUPTION TO REINVENTION

Iam nineteen years old, sitting on my lifeguard perch on a hot summer day in the suburbs of Chicago with zinc oxide on my nose, mirrored sunglasses, and a whistle around my neck.

My job is to watch for anyone who gets into trouble in the pool. I see nine-year-old Sophia standing at the edge of the diving board with great trepidation, so I know it is probably her first jump. That alone makes me sit up on the edge of my seat.

I watch her jump and I start counting…one second, five seconds, six seconds, which is now about two seconds too long for her to surface. Finally, her head emerges, but she is flailing. I immediately dive in because I know from my training that she is panicking.

I reach Sophia within seconds and pull her to safety. She is scared and coughing, but I know she is going to be okay.

That moment happened over thirty years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday. My ability to react in a moment when someone’s life was literally in my hands continues to give me the confidence to deal with whatever challenges I may face.

My lifeguard training taught me to stay calm and not panic. Even though I dove into the pool with Sophia, going in is normally the last resort when someone is drowning. This is the process I learned to follow:

1)Reach

2)Throw

3)Row

4)Tow

5)Go

If the drowning person is near the edge of the pool, you first try to reach them with a towel to pull them in. If that doesn’t work, you throw them a buoy to see if they can grab it and recover. If you are on a lake, you can row out and try to tow the distressed person in. A lifeguard should only go into the water as the final option because the drowning person is panicking and might unwillingly push you down in their efforts to save themselves.

All of these steps raced through my head as I watched Sophia flailing. However, in this one situation, the only choice I had to save her was to dive. She was too frantic to even see, much less grab, a buoy if I threw one to her. The training taught me exactly how to approach and hold her so I could swim us both to safety.

These same skills are what you need to be your own lifeguard in today’s world where careers are being disrupted at a rate never experienced before.

How do you respond in life when an unexpected wave hits you? Do you panic or stay calm? The choice you have to make is to let fear win or conquer it and ride the wave.

If you keep your head down and ignore what’s happening, you will drown. If you raise a hand and are open to change, you can learn new ways of doing things, even amaze yourself and thrive. Unlike during a hurricane where rescue workers arrive by helicopter to save you, there is no one to save you in the ups and downs of everyday life. Thus, you need to be the lifeguard of your own life.

There are three steps to being your own lifeguard:

1)Don’t bury your head in the sand.

2)Combine your instinct with your intellect.

3)Get out of your comfort zone and move into a learning zone.

I remember putting this into practice for the first time in 2004. My life was going great. I was working for the mass media company Condé Nast selling luxury ads and the luxury market was taking off.

Right around 2006, I started noticing advertisers shifting their money from print advertising, which I was selling, into digital, which I was not really selling. It was like watching the Titanic. You could see the iceberg in the distance and just hoped you weren’t going to hit it.

Back then, people were using their home loans like ATM machines. Property values kept going up and people could borrow cash against their homes, no problem. So they did. With their influx of borrowed cash, people started buying expensive and high-end products they probably couldn’t afford. With this new-found demand, advertising budgets for luxury items were huge. Advertising was at an all-time high. But, by 2008, the whole housing market crashed and so did the luxury advertising market.

I was on a trip in Los Angeles when I got the dreaded call from my boss in New York, We’re laying off all the outside salespeople, including you, and we need you to be out of the office in twenty-four hours. After fifteen years, it was like a kick to the gut, but I remembered my lifeguard training and stayed calm. I asked my boss if she wanted a status report for my accounts, so whomever took over my clients would know what page and what issues their ads should run on. She was taken aback as all the other reps were storming out mad and accepted my offer. I remember telling her, I’m not going to just walk away. I care too much about my clients as people.

Little did I know then how my one decision to leave a status report would benefit me later.

Suddenly without a job, I needed to figure out what I could, and would, do next. I thought to myself, Well, if advertisers are moving their campaigns from print to online, then I could learn how to sell digital advertising.

I talked to many friends and trusted colleagues during this time and one said, You know, this is very similar to what happened when technology disrupted the movie business. There used to just be silent movies and movie stars didn’t have to talk. Then suddenly there were talkies and only some of those actors made it from the silent movies to the talkies. It is just as true now. All of this innovation keeps coming and it’s happening at a rate that we’ve never seen before in our careers. You have to decide: will you embrace the disruption or ignore it? Because if you embrace it, your career will continue to evolve. Of course, you can stay in the comfort zone of what you know, but change is happening so rapidly that comfort zones are becoming a luxury of the past.

Look at what happened to the television industry. There used to be only three major networks, then along came cable and programming game changers like HBO and Showtime. They started competing with the network TV shows and winning Emmy Awards. HBO and Showtime think they’re now at the top. Then along came Netflix and Amazon, and now they’re winning the Emmys. And now Hulu is winning Emmys. Who will be the next competitor?

The auto industry experienced similar trends. Americans used to pretty much buy cars manufactured in the U.S. Then the Japanese manufacturers came in and said, We’ve got cars that are less expensive and more reliable, and started taking market share away from the Americans. Then guess what happened to the Japanese? The Koreans arrived in the U.S. with Hyundai and Kia, Oh, our cars are even cheaper and just as reliable as the Japanese. All of this is to illustrate that when I say there’s no comfort zone anymore, there is literally no comfort zone, regardless of what industry you work in.

Just as the above examples show evolution in business, I realized I had to make a change too in my industry and, ultimately, I transitioned to selling digital ads. It was not easy making the transition from print sales to digital sales. I was learning a completely new language and competing against experienced people willing to work for much less money than I was making in traditional advertising. That did not stop me; I had to make the move.

I used a contact from Condé Nast to get a phone interview at The Daily Beast, an online news outlet. They were based in New York but were going to open an office in Los Angeles where I lived. During the phone interview, I decided to tell them I had a trip planned to visit friends in New York (even though it was not true at that moment). I offered to stop into the office for a face-to-face meeting. I knew on paper I was not their first choice without a digital track record, so I needed to get in front of them to present my strategy. It worked; they said yes since they didn’t have to pay for my trip.

I invested in myself and this career path at a time when I had no job or money coming in. Sometimes, though, you have to do what it takes to overcome obstacles. I knew my chances of being hired into a field I had no experience in were slim to none with only my résumé to support me. But I felt confident that I could sell them on my strategy, my approach to sales, and my track record of client relationship building if I were in a room with them. If you think of yourself as a stock that you would buy because of how great the skills and work ethic are, then you will invest in learning new skills. And invest in getting through the door to grow them.

The Daily Beast hired me after multiple interviews where I demonstrated what I would do in the first ninety days on the job. I even acted like I already had the job. I started to work on how I could get Lexus to advertise as the launch partner of The Daily Beast’s Innovation channel. I mocked up the campaign for one interview and eventually used that same mock-up to sign a deal with Lexus four months into my job there.

I learned about digital marketing and built The Daily Beast’s advertisers list through my relationships, past connections and creating strong, strategic campaigns. It was two years after they laid me off that Condé Nast called me to come back. I am sure one of the reasons was because I had left on a good note. My former boss told me there was a new editor and a lot of client turnover at the time and they were interested in hiring me back. They needed someone who could sell print and digital, and now I had that experience.

This was a tough decision after being let go. I decided that if I were to go back, I would do so without any fear. For over a decade, I carried the fear of being laid off or not making my quota. Now that the worst had happened and I had been laid off, I was free of that fear and I proved I could reinvent myself. This freedom gave me new creativity and confidence to propose big ideas when I returned. And I did.

One of my big ideas helped W win Guess back as an advertiser. Guess left when the magazine’s editor was fired and they were not happy with the creative direction of the magazine under this new leadership. My proposal was to host a joint celebration with Guess Jeans and W magazine, both celebrating anniversaries the same year. I connected that Drew Barrymore was both a past Guess model and on the cover of W at one time. I proposed using images like the one of Barrymore’s cover to showcase other Guess models and actresses who had posed for the brand over the years and display them at an event. I knew this could generate more press than just one brand celebrating alone. Guess loved the pitch and ended up running a thirty-page, paid supplement in W’s 40th anniversary issue. They extended my idea by featuring one of their models from the last thirty years on each page of the supplement.

If the idea is big enough, even when budgets are down, people will find a way to work with you.

I won Salesperson of that year. Standing at the ceremony collecting my award, I said to myself, "I am the same person whether I get