SALESÂ GROWTH
I couldn't believe how fast Peter responded.
At 5:52 pm I hit 'send' on a cold email. By 6:27 pm, the CEO of an 80-employee, $14M ARR company had already replied saying 3 things:
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1) He never responds to cold outreach.
2) I hit a nerve on a hatred he had about demos and feature battles.
3) Let's chat.
He scheduled the meeting for 8:30 am THE NEXT DAY. Like, literally 14 hours later.
24 days later we reviewed a proposal and we were off to the races.
Peter noticed something holding back their revenue. They were a $14M company that should be doing $20M easily and scaling to $30M.
But how they were pitching the company was keeping them down:
Outbound was ineffective. Discovery wasn't going deep enough. Demos were a guided tour of all the product features. There was no story to differentiate -- one that the buyers could re-tell internally to build consensus.
Which led to prospects saying, "We'll think about it and get back to you."
Now, it's not like they weren't winning any customers.
They were. But too many of those wins came after a discount dogfight against a competitor.
Not only were close rates and ACVs all lower than they should be, every seller went about things their own way. There was no consistency, and therefore no true way to measure what was working and what wasn't.
Increasing Peter's urgency to solve the problem was the fact that the company had recently been acquired by a PE firm that had their eye on upping the valuation so they could flip it to a new buyer within 3 years.
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The valuation clock was ticking.
Something had to change: The story.
They needed a fresh take.
They needed a narrative that united the team and rallied customers.
They needed a Hypeman...
Peter could feel it all clicking together, finally. Close rates and ACV went up. Discounting was limited to special cases.
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But they didn't expect how much Marketing would benefit from the Story Stack, too:
The narrative was consistent from top funnel to bottom funnel, and it was working.
As if that wasn't enough, he took a pie to the face after the team beat the revenue goal he set for them.
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These wins started within one month of the Story Stack, and with ongoing call coaching they kept up throughout the year.
3 years later, Peter used the pitch deck in a very certain kind of board meeting. A meeting that had quite the fortuitous outcome.
He got the company acquired.
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"I used the pitch deck to get the company acquired. You rock."
And the cherry on top?
When Peter joined his next company, Centage, his first order of business was reaching back out to run the Story Stack back.
Get the story that unites your team and rallies your customers.
