Transcript
Intro
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teamsâŚteams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real-world and practical advice to help you develop superpowered B2B sales teams. So, as you're listening, hands up. One hand, two hands⌠if you've pitched Shark Tank? I think we're going to have most people with their hands up. Hands Up, if you've pitched Snoop Dogg? I think we're going to have most people with their hands down. And hands up if you've got a patent around your product, I think there'll be a few that put their hands up there. But for most people listening, these are firsts. And for me, certainly as well. I've never pitched Shark Tank and I've never pitched Snoop Dog. But Akeem Shannon, who is our guest today, has. So, we are going to have some fun. But before I hand over to Akeem, let's have a little bit of a look into his journey. Because he's one who's had more than his fair share of setbacks, failures, hurdles, if you like. But he's also a guy that by failing again and again, he's found himself inching his way towards success. So that true definition that I talk about a lot around grit and persistence, beating resistance. So Akeem has self-classified himself as a man who was a college dropout and is now a CEO of an income magazine, Top 50 fastest growing consumer brands in the US, and has, like I said, shared his stories on stages such as Shark Tank, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and many other places that are very public. But what I really like is that through his journey, he's had to navigate mental health, management motivation, marketing and a whole lot of challenges that a lot of business owners do, but certainly in his fair share. So great to have you on board, Akeem. Thank you very much. We had some logistical issues getting here today that were completely our fault. But really good to have you here.
Akeem Shannon:
Man, it's great to be here, Ben, thanks for having me.
Ben Wright:
My pleasure. Tell me more about Flipstik. Tell me more about your product and your really cool business that you've built.
Akeem Shannon:
Yeah. So our company is called Flipstik. So we make a line of phone accessories, and really they're around making it accessible for people to create and consume content hands-free. So our chief technology is our synthetic CT technology, which is a reusable adhesive that's based off the feet of geckos. And essentially it allows you to stick or mount your phone to virtually any hard, flat surface. So you can imagine if you're in a plane and you want to watch a video, you can stick it to the back of a seat and kick back and watch it. If you're on the go and you need to record yourself on TikTok or even maybe do a Zoom call or a FaceTime, you can stick it to the wall and be able to record yourself with ease. And it's rewashable, reusable, and you can use it again and again. And then they have a couple other features in there for some power users as well, too. But we like to say that we want to empower the creator within you. So whatever that means for you, whether you're a content creator or you're just a mom who's trying to get a family photo on vacation, we try to make devices for you.
Ben Wright:
So, geckos feet, you said, in terms of the sticky compound. Tell me more about that, because certainly where I live, there's snakes, there's geckos, there's sharks, there's just about every type of animal that you can think of.
Akeem Shannon:
Let me first say we harmed no geckos to create this product. One time, I had a little girl, she's probably about seven years old, starts crying because she thought we literally were putting geckosâ feet on the back of our product. But no. So, this actually all started six or seven years ago. I was on a phone call with my uncle, who's an engineer at NASA, and he was telling me about a project he was working on for the space launch system and how he was going to use this adhesive that NASA had invented in the 70s that was based off of Gecko's feet. It's called synthetic CT, and it essentially mimics the microscopic hairs on the bottom of a gecko's foot using different materials. You can use carbon, you can use plastics, all kinds of stuff. And so, as he was telling me about this adhesive, I had recently quit my job, and I was on my own. I was. At the time, I was doing marketing, wasn't really in love with doing marketing for people as a consultant. And I had recently mounted my tv on the wall, and I couldn't get this thought out my head that if I had this special adhesive, it could have saved me a lot of time and energy mounting this tv to the wall. And so, in most times in my life, probably, we all have those thoughts where you have an idea and you think of it for a little while, you're like, oh, that'd be cool. And then it kind of just goes in one ear, out the other. But at this time in my life, I had recently read a book called the Alchemist, which is about a boy who goes on this journey to find this treasure, international bestselling book. And this book put me in this mindset to, you know, your treasure is out there, and if you follow the omens and the signs from the universe, you'll find your treasure. And I just felt like this synthetic CT adhesive was a sign. And I started doing research, and seeing MIT and all these different universities had done research, and eventually I made a prototype out of literally double-sided tape and cardstock, made a video, sent it off to some manufacturers in China, and I was off to the races. And that's kind of where the idea was born.
Ben Wright:
It is so common for people that I meet with, and I work with a huge number of salespeople, sales teams, and entrepreneurs. But to hear them having that moment in time where they realised they had an idea and they wanted to bring it to life, and it became a real pivotal moment for them in their life, where they actually changed everything. I've certainly been in that path or along that journey for me, in the businesses that I've had. But I love speaking to people who have also had that moment in time, because what has ended up as a result is that they've really doubled down into what they do and become experts at it.
So when we talk about Flipstik, you spoke about creating content, and I think I heard the word stories somewhere in those last few minutes. That's what we want to talk about today. And I think you are as well-equipped as anyone that I've had on the show previously to talk about storytelling. Because you actually sell a product, your business embodies everything about storytelling. So, tell me, please, for you, what does storytelling mean to you, and how did it help you with Shark Tank, with Snoop? With all those other type of big pitches that you've had to make.
Akeem Shannon:
You know, I think a lot of times when we think about sales, right, we're always thinking about, okay, well, let me talk about the features. Let me talk about the problems that it's going to solve for people. And sometimes we get so caught up in the technical aspects of why something is meant for someone that we forget the human connection there. And the human connection is the story behind the products. That is really just about, okay, well, what happens in someone's life when this variable changes? And I think, for me, prior to starting Flipstik, I had been in sales. I was actually the top sales rep at two Fortune 500 companies. So, I'd always been good at sales, but I didn't know why. I just came natural to me. I like talking to people, so it always kind of just worked out in my favour. But when I started at Flipstik, the first thing that I went out to do to sell the product is I had a kiosk at our local mall, and I would stop every person that I saw and say, âhey, have you heard of Flipstik?â Because I knew they hadn't heard of Flipstik, right. So I knew that was an easy one to get. And then I'll present to ask them stories about their lives. What do you do? Do you have kids? You go on vacation? Do you watch videos? Do you use your phone to watch videos? And they start telling about their lives, and I start telling about what that story of their life would look like with a flip stick. Remember last Christmas when you wanted everyone in the photo, but grandma wasn't in the photo because she was taking the photo? Well, now that won't happen anymore. Now the story is going to be different. And I was able to sell Flipstikâs one to one. And I thought at the time, yeah, I'm telling people a story about how their life will be different with the product, and that's why they're buying the product. But what I didn't realise was that that wasn't the only story that they were buying into, because, see, they were also buying into my story because they were seeing, here's this kid stopping me in the mall. It's Christmas. I'm just trying to get my shopping done, but he's really trying to go and do something. He has a pretty cool idea. And so, yeah, I'm buying this because I think it may work for me, but I'm also buying this because I want to be a part of his story, and I want to see where his story goes. And when I first started Flipstik, I didn't realise the power of that story, which I like to call. What is your founding story? Why did you get started doing whatever it is that you're doing? But that is a very powerful story. And I remember the first time I applied to be on Shark Tank. 40,000 people apply to get on the US version of Shark Tank every year. And out of 40,000, only 120 people get on the show each year. And so I went, I applied. I wasn't even a year into my business. I got down past 40,000, down past 10,000. It was the final 250 people. And I just knew, I'm like, I'm getting on the show, it's going to happen. I'm in here. And they called me up and they said, Akeem, you're not going to be on the show. We decided to go in another direction. And I was devastated. It really hurt me. And I didn't know, know. I thought the product was great. I thought it was fun. But what I didn't realise then, that I'd realise later when I would actually get on the show, is that there was no story there. I was just telling them, here is the product. Here's the product. Here's the product. But people invest in people and they invest in a story. And so when I was able to come back the next year, well, now there was a totally different story. It wasn't just that, hey, here's a product that allows you to stick your phone to surfaces. Now, it was, here's a kid who tried to get on Shark Tank, didn't make it onto the show, then convinced Sean Diddy Combs, via a rap, yes, a rap pitch, to invest into his business and buy product. Then he invited him to LA, then he convinced Snoop Dogg to be part of the product. And Snoop Dogg called Shark Tank and was like, you got to get this kid on Shark Tank. And now here, this kid comes with this great product, but he went through all these hoops in order to get right back here. That's a great story. And that's a story we want to be a part of that. We want to help propel forward into the stratosphere. And so once I started to realise, like, wow, yes, there's the story of the product and what it can do in someone's life, but there's also the story of why I'm here. And some people may buy it because of the product, but some people may buy it because of me and because of what they see that I'm doing. And that was like the first time I realised the power of that story, it wouldn't be the last, and it wouldn't be even the most profound story. But it really went to show me that that human connection that you create with people is far more important than any set of features that are out there. And that's why, when you see Apple advertise their product, it's never about, oh, here's the battery life, and here's how loud it is, and here's how large the screen is, and here's the pixel density of the screen. They're not talking about that, right? They tell you the story about how a man was hiking in the mountains, and he'd lost signal for his phone. He was in another country. He had no signal, and he had a little bit of battery life. He left. And then he remembered his iPhone had a feature called SOS that could connect directly to the satellites. And he makes a phone call, and that phone saves his life. 99.99% of people never going to be in that situation. That applies to practically no one. Yet. I remember the commercial, and so does everyone else who saw it, because they think about, wow, what if my loved one was in that situation? What if I was in that situation? What if it was my kid, my grandmother? I'd want them to have this phone, and Apple knows that. And they're master at storytelling. And they really showed me the piece that I was missing in the beginning. When I first started telling stories to make sales for Flipstik, it was always about why we got started, why I did it. Here's my journey. But the real powerful moment that came out for us is when we started using those customer stories, because then people really connected because they saw themselves in other customers.
Ben Wright:
So powerful. The art of storytelling. I talk a lot about presence with salespeople. So that's having presence in front of a customer. You can be the best technical, most diligent, most convincing person on this planet. But if you don't connect with the other side of the table or the phone or the video call or the other side of the world, as we're doing now, then these salespeople, they don't cut through. And when you don't cut through and build that relationship, you don't actually generate sales. A common response that I get, a really common response around storytelling is, Ben, I just don't have it. And we take you, for example. You present well. You've got a great personal story. You've got the hair, you've got the confidence. You've got everything about you to get in front of someone and say, here's my story, listen up. And quite commonly I'll get the response that says, I just don't have that in my persona. I'm just not likable like Akeem or whoever it may be. And to an extent I understand that. But I look at it more that they haven't trained themselves to become really good at stories. It's like riding a bike. No one knew how to ride a bike when you first started that. No one knew how to sell a product, no one knew how to write, no one knew how to talk, no one knew a lot of things in this world. So when you're working with your team members around stories, what do you do to help them become better at telling stories and engaging with people?
Akeem Shannon:
Yeah, I often like to equate it to a movie trailer. I'm like, everyone knows we've seen movie trailers. The trailer is incredible. We go see the movie is terrible. Okay, but why are trailers great? Why do trailers make almost every movie seem incredible? It's like you have to take all of the excitement and the sadness and the fast-paced moments and the slow-paced moments and the love and the joy and the hurt and the pain, and you got to pack it all into two minutes, 2 hours worth of story, tell it in two minutes.
And I think that when you do that, when you take all that content and you put it in something really tight, a really small package, it's very hard not to tell a good story. It's very difficult. And I think that if more people looked at their case studies as story studies, where instead of it being, hey, let me tell you how we went in and this person did this and this is how it changed. If instead you wipe that off and you just started talking about who are these people whose lives were changed because their chance encounter with you and the product or service that you sell and how it was different, to me, it becomes a lot easier to tell that story. And I'll give you a quick example. I was running not even a sales training, it was a pitch training. And this gentleman had a product, and this product was an innovation for doctors and nurses, for stethoscopes. And he starts talking about the stethoscope and its technical and it has all these features and it's better and it's more compact, you can take it places. And he goes through this whole thing and the audience is there and I'm like, okay, that's cool. And I said, why did you create this stethoscope? And the first thing out of his mouth, he's like, well, my colleague almost died because she got strangled by a regular stethoscope. The whole crowd went, what? And I was like, wait a minute. Where was that story? That's what I want to hear about, because I had no idea that the doctors are getting strangled by stethoscopes. And you just told me you created this after that happened. If you start off telling me anything about this product, I'm not a doctor. I could care less about this product. But if you start off telling me the story of what it was like, turned out he was an ER nurse. He's an emergency nurse. And I was like, if you tell me what it was like in that emergency room that night when that moment happened and the way you felt in that moment when you saw your colleague almost lose their life from a tool that's supposed to save people's life and how that inspired you to create a product. Now, it doesn't matter what I know or what I do. I believe in that product already just because the story you told me of how you came to the concept of it. And so here you have a guy, right, who. Not a storyteller, right? He's in the medical field, really not what he does. But I'm like, just because you're not a storyteller doesn't mean you don't have stories to tell. And you got a story to tell. And I think for each person, it really just comes down to identifying what the good stories are that they have to tell, because everyone can tell you that story about their bud, their college buddy, and the crazy thing they did on their honeymoon or the trouble they got into with their sibling when they were young. And they get animated and they get excited and they're reliving the experience. And that's really what you want to create when you're having these sales story conversations, it's got to have that same emotion and that same feeling. Like I said, like it's a movie trailer. Because if you don't have that, if you're not interested, if it's not exciting, the person on the other end is definitely going to sense the fact that it's just not genuine, right? And they're not going to listen from the jump.
Ben Wright:
So, let's talk about that. Getting a story, right, and I fundamentally agree with you about writing down your stories. It's like when you're learning features and benefits of a product, you've got them all sitting there in the back of your mind, and you can reel them off when you need to. Do the same with your stories, write them all down, know them, have them ready to roll out on cue. It is no different to everything else you train and learn around in your life. So, when we're talking about sales, good stories love to know in your mind how good stories help you make more sales, but also in reverse, how stories that aren't quite so genuine or not quite pitched in the right way can impact sales.
Akeem Shannon:
Yeah, different stories work for different audiences. So, having a consumer product, when I'm selling to another business, right, like maybe like a major retailer, we're looking for them to buy 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 or so units. To really invest into the business, to market it, all this kind of stuff. I'm going to tell a totally different set of stories than what I'm going to tell on our social media pages or through a Facebook ad or to a consumer that we want to buy a single product. But even though the story may be different in the way I tell it, it doesn't always mean it's going to be a completely different story. So for example, one of my favourite stories that we had, we had this customer who started using our product, signed up to be a brand ambassador and get flagged that this guy's making this content, he's starting to sell quite a bit of product on his code. And turns out that this customer was deaf and he was using our product. And I guess Iâm pretty ignorant, I didn't realise, I'm just assuming, hey, you're deaf, you send text messages, problem solves back in 1998, it's all good. But if we're being honest, just like you and I here, we're talking over Zoom, we want to see each other. You can't get all of your emotion and expression and you can't tell great stories through text message alone. You need to be expressive. And with sign language, the visuals are the expression. And so rather than send text messages off the time, the most popular way to communicate is through FaceTime. But there's a problem. If you have to hold your phone with one hand, that means you only have one hand to sign with. And so this customer was telling his audience on social media, hey, if you want to be able to FaceTime, you want to be able to sign with both hands. Get one of these Flipstiks so you can stick your phone to the wall where you're on the go and you can sign and have a full conversation with someone. And I just thought this was so incredible because here I'm thinking people are just buying our product to make TikTok videos. And for this entire community of people, this is actually meaningful and important. And I remember we were in a meeting with BestBuy, one of the largest electronics retailers, probably the largest electronics retailer in the United States. And I'm telling them this story of this customer who is deaf. This is a tiny portion of their customer base, right? But I'm like, think about what I told them was like, think about if we did this for one set of customers. Think about all the sets of customers that come into your stores and the set of customers, more importantly, that aren't coming into your stores and what our product can bring to them that you don't have today. Because we're coming from a space of creativity and a space of inclusivity and a space for people who are younger and are thinking differently from the average customer that's walking in your store. And the rep at BestBuy was listening to this story, and he immediately is like, you know what? Even before you got on this call, I was already thinking this, because I was at our Christmas party, and we had our Christmas party, and I had a Flipstik on my phone, and I remember we had to take a photo and I was getting everyone together and I stuck my phone to the wall and everyone was so excited because we're all in the photo, we were having a great time, and I was just so excited. And I'm telling her a story, but then she's telling me a story back about my product that we're trying to sell to her. And it was one of those genuine moments where she was waiting to tell her story, but then also receiving the story of these other customers. And instantly it clicked for them. It was like, wow, here I am, fully able-bodied person at a corporate event, and I'm using it this way, and here's a totally different person, completely different use case, and then they're using it. And when you see those two things, they realize the wide spectrum of customers that they would be able to serve with the product, right? And so it wasn't even a sales conversation at that point because, boom, you had these two stories and they're like, yeah, let's move forward with this.
Ben Wright:
You absolutely nailed it. When you get storytelling, right, there's no need for a negotiation, there's no need for a pitch. Decisions are made on stories, and then facts are used to support that decision, rather than decisions being made around facts and trying to find a good business sense or business point to range a product or to embrace a brand or a service. So, if you, Akeem, had to, before we let you go, if you, Akeem, today, had to give your top three tips on storytelling, and you could only give three, the best, meatiest, most impactful tips, what would they be around stories.
Akeem Shannon:
Number one, tell your customers stories and tell them, well, not in a PDF document, but tell them the way you would tell your mama at the cookout, at Thanksgiving, at Christmas time. Like, tell it in an engaging way. Number two, personally, for me, I like emotion. Either make it funny, make it sad, make it exciting, or make it as an overcoming moment. But it's got to have emotion there. You got to take me on a roller coaster ride, because as humans, we connect emotionally. And if there's no emotion in your story, well, you can just keep it. No one's paying attention. I'm going to forget it as soon as you walk away. Okay, so the third piece that I would say, keep it succinct. Don't go on forever. If you can say it in one sentence instead of five, then say it in one. But get your point across quickly because the more you can condense it, the more powerful it becomes.
Ben Wright:
So, we've got practice telling stories. I love it. What you practice at, you get better at. Be real and genuine. Let that emotion come out. And the last one is make it, make it concise. Say what you got to say. Get off the stage, hand over to someone else. It's their turn to speak. Right. But the shorter that story, the easier they are to hear. Fantastic. Thank you, Akeem. I really enjoyed today. I enjoyed listening to your stories and I think that above everything else, is a really compelling reason that we should be investing time with our teams and ourselves into telling stories.
So please, everyone, check out Flipstik. Akeem, I'm going to be a customer. I do create a lot of content, a beautiful property here where I'm always outside, so I'm going to find a way to use it. Thank you. But please check out Flipstik. Where else? Akeem, can people learn more about you?
Akeem Shannon:
Yeah, if people are interested in learning more about storytelling, some of the methodologies that I came up with over the years, they can connect with me directly through my personal social media, which is at @akeemshannon, that's a k e e m, Shannon, as well as akeemshannon.com.
Ben Wright:
Awesome. Thank you, Akeem. Been a great session. For everyone listening keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve.
Why We All Have Stories To Tell with Akeem Shannon
