****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Bruce Scheer 0:00

Hi, I'm Bruce Scheer and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:20

Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I'm Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me Shark. I am a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver host of this show in your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:32

When you introduce a new product service or solution, what are the costs you're expending? I mean, after all, there are the dollars and most CFOs banks or investors don't lend twice for any do overs? What about the space that story takes up in someone's mind? There's a lot of traffic there too. So it's not like people are waiting for you to refine it. Most brand market stories are not afforded a second look, with all the cost being literally and figuratively expended. Then how do you inspire your buyers with a go to market story that sizzles.

Kenneth Kinney 1:02

Bruce Scheer is a professional speaker and president of NSA Northwest, a CEO of a consultancy, and the author of Inspire Your Buyers: Go to Market with a Story That Sizzles.

Kenneth Kinney 1:12

And on this episode, we will discuss living and studying overseas, a story that sizzles messaging frameworks, the narrative imperative trick questions with solutions, problems and outcomes, the big solution and the path to change. Developing a set of prescribed next steps, communicating your narrative through simple unforgettable visuals, the big solution and a path to change, aligning teams, Shark GPT, and a lot, lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 1:37

So let's tune into a CEO takes a walk with this podcast with a shark who of course takes a swim on every episode of this podcast. So let's dive into this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 1:51

Bruce, welcome to a shark's perspective, if you will. Tell us a little bit about your background and your career today. Oh, thanks, Shark.

Bruce Scheer 1:58

Yeah, it's a wonderful to be on your show. I it's one of my favorites that I actually listened to. And I've got a list I walk every morning 10,000 steps and I love coming into your show, I always learned something and great takeaways and a host second to none. So Shark just a bit about my background. I'm CEO of....

Kenneth Kinney 2:18

You're a professional liar (laughter) but thank you for the compliments. Yeah.

Bruce Scheer 2:24

So anyway, CEO of Inspire Your Buyers.com. So that's a consultancy firm that helps organizations get their story straight and very much into revenue enablement, will will partner with organizations to kind of bring it and help them accelerate revenue growth for some of the largest organizations in the world, and scale ups and every now and then a startup or two. So that's on the business side. I love doing community service. And this is my year to be president of National Speakers Association Northwest. And that's been a lot of fun shark, we're on our way to doubling our membership. So kind of applying some of these principles even even in the not for profit world of the National Speakers Association, redid the website and working on our value proposition. Just recently shark we formed the West Coast Alliance. And that's five chapter presidents including myself up and down the West Coast, making sure that all our members can attend each other's sessions. So instead of just like one thing, a month now you got like five. So that's been exciting. So just my background though, is I'm kind of born and bred in Oregon, went to University of Oregon studied all over the world I call University of Oregon, my credit brokerage house. They were good for me both as an undergrad and a grad. And gosh, lived in Asia for 10 years, frequent Europe all the time. So I do a lot of international work. And I just kind of landed into you know, this one domain. I call it the cherry on the top for me, I just love it. But it's helping organizations get their story straight. And I typically work with business leaders and revenue leaders to do that and then scale that with their teams, their sales and marketing and product teams.

Kenneth Kinney 4:18

Were all of you lived all over. I mean, you studied overseas as well.

Bruce Scheer 4:22

I did. Yeah. I went to university Copenhagen lived in Denmark for a bit. Gotcha. Hawaii was like a foreign country for me. Shark back in the mid 80s. Went to u h Manoa for a while. Again, you have always my credit brokerage house, Cornell spent time over there. And then I didn't stop doing education. I represented University of California Berkeley management education in Asia Pacific for quite a while as well. So I just kind of continued, I'd bring profs in and I'd go act like a student and enjoy them. Both the dinners before they were on stage and then I I'd be a student in the room as well. So I, I love learning.

Kenneth Kinney 5:04

Well, I had a chance to read your great book, inspire your buyers go to market with a story that sizzles. What inspired you to write the book? And who was your initial target for it?

Bruce Scheer 5:14

Absolutely. Well, I mean, it's kind of my story, if you would, you know, of helping business leaders over, you know, 20 years, go to market successfully, one of my old bosses told me, you can't afford to go to market twice. It's way too expensive. And time goes by you lose an opportunity. And so that was ingrained in me a long time ago. And just thankfully, I've been able to do that practice working with business leaders and go to market teams across HP, Microsoft, SAP, etc, you know, go to market with a new product, new solution, I call them big bets shark, where my client has made a huge investment in going to market where you know, product investment, partnerships, investment, investment, and building out teams. And Gosh, darn it, you know, they typically blow it as it comes to going to market with a story that sizzles. So my target audience is CEOs and revenue leaders, and entrepreneurs, I get a lot of entrepreneurs reading this and loving it. Just because it helps them get their thinking oriented in the right way to build their go to market story.

Kenneth Kinney 6:35

We you focus a lot on the narrative in the story and stuff that I was thinking about, in you said it right there with entrepreneurs, I mean, people that are, you know, at least in some startups, but the when of when you come into a company, obviously will change where you fix the narrative that exists with that company, you know, you're stuck when it's an entrepreneur, often it's early on, and it's a little bit of a blank slate, versus you mentioned SAP or some big company like that, if you go into consult with them, changing that narrative is a lot different. So I'm curious if you can add any insight as to what you see, when you do this, that is kind of the when you you take a look at their narrative.

Bruce Scheer 7:17

Absolutely shark and for the listening audience, I just need to mention, I still have a pretty good full head of hair. Especially as it relates to some of those bigger organizations like SAP, etc.

Kenneth Kinney 7:32

So the more you listen, the greater it gets, just like mine.

Bruce Scheer 7:37

But the hair loss, especially for some of these bigger organizations is when you're designing a story, a go to market story. There are lots of opinion. And that gets amplified in bigger organizations. And every now and then I'll even have a wizard behind the curtain come out and go, Hey, you got to change that. And he's like, what, you know, we're already a couple months down the road here and you want to make changes. Oh, boy. And again, you know, like my boss said, you can't afford to go to market twice, and the tax is so heavy. But anyways, yeah, sorry, you gave me some p PSTD. Or whatever PTSD around working with my bigger clients and the opinions that surround them. But one, one big winner shark and all this as you're designing your story that sizzles is focused on the buyer. That's the opinion that matters the most. And that's typically like when a marketing director goes, Hey, Bruce, here's our brand guide. Follow this. I might just go and have you tested this with our target buyers for this particular solution that we're betting the farm on? Well, no, no, not really. And I go Yeah, I didn't think so. You know, so let's not focus on internal opinions and insular thinking, let's develop a narrative and go test that with our target buyers. And that opinion matters the most. That's what drives revenue growth that that buyer back perspective that I really drive towards with the teams that I serve.

Kenneth Kinney 9:11

Well, and then also you said internal, you know, the internal voices that can include external agencies, because they in any bigger organization where there's, you know, say 20 agencies working with them, it doesn't matter if they have nothing to do with brand messaging, they will make certain that they let you know what their opinion is in complicate their matter more. And until they start to align that message with whatever the true narrative and story is, it becomes a jumbled mess to your customers.

Bruce Scheer 9:42

Yeah, Shark I won't mentioned client by name, but they are a top FinTech provider. They had an agency that they engaged to work on their messaging platform, their their messaging framework, and they also engaged me in my A team. And it was really wild, I met with the agency leader, owner, and three times, and I gave them the framework I needed, which is in the book that I sent to you around how to design a store that sizzles. And I said, hey, whatever you guys do, you know, I know you're gonna do your messaging framework and do what you normally do. But is there any way that you could help me in my job, I need to build a narrative that sizzles. And I gave them the structure? And reiterated that three times? Did I get that structure back from them? Hell, no. The I literally didn't, I got the typical messaging map, and some, you know, some some very intelligent, well put together your message bytes. But I did not get the story. And so I had to, you know, kind of irritate my client and do additional work. Hey, where'd he get all these interviews with the agency? What are you doing? Am I going sorry, guys, we didn't get the answer we needed, you know, so kind of had to do some redo on that to get the narrative straight. And so far, they're doing really, really well with it. So very often, I try to leverage, you know, the branding work, the agency work, you know, gosh, there's internal people in the organization that cook up stuff, too. I typically talk to all the best sellers and say, hey, send me all your stuff. And that's completely different than anything that marketing. And so I get, I get immersed in this, and then we start to craft, you know, hey, a narrative that's going to work really well for

Kenneth Kinney 11:35

them. So tell us a little bit about what is the narrative imperative,

Bruce Scheer 11:41

the narrative imperative, geez, you know, if you don't have a killer narrative, a narrative that sizzles, oh, my gosh, you're, you're you're leaving money on the table. And chances are, you're going to take everybody down a rabbit hole and have a whole lot of no fun. And when you have a great narrative, I'm telling you, you know, all boats rise, you know, I, you know, you do a great job of, of execution around that narrative. And that's why I typically work with the sales team, the marketing team, and the product team, to really align with that narrative, where we can put all the wood behind that arrow and really, really go to market with impact. And when you do that, it's a, you know, more profitable, you know, the owners love it. And everybody involved with it, just having a better experience getting better results. That to me, is the narrative imperative. And sadly, many organizations didn't get the memo. They still don't have it. And there's a lot of opportunity out there to get this right. Hence the reason for the book shark.

Kenneth Kinney 12:47

Well, I want you to tell us a little bit about your trick question that you've tried to get me on the phone.

Bruce Scheer 12:53

Okay. Yeah, my typical guy, trick question. And I came to this question, having a big argument with a president that I was serving, you know, he, you know, he. So the trick question is, what are you selling at the end of the day shark? Are you selling a solution? A problem or an outcome? At the end of the day? What are you selling?

Kenneth Kinney 13:19

Oh, I'm not doing the Pull my finger because you've basically gotten me on this before. So go ahead and explain this to the audience.

Bruce Scheer 13:28

So, so the answer is the shark had rightly pointed out, it's a trick question. You know, the, you know, you're at the end of the day to sell something, I argue you have to sell all three. It's not just one, it's all three. And then the next part of my trick question is, if I have agreement there, yeah, Bruce, you're right. You do need to sell all three. Now in what order? Do you sell them to get a buyer to buy? And that's also I see people squirm when I ask that question chart.

Kenneth Kinney 14:02

So how did you come about looking at it that way?

Bruce Scheer 14:06

My clients teach me they pay me to learn from them. And I got into this big fight with one of my clients a president. He, you know, he wanted to sell the solution. And we were putting together a booth for him for a trade show that he wanted to go to. And I wanted to lead with the problem on that booth. And he wanted to leave lead with his branding, his name, and the solution. And sadly, his brand was just nothing. Nobody knew that brand. It was just a total no name brand. So you know, why would you lead with that? That's not going to get attention. You know, they hadn't invested their millions and billions in building a brand not at all and but that's where he wanted to go and I go, No chance we really got to lead with the problem. So funny enough, he brought me into that, that thinking through through that debate, then I had to prove myself. And have you heard of a guy named Daniel Kahneman. You know, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, really wonderful. But he, he coined and did a lot of research behind Prospect Theory and loss aversion. And that's beautiful work shark, because it really proved my case that if you want to disrupt a buyer status quo and get them interested in to true change, not just interested but willing to take action, you really need to break their paradigm and, and disrupt their status quo thinking. And the number one way to do that is leading with the problem. That's, that's the biggest motivator to get someone to want to change. People hate pain and problem. And they want to move away from that. The second most powerful element to get a prospect to change to truly desire that change and take action is to take them into the promised land, the land of gain. And that's the wound of land of outcome. You know, what, what does life on the beach look like? When we've been successful? When we've, when we've had a successful change? What's that look like? So that's number two, in Bruce's framework, if you would, you know, so you know, lead with the pain and the problem. And then make sure you've nailed that before you move on. Next, you move on to the, you know, to envisioning the outcome with that prospect so they can see what life and you know, looks like when they've been successful, and what's their personal gain in that situation. And then if you if you got a dream in there, and if you've anchored there, then and only then do you talk about solution, but not in the way that most people do, where they're kind of, hey, let's look under the hood together and see what's in this thing. Now, that's not what we do, we lead with what I call the big solution, and help them see a path to change. And then so if you get agreement on those three key elements in those introductory dialogues, or on your marketing site, for example, your website, you know, get get agreement across those dimensions, then the buyer can do some more deep, you know, introspection, tire kicking in, etc, and decide to move forward with you. But that's what you lead with problem, outcome solution.

Kenneth Kinney 17:32

So I really like chapter six, as well, I find this with a lot of books, and I find it with a lot of brands, they don't really touch on what is really important. And I think you do a good job of explaining this, developing a set of prescribed next steps and how important that is because we get hit with so much information. It's a great idea, but it's now what do I do with it? And then you sometimes have to lay that out. And I think you do a great job of talking about that. So if you will elaborate on the importance of developing a set of prescribed next steps.

Bruce Scheer 18:03

Thank you Sharky, and I'm sure you've done this yourself, you know, either concertedly or intuitively, knowing your experience in the world of marketing and sales. But for me, I kind of came to that epiphany, gosh, early on, thank goodness, you know, I got brought into a project between HP and Microsoft. And this project went all the way up to Steve Ballmer, owner of the clippers and every everything else in the world. But my most stressful project in my career. And what teased out of that project was me and my team we were responsible for go to market stories for eight different solution areas for between HP and Microsoft. And Mark Hurd and Steve Ballmer. They were going to make this the strategic partnership that has never been seen before where you have this huge system integrator, and software provider really tied at the hip going to market with these eight solutions. So when I started working with the each of the solution leaders shark I was asking them, so you know what, once we got the buyer convinced that they need to buy, what are the next steps, and most the solution owners kind of hemmed and hawed Well, we could do this we could do this Bruce, and sometimes we do that. But it was kind of wishy washy and muddle might go guys not good enough, we really need to have some hard concrete prescribed next steps for these buyers, and shark. These were multimillion dollar purchasing decisions. So I just believed in my heart they needed that to get it over the goal line. And just thank God I was given the remit to do this and the solution leaders wanted to support it wanted to be successful with these big bets. So we designed and hard coded these next steps you know, which was typically a business case and assessment a proof of concept. You know, some rough difference checking, you know, etc. But we got them, you know, kind of hard coded for each of the eight solutions. And not that the buyer had to do them. But we recommended those steps to help the buyer buy. And because of that, I won an award and the HP people that were part of me part of this, they won the marketing Circle of Excellence Award for that year, because it was a highly successful approach. Each buyer that started a selling conversation with us, over 50% of those buyers bought those multimillion dollar decisions. So it was wildly successful. Well,

Kenneth Kinney 20:45

French writer wrote this saying goal without a plan is just a wish. And so it's always been Uber important for me to help get people into those next steps. Otherwise, it's a lot of fun conversation, but it goes nowhere. So

Bruce Scheer 20:57

yeah, and I found shark that you need to kind of build those next steps. It's not easy. It's not just a magic wand. You know, I have to you know, what's that assessment look like? What are the dimensions that assessment? What, where's the benchmark data against that assessment, the business case, the ROI? What's that look like? Where's the proof around that? How are we going to convince the CFO that that business case is valid, that it's worth investing in, and the return is going to be higher than that investment? You know, so just, you know, it might be nice to say, but I'd also say mastered by few, you really got to get that dialed in. That's a separate effort. Yeah. Well, I

Kenneth Kinney 21:38

love doodles and books, and you get some great doodles. And I thought it kind of reminded me of this question. The first one, when it's in the introduction, it's almost sort of a signal to me, this is a hand coming out of the water. There was another one where you retelling the story about your dad's boat, and there's a fin on top of the boat that you'll see. But it kind of goes back to one of the last chapters talking about the importance of communicating your narrative through simple, unforgettable visuals.

Bruce Scheer 22:06

Oh, absolutely. Can I give credit where credit's due shark? I asked my wife to do those doodles for me. And that's this book truly has been a family project, you know, including, you know, that story about me buying my 92 year old dad's boat off Craigslist deferring to my smarter brother who's never carried a sales bag. But anyways, yeah, the visuals were a joy. Yeah, no doubt about it. You know, in the book, there's lots of stats in there around the power of visuals, and cash, one of my really good friends and other pro in my lane. He speaks about Daniel Pink's book drive if you've read that book drive, so he is a lover of organizational development and motivation. And he read that book multiple times. But where the light bulbs went off is when animate if you remember that outfit that used to animate books, you know, they made like a, you know, five minute animation of the core of that book and just lightbulbs go off. You know it because of that visual storytelling. So I try to do that with the teams that I serve. How can we visualize the problem that we're solving the outcome that we're promising? And then the solution that we're delivering? How do we visualize that in a way that's incredibly compelling? And if we can do that, you know, hey, you know, 1000 words can go away, right like that, you know, we've got a picture that's really going to help people get past their status quo bias. But doing that sounds simple. It's really hard. I'm working with an organization right now. The CEOs business, you know, he's founder of it. They've been in business for 30 years and doing really well, but he wants to take it to the next level, visualizing their story. It's, it's hard, it's not easy and chat GPT hasn't solved that problem for us just yet. You know, it's a challenge. And I normally start sharp just as a bit of wisdom for the listening audience is start by trying to visualize the problem. And typically, when I started engagement, I asked for, hey, are there any visualizations send me your slide deck, send me this, and that sent me to your website, but send me to where I can see the problem you're solving. And typically, that's just a loud, you know, thud sound or or a lot of silence when I asked that question. Just send me a picture of the problem. It typically does not exist. And that's where we need to begin. That's where we really start things Get through and start to visualize. What's this problem perspective look like? And I think you saw in that chapter, I gave an example of some work that I did with McKesson technology, where, which was really great, you know, getting the team together in a room and, and doing tons of dude lean as a team, you I love to get divergent thinking. So I typically get people into groups and even with SAP, we did this virtually global groups, but get people to visualize it, show me what they came up with in terms of that portrayal of the problem domain in a pictorial, pictorial format, just doodling. And, boy, that's really telling. And when we get that, right, that can move mountains in terms of busting through that status quo bias.

Kenneth Kinney 25:45

Well, my compliments to you as well, other than just being a good thought provoking book, too, is you did it very concisely, and it doesn't take six weeks to read, like, some people's books have come out of recent that I've I just don't have the patience anymore for you know, these books that I can't finish in a day or two. Oh,

Bruce Scheer 26:11

man, a guy in our chapter sent me a copy of his book, and I just saw it and I go, Oh, my goodness, this one is gonna take a lot of work to get through. And it doesn't have to be that way. You know, a lot of books there's there's a, I think there were some rules shark you probably know this really well. But a typical business book nonfiction was all back in the day, probably 50 to 70,000 words. And in this modern era, I think that the common wisdom is between 25,050 1000 words. I decided to kind of do something a little bit unconventional. But I know Jay bears, I think Ben on your podcast, he did the same thing. I took mine down to 12,000. Thinking I did mine kind of fast. And the narrated version of my book shark is only an hour and a half. Jay even beat that, you know, you don't have to go long winded on these things to create the value. And we just buffed and buffed and buffed on this thing to make it readable in the course of a flight. Or one of my friends and CEO of his firm, shot me a photo he was out in France and he read my book in the course of a doctor's office visit. You know so yeah, not expecting people to camp on this thing. And most people won't anyways, I wrote it so people could read it. That was my primary aim. Make it short and sweet. Well,

Kenneth Kinney 27:44

Bruce, I appreciate you also listening. And as you know, I asked everyone who appears on the show and you do live off the Puget Sound. So where there are some some waters, but what is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Bruce Scheer 27:59

And can I tell you the story shark and your listening audience? I'm a chat GPT fan. I'm in that app, you know, every day doing something with it personally for business, what have you, but I asked Chet GPT to help me with this question. You know, what is my favorite shark and I'm not a shark and I don't have a podcast called The sharks perspective. So I needed help. And I just explained to chat GPT you know, typically when you're doing a good prompt you need to load it up and I just said hey, you know, I'm a an older sales and marketing consultant getting ready to go into a podcast as a guest, the host is going to ask me what's your favorite shark? I don't know the answer. I do know I'm an entrepreneur have written a best selling book have inspired 1000s of sellers and marketers through my career and love learning and different experiences. Can you ask me questions to help me determine what my favorite type of shark might be? And chat GPT it's getting so clever now shark it's just getting better every day. But it responds like my best friend of course, let's dive in and find the perfect shark that aligns with your personality and experiences. So it kind of went through an entrepreneurial shark and authorship type of shark which happens to be a black T brief. black tip reef shark, an inspiring shark which might be a mako shark, a love of learning type of shark, which is the thresher shark. And then a unique experiences type of shark that might be the spa shark. And I'm like going man, all these sound really cool. Could you take a guess for me? Chat GPT you know, I think mine is my favorite one is the thresher shark because it's literally a cutting edge shark it uses its tail to cut into other prey and and does pretty good night. I like to try to be cutting edge myself. I'm at Consumer Electronics Show every year lurk looking for the latest cutting edge techniques. ologies just a passion. And so sharp GBT you know response. Ha ha. Well played based on your profile as an innovative entrepreneur your love of learning and your appreciation for unique experiences. This thresher shark does indeed seem to be like the fitting choice. It's unique tale adaptability and the innovative way are represented. It represents qualities that can do groundbreaking entrepreneurs who stand out from the crowd embracing the thresher shark as your favorite seems both apt and delightfully cutting edge. And then it follows on Shark with good luck on your podcast. Well, like it's like chatting with my best friend using a very kind best friend.

Kenneth Kinney 30:46

You told me about this right before we got on air and thresher sharks a good choice because I'm trying to remember if anybody else has used that now, they did leave out the hammerhead shark in the unique shark category. But thresher sharks have that big tail they basically use it like a whip. And I've only seen a few you don't see see a ton of them. But there are macro sharks and they are they're large sharks and spend a lot of time in tropical waters and they can flick that tail and knock knock a fish you know silly then go get them so that was fantastic.

Bruce Scheer 31:18

I love it Shark you know, in the work and back to the book. You know, I love helping clients find their point of differentiation and which which many struggle so much to do. But that thresher shark just seems so different as well that you know, it really has a different angle to the problem. Yeah,

Kenneth Kinney 31:38

Well, Bruce, at this special time of the show you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Bruce Scheer 31:44

Oh, no. Did and now it's time to get me flat footed. Okay, let's go.

Kenneth Kinney 31:48

Alright, number one, because I watched your video on your site. That's That's good. Do you enjoy more riding your bike through the woods in the mountains or riding your elliptical Stairmaster bicycle on the paddleboard that you use out on the water?

Bruce Scheer 32:06

Man tough choice. I would definitely if I had to choose one. What do I like more if I was stuck on an island? Well, gosh, I gotta rethink this one. The bike might do not do me so well on that island. Maybe the elliptical paddleboard type of thing would do best. And I'm just telling you, I'd gosh, I can do a mile in eight minutes. So I could probably even get to safety. But I love my bike. I travel with a bike shark. Yeah, it's a folding bike. And I traveled around the world with that thing and just love it. I'm trying to be healthy wherever I go on when I'm traveling. There's rarely time to go to the gym and try to stay to my disciplines. But the bike really saves me and I learned from David Byrne a long time ago. There's no better wetty no better way to take on a new place and a new city and have more interesting experiences than from a bike. I just see things that people don't see I see the homelessness I see statues I you know, I see weird stuff, you know, just a bike. I love it for having new experiences wherever I go.

Kenneth Kinney 33:16

Yeah, wherever I go, I tried to go diving. So that's a Yeah, that's why I speak so much on the coasts. Alright, number two, talking about inspiring your buyers. And you also do some work as a speaker. But let's talk about the who would be your favorite inspirational speaker in history. Tony Robbins or Les Brown. Which do you prefer?

Bruce Scheer 33:38

You know, I'm more exposed to Tony Robbins. And I've attended one of his events and Singapore ballets day, while the way he had just come out with Awaken the Giant Within and was on was on his circuit. And I respected him as a speaker so much of course, he had us jumping into the rafters in this huge Congress type thing. We're all going nuts over him. And he got us all riled up, you know, Taylor Swift music, you know, we're just going nuts. But the thing that probably impressed me the most was his ability to connect with Singaporeans on arrivals. He himself and probably his team did a bunch of research. And he was giving local stories and references and literally had the audience in the palm of his hand, probably within five minutes of being on stage where we're the airbase is going, Whoa, he gets us and then he just took us on a ride, you know? absolutely outstanding.

Kenneth Kinney 34:39

Oh, a few 100 million and a few gray hairs later, and he's still jumping up and down to Taylor Swift music and he's still a Svengali with people. It's amazing. All right, number three. Let's see you're leaving. And let's say there was not a border to worry about crossing. Would you rather spend a day in Seattle? Or would you rather spend a day in Vancouver

Bruce Scheer 34:59

Seattle is probably my first choice now. And the reason is sharp is because we have trolls. And I haven't seen any trolls up in Vancouver. I'm going to Vancouver tomorrow, by the way, but you know, and I love it up there. But yeah, we've got we've got an edge at this point in time we've got trolls.

Kenneth Kinney 35:22

Alright, number four. You live on the Vashawn Island? Is that how to say it?

Unknown Speaker 35:27

Vashon

Kenneth Kinney 35:28

You live on Vashon Island.

Kenneth Kinney 35:30

Yeah

Kenneth Kinney 35:31

If you could live on any other island in the world, where would it be?

Bruce Scheer 35:36

Gosh, I've lived on a few islands. I lived on a Oahu and Hawaii lived in Singapore and island state. Any other island? Oh, man. I probably head back over to Hawaii. My wife and I are heading there for a week in December. And I go back there every year. But I really love Hawaii. Back there. And yeah, I dig it.

Kenneth Kinney 35:58

Alright, number five of them. And the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread?

Unknown Speaker 36:06

Cornbread, please.

Kenneth Kinney 36:09

I don't really know, I don't think about, you know, the Puget Sound and, you know, Southern delicacies like that. So what I wasn't sure what you would say. Yeah.

Bruce Scheer 36:17

And it's unusual. And I only have it around family events. And yeah, I know. It's a fun one.

Kenneth Kinney 36:22

Alright. Well, Bruce, where can people find out more about you get a copy of this book, and so much more?

Bruce Scheer 36:28

Oh, there's a few ways. I'd appreciate it. If you want to go to the website, www dot inspire your buyers.com. And if you're interested in this book, or another book that I was featured in another 2023 Best Seller called bashfully, the most amazing marketing book ever. Those two books can be found at WWW dot inspire buyers.com forward slash books where you'll see the books I've been featured in this year. And I hang out on LinkedIn as well. So my first name is Bruce. It's B. Last name s c h e e r, you'll find me on LinkedIn as well. And I'd love to connect with you and continue the conversation with you there.

Kenneth Kinney 37:12

All right, well, they call him Bruce and Bruce, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Bruce Scheer 37:17

the real Bruce

Kenneth Kinney 37:19

the real bruce

Bruce Scheer 37:20

Thank you Shark.

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Kenneth Kinney 37:26

So there was my conversation with Bruce Scheer, a professional speaker and president of NSA Northwest, a CEO of a consultancy and the author of Inspire Your Buyers: Go to Market with a Story That Sizzless. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Kenneth Kinney 37:40

First, you can't afford to go to market twice. That was some great advice that someone once gave Bruce, you can refine your message throughout that story. But that go to market story happens only once, your wallet likely won't stretch further. So whatever you do, think through that market message.

Kenneth Kinney 37:56

Second, when you're designing a story, especially big companies, there are a lot of opinions, internal teams are tough to align. But then you throw in those extensions of your team, the agencies, and they've all got opinions, and it can become a mess trying to get everyone aligned with the same focus. The best way to narrow that target, though, is to test your target buyer. Bruce added do not just focus on internal opinions and Intel are thinking it's the buyer back perspective as he described it, that is the winner.

Kenneth Kinney 38:24

Third, to see the success of the narrative imperative, Bruce said to leverage the sales team, the marketing team and the product team. You've heard me speak about this on many shows. The more you integrate your story throughout all your teams, the better success, your story will have.

Kenneth Kinney 38:39

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective dot com.

Kenneth Kinney 38:43

Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 38:48

Today. I want you to find your story and make it sizzle. Just don't burn your finger and join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)