286: How Sales is Like Acting - with Stacie Chan

EPISODE SUMMARY

In the most recent episode of Scale Your SaaS, Stacie Chan, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of 1Bstories, shares valuable insights into the world of generative AI, content creation, and lead generation in the software startup landscape with host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach. 

Stacie’s journey from a diverse career background, including acting and journalism, to her tech-driven startup role offers valuable lessons for software founders and entrepreneurs looking to create compelling content. This episode explores the key takeaways, highlighting the role of AI in content creation, and how acting is a lot like sales. Read on to learn more.

PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE

Podcast: Scale Your SaaS with Matt Wolach

Episode: Episode No. 286, "How Sales is Like Acting - with Stacie Chan"

Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS Sales Coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor

Guest: Stacie Chan, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of 1Bstories

TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE

• Leverage AI in Content Creation
• Strive for Consistency & Personalization

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• The Role of Content on Social Media
• The Role of Trust and Connection
• What We’ve Learned So Far

TOP QUOTES

Stacie Chan

[10:58] “I find that my conversion rate is so much less every call that I get on if you're not prepared for that first pitch, and also prepared with the follow-up. Research the potential client and customizing that first pitch to ensure I understand their business.”

[17:20] “Social media is the last bastion for true organic discovery, where people are in a receptive mindset and algorithms help put relevant content in front of them.”

Matt Wolach

[21:18] “I think it's fantastic that you can have technology help you and get you to the point where you look like you're spending hours and hours and hours a day creating all this, but actually, you're focused on other things. You focus on clients, focus on sales, and it's doing it for you.”

LEARN MORE

To learn more about 1Bstories, visit: https://www.1bstories.com/ 

You can also find Stacie Chan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/staciechan/  

For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com

Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:

• Sales Tips
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

Transcript

Matt Wolach: 0:00

A lot of software leaders asked me hey, is sales a science or an art? Guess what it's both you need to understand the science behind it. There are proven techniques and methodologies, but also need to have a little bit of acting a little bit of art not to fool people. But because after five demos a day, you kind of get over it and your brain is mush and you need to still stay passionate for those people in front of you who are seeing it for the first time. Stacie Chan, she's on the show. 1Bstories is her company Vidyo.ai is the product. She knows this expertly well, because she has the business background. And she's been an actress, she has the acting background. So she merges them beautifully. And she goes through and talks about how she's been able to perform in her sales and what she does what she's taken really from her acting career that she's still applies today. I think you can learn a lot about this. Not to mention, she talks about how AI can help you create a whole ton of amazing content really quickly without spending time on it. Lots of good stuff in here. Check it out.

Intro/ Outro: 1:06

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exits brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach.

Matt Wolach: 1:22

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS. Thank you very much for joining us today. I am very glad that you are here. And while you're here, if you're new here, definitely subscribe to the show. We bring on amazing leaders and innovators who are going to share with you a ton of ways to scale your SaaS. So if you're looking to grow your company, absolutely join our community. Subscribe to the show. And today is going to be one of those days where you're going to learn a lot. I've got Stacie Chan with me. Stacie, how're you doing?

Stacie Chan: 1:48

I'm great. Thanks for having me, Matt.

Matt Wolach: 1:50

Absolutely. I'm really glad that you're here. Let me make sure everybody knows who you are. So Stacy is the co founder and CEO at 1Bstories. And by the way, she's an Emmy nominated actress and award winning journalist, a Google product partnerships lead, and now a startup co founder out to revolutionize the content world with generative AI by the way, look at all that stuff she's had going on in her life, all of her background is amazing. Can't wait to dive into that. By the way. 1Bstories, aka 1 billion stories is a global content technology startup that is changing the entire content ecosystem. They have launched video five.ai An AI powered content transformation engine helping brands and publishers turn text, audio long video based content into short form vertical mobile friendly video content, perfect for social media and direct marketing outreach at scale. In an instant, this thing is really slick. And one of the stories is currently funded by 48 VCs and angel investors and has raised 5.5 million in seed funding. So Stacie is right in the thick of her growth journey. And I cannot wait to learn more. Stacie, thanks for coming on the show.

Stacie Chan: 3:00

Absolutely. It's an honor to be here. Matt, huge fan and always learning a lot from you and your podcast as well.

Matt Wolach: 3:07

Well, thank you. I really appreciate it. But tell me what's going on with you lately. And what's coming up.

Stacie Chan: 3:10

Oh, never adult day at 1Bstories, Matt. I tell you since we launched our flagship product, video file.ai. Keeping up with this generative AI trend, making sure that we're building a world class product is a 24/7 job but in the most thrilling way possible. We as I mentioned launch video file last year, but every two weeks we go through Sprint's building new features, listening to what our paid clients are asking for listening to what our trial customers are testing out any bugs that they stumble upon, and just keeping our ear to the ground. What are our competitors doing? What are the trends? What are the concerns, especially around generative AI? You hear a lot of naysayers about AI. But then you also hear the optimists. It's really taking in to consideration all this feedback, and keeping up with the momentum, the concerns, and building a product that is actually going to see real results and transform different people's businesses across them for a wide variety of industries.

Matt Wolach: 4:19

Isn't that so cool? That's something I just love about software is you had an idea, you you have this thing that you kind of built out of nowhere. And I know product people be like, I put a lot of effort into that. But the code is you just really type in some stuff on a screen. And all of a sudden there's the thing that people are paying you for and like you said, creating transformations at businesses and it's pretty amazing. I want to know though, what inspires you to create 1Bstories? How did this all happen?

Stacie Chan: 4:46

Well, I think it just dates back to, at least for me. I have wonderful co founders that bring different aspects to the business. I run the business side, but with business really encompasses the content and the store By telling, you give a wonderful background of mine, but I've sort of zigged and zagged throughout my entire career from acting to journalism to tech within Google. But I've always loved media and technology, and bringing the latter into the former bringing more tech into the content space. Because when I started my career, it was very Luddite, if you will, I was on stage, I was writing newspaper articles where we literally would talk about the length of the article in terms of inches, because the eight inch story wasn't even a word count. That was what would fit on the newspaper. That was the kind of technology using air quotes that we used in our newsroom. And I did this for years. For news, from newsroom to newsroom. And slowly over time, in 2008, when the.com bubble, well, it bursts but also gave life to a lot of tools that could be interjected into these newsrooms, to transform old school newsrooms into digital. That was my mandate when I worked at a newsroom called patch owned by AOL. And so bringing tools into, I would say, more traditional industries has always been my passion. And that's why when I joined Google, I wanted to understand how to bring more of this technology into newsrooms around the world. And so I blinked eight years later, I was still at Google, working across a bunch of different products, from different continents all over the world. And I said, it's time to actually branch out, take the leap of faith, build a company that can do this more nimbly, and do this at scale. And so that's where the genesis of one B stories, which stands for 1 billion stories came to life, because we wanted to empower businesses, brands, publishers, a billion people around the world to create stories, where they didn't have to know how to code that we could build software to help them tell stories, really just starting off from maybe a string of text, maybe they did have a fledgling blog, or if they were an actual publisher, we could convert using technology, their existing content into different content formats. So a long winded way, Matt, of how we got here. It's, each of my co founders have their own journey. But that's really where I ended up. And we are still on that mission, or maybe at a few 1000 stories that we've helped our clients create. So that billion target is still very much our Northstar metric.

Matt Wolach: 7:44

I love that you have a target, and you've put it right in the name of the company. And I think that's so fantastic. You're gonna have such a celebration, once you hit that billion story, it's gonna be amazing. And I love your background, just so many different experiences you can draw on I and I have to hear about you being an actress. We don't get that every day on the show. How was that experience? And? And are you are you able to keep anything from that, that you're still applying today, any learnings that you're still putting into place today?

Stacie Chan: 8:15

Definitely. It's, gosh, that was definitely another lifetime ago, when I was acting, I grew up in Los Angeles. So like every good kid in LA, you dream of becoming a star. And it wasn't really for the fame, I actually realized how much I loved being on stage and being able to connect with the audience tell stories, through my voice through my body language. And in a similar way, that's actually been the thread throughout my career as well. You're always trying to connect and communicate with people, especially in sales. Everyone is busy there, they've got their priorities at their job. So when you're pitching, or potentially selling to one of your customers or clients, I actually Dawn kind of an actor's hat. Not that I'm trying to fool anybody or be a charlatan, it's, it's more really tapping into the emotional connection that I can have with a potential customer. Because at the end of the day, your SaaS is trying to help them solve a problem. And so if you can't communicate with them, at the same emotional level, you're never going to understand what their problems are, or how your product can be a potential solution. Because if you're just pitching, pitching, pitching and not really connecting with them, your product is never going to be something that they're going to cough up money for. So actually bring a lot of my acting skills. In more the communication method of what I do today, as a CBO. Every client I actually have a deeply personal connection with I know eventually when we scale, that's not gonna be possible. I can't hop on one on one. Customer service calls with every single client But at this stage, at least where we're at with one B stories, when I see them using video files, I will jump on a call with every single one of my customers weekly, just to see how things are going, be a fly on the wall, monitor how they're using our product. And so, it may seem a little counterintuitive, but acting is where I actually learned how to connect with people.

Matt Wolach: 10:24

I love it. And I liked that you say that you need to act in your process, because I coach that a lot of people ask, Hey, is sales, is it acting? Or is it theater? Is it act? Or is it science? And a lot of times people go back and forth is no, it's science. No, it's acting. And I say it's both. It's it's both a science and an art. In terms of how you sell, there are definitely things that are proven scientifically that you need to do in your sales process. But also, if you've done three, four sales calls, five demos in one day. Yeah, you might be super passionate about the first one. But I'm here to tell you, I've been there, that last one you are over it, your mind is mush. But to those people you're talking to, it's still the first time that they've ever talked to you in the first time that they've ever seen this system. So you have to deliver. And I actually coach my clients. It's just like you're an actor on stage who has done three shows a day, for every day for the last whatever on Broadway, and you've got to deliver, you've got to get up for it. Even if you're kind of feeling a little down or whatever. You have to show them the passion and the energy and the excitement that you have to help them and solve their problems. And so I absolutely believe that that acting part of it is critical. And I love that you're applying that yourself. That's that's so cool. I want to ask you. Why is Why is content on social media key for lead generation?

Intro/ Outro: 11:51

We'll be right back. Scale Your SaaS is supported by Torowave. Lots of software leaders I talked to are looking to scale their SaaS and I keep hearing over and over about one major struggle getting ghosted by buyers after the demo. How frustrating is it when you have a great demo? You're feeling good they like it. It seems like a done deal. And then crickets nothing reach out they're not responding to you at all. And when these software companies they asked me to dive in, I noticed that the sellers are following up the wrong way. Or actually I should say with the wrong medium. What they're doing is they're hammering emails over and over again. I got a newsflash for you. Email effectiveness is dwindling down and down every year. So why beat your head against the wall losing all kinds of business, start texting mixing texts, along with emails and calls and watch your conversion rates go up. In fact conversion rates go up by about 50% When you use texting as part of the follow up people are used to it and did you know though response rate on text is 98% 98%. So why throw emails into a black hole knowing that they're never gonna get returned text buyers and get results but don't use your own phone all kinds of security and compliance issues if you do also none of that data is with your company. That's not good. Instead use this system Torowave. Toro wave is designed for sales. It makes texting with buyers super simple and fast. And it helps drive more deals, deals that you've been losing until now for being a listener. You get 50% off your first month of using Toro a 50% off just go to Torowave.com/scale That's t o r o wave.com/scale get signed up and start winning more deals like Tracy who closed $170,000 In three days after starting again, go to Torowave.com/scale Catch up and win by texting with poor win.

Matt Wolach: 13:49

And we're back.

Stacie Chan: 13:51

I love that. Matt, I did want to expand on what you said because I could not agree more still. I love the I love the acting can help you in sales people find that disconnect. But actually, it's exactly what you said. It really is so much preparation for every sales call. You can't wing it is not improv. If you're not prepared for that first pitch, and also prepared with the follow up, I find that my conversion rate is so much less every call that I actually get on it's researching the potential client. It's customizing that first pitch to making sure I understand their business, what kind of content are they creating? Are they a lifestyle German magazine, versus a French culinary news site? Very, very different use cases and how they use our content. And it's also the follow up. When I press the hang up button. I'm not done. It's still the follow up. And also I try to record every meeting if possible. Same what we did with acting, I would have to as uncomfortable as it used to be I would have to watch myself, listen to myself and evaluate my performance. Again, sales isn't about trying to fool people, but it's really watching how the connection went. And looking at their reaction. That's why I actually loved theater the most out of all acting because you could read the room. You could feel the vibe of the audience. Were they emoting with you? Did they laugh at the right spots? I would adjust my delivery for different performance. If I said, that line actually got a really good response. It's the same thing when selling your product. When I demoed that feature, oh, that's when I saw an eyebrow raise. Or if I thought an eyebrow was gonna be raised, and it was just deadpan. Hmm, maybe not a feature that they were particularly interested in, I might actually lead with a different feature of our product based on who the customer is or how other sales calls have gone. So just to expand a little bit on that thing.

Matt Wolach: 15:54

No, I think that's fantastic. I'm glad you did, because I definitely teach that quite a lot, especially around, hey, you might not say things exactly the same, same way every time. And that's okay. That that morphing that way you change actually can help. Because just like you said, you might say something that they react to, either positively or negatively. And you either say, Wow, I need to say that more often in that way, or who made sure I Never say that again. And your gets you get stronger and stronger in your pitch in your process. Because you're kind of AB testing little things here and there. As you're doing it. Yes, you need to structure Yes, you need to know, hey, we're going to make sure we cover this hit this. But those little kind of adjustments that you make throughout the process, use them and get that response from your audience. In this case, with you as an audience on a theater stage or with your demo audience, the person you're talking to, it absolutely makes the next one and the next one more and more powerful.

Stacie Chan: 16:59

Absolutely. And I actually would seek your advice to Matt, because obviously, I try to always do a demo or pitch in person, you just have that human human connection. But I find with the advent of zoom, so many more of my sales calls are over over the screen. And it's a simple thing. But it was really game changing for me, you can always present your screen. But you can also see you can still see your own tab, because I found it critical to watch my customers reactions. Do you have any other tips for how to manage and watch their reactions to really understand what they're thinking how they're thinking about your product?

Matt Wolach: 17:42

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I love face to face selling it is by far the number one best way to sell. So if you a lot of people who are clients of mine, they say oh, yeah, we're always on Zoom and say what if somebody sends in a request to talk with you who's down the street, definitely go see them. Because the face to face interaction, that connection you can make is critical. We are lucky in this day and age that we have zoom, we have the video chats that we can do, it's just so amazing. Because we kind of trick our brains and we can see these people we can connect with them, we can, like you said emote with them. And part of sales is trust. And when they can look into your eyes, they can trust you a lot more than if they're just talking on the phone. So a lot of times I'm reviewing sales calls or demos, and the rep never turned on their video, you have an opportunity to get really close to a face to face interaction. And you don't turn on your video. So everybody out there, please, please, please make sure that you are turning on your video you're using these video call technologies that we have and connect with your audience. They will trust you so much more. But you're right, Stacy, you want to be able to watch their reaction to now watching their reaction is one thing. And I actually think it's easier after the fact because if you're too focused on them in the moment, especially if you're newer and you're not quite sure how exactly you're supposed to demo and do your thing and you're kind of more focused on make sure you hit the right thing. It's gonna be harder maybe to dual brain this and focus on doing your thing and what they're doing. So like you said recording, I highly recommend it go back and watch after it when you're out of the moment out of the emotion of it. You're going to be able to see oh yeah, I gotta make sure I do that better who I shouldn't have said that. It's going to be a lot easier after the fact you're right. It is a little awkward looking at yourself in a recording, but it's definitely a lot better i You related it to acting I related to sports, which is my background and sporting, you know, coaches and players, they're going to go back and look at the film and look at the tape of what they did right and wrong to try and improve and correct upon it. So I absolutely have, you know, a belief that you have to do that as well.

Stacie Chan: 19:53

Right. And jumping back to the content question remind me again because I know we went on a few different tangents but I love this conversation. can still about acting and sales.

Matt Wolach: 20:03

So why do you say is content on social media key for lead generation?

Stacie Chan: 20:08

That's right. Lead Generation is everything at a at a startup, especially a SaaS startup. And I am constantly thinking about how to create warm leads. Because you can pound the pavement to outbound as much as you would like. But it's really when that flywheel gets going of inbound leads that I do think you have a sustainable business. And we found that social media is, I believe, the last bastion for true organic discovery. Because people are in this mindset of openness, they're not really looking for anything in particular, whereas that's really the the converse on search, where they have an intent to do something. But you have this huge opportunity to widen your funnel, customer acquisition when people are on social media. Because they're there, they're in this receptive mindset where they're looking at beautiful content that is typically relevant to them. We're very grateful for the algorithms on whether it's Instagram or LinkedIn or Tik Tok, doing a pretty darn good job of putting the right content in front of the right people. So content is really the best form, we believe, for organic marketing. And I think customers are pretty savvy, they just don't want to see ads, they really want organic content that is going to be relevant to them. And social media is where people are spending their leisure time. So if you want to get customers at that right point in time, you've got to be putting out that content to hit them when they're primed to be in that open discovery mindset.

Matt Wolach: 21:48

I love it. I totally agree with you on that. Okay, so now we know any content, sometimes we get so busy, we can't do it. But how can businesses use AI to generate really, really high quality personalized content at scale?

Stacie Chan: 22:00

That's exactly it, Matt. AI is going to be a marketers best friend AI is going to be the way that you or your business, who probably may not even have a marketing manager, or social media manager start to create that content consistently across different social media channels. Because we've all been there. I was there a few months ago. How am I going to set up my Instagram? How am I going to continue to populate my youtube channel daily. It's that is a full time job. I already wear so many hats as the CBO, how am I going to be the content creation manager. Also, AI is going to be the tool that I need. And with tools like video vibe, there are many others out there. It is so easy and frictionless to get started. So create those first 10 videos to create the foundation for social media channel. But also maintain your channel. Because we know that it's you probably need at least three to four videos a week to even get get your fledgling channel a chance to get in front of eyeballs get rewarded by the algorithm. And you might think oh, my gosh, three to four videos a week, how am I going to be able to create those technology helps you for example, video five, you can convert your blog post, even just a string of text into that short form video in under five minutes. So I know everyone wants to spare an hour on their Monday, plan out your content calendar, if you will. And you've got the content ready to go for the week in just one hour. There's really no excuse myself included, to not at least try to get started with AI. Because it is that initial hurdle that a lot of folks find difficult to get over. But shameless plug we offer free trial accounts or video five. And I've just seen an explosion of how people gravitate towards this because it is the easiest tool to use. Anyone can can get started, you can type some text, or copy paste a URL, you suddenly have these videos that you can post daily. If I had something like this back when I was a journalist, and I could have daily videos created in an hour for the rest of the week, this would have been absolutely a game changer for my entire newsroom.

Matt Wolach: 24:26

Awesome. I totally agree. I think it's fantastic that you can have technology help you and get you to the point where you are looking like you're spending hours and hours and hours a day creating all this but actually, you're focused on other things. You focus on clients focus on sales, and it's doing it for you. I think that's fantastic. So as we wrap up here, Stacey, what advice do you have for other software founders who are starting out and wanting to create content?

Stacie Chan: 24:51

Oh my goodness, so many words of wisdom. I'm sure it's more. How do you avoid the mistakes that I made? But I want to just emphasize one final point, probably, if you are a SaaS business, you're by definition, selling a service, your software is performing a service. So you need to justify to your customers why they need to keep using your software, month over month, it's not a one time purchase. So you need to convince your customers that they should be using your service continuously, you need to be putting out that content continuously, continuously reminding them of the value of your product. And the only way to do that is to create differentiated premium content. So that's where a lot of these AI platforms and tools like video five can help you create that consistent content, to be able to be the champion of your product. And make sure that your customers are that retention is high, that they are loving your product. They're reminded of all the different value propositions, the features that you're launching, and so that when that monthly invoice comes, they don't bajnai It's a line item in their budget, and they recognize the value of your product.

Matt Wolach: 26:07

I love it. That's fantastic. I totally agree. Great advice. How can our audience learn more about you and 1Bstories?

Stacie Chan: 26:14

The best way is probably LinkedIn. We take a dose of our own medicine, we create short form videos on LinkedIn. So if you just search us 1Bstories, you'll find this and keep track of what we're up to. And we hope that we can create more content with you.

Matt Wolach: 26:33

Very cool, and we'll put all that into the show notes. So everybody out there, you can check on that and go check it out. But Stacey, this has been awesome. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Stacie Chan: 26:42

Thank you so much for having me, Matt. This has been so much fun.

Matt Wolach: 26:45

I totally agree and everybody out there hope you had fun as well. Definitely make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any of the other amazing leaders like Stacey coming up. It's been great having you here. Thank you and we'll see you next time. Take care.

Intro/ Outro: 26:58

Thanks for listening to scale your sass. For more help on finding great leads and closing more deals go to Mattwolach.com