Spreadsheets and Storytelling

There’s something I keep telling my team.

Know your numbers. Not at a surface level. Intimately.

If you’re in sales, know your conversion rates, your real sales cycle, and your pipeline quality. If you’re running a B2B business, know what drives MRR, what improves renewals, what reduces churn, and what expands accounts. Most people remember the headline metric. Very few understand the drivers underneath.

And that’s the difference.

If you only know outcomes, you react. If you understand drivers, you influence.

But knowing numbers is only half the job.

Once you understand your numbers, learn to tell your story.

James Clear captured it beautifully in one of his blog posts: “Storytelling and spreadsheets. Know the numbers. Craft the narrative.”

Spreadsheets give you credibility. Storytelling gives you influence.

You can’t walk into a leadership conversation and just say, “Revenue is up.” You need to explain why it’s up, what changed, whether it’s sustainable, and what you’ll do next.

I’ve seen people who recite metrics but can’t explain what they mean. I’ve also seen passionate storytellers who crumble when asked for numbers. Both are incomplete.

When you can say: here is the number, here is the driver, here is the pattern, here is the decision, you stop being an operator and become someone people around you trust.

Spreadsheets and Storytelling.

Master both.