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So you think you can sell? Sales narrative training and its blueprint to success

So you think you can sell? Sales narrative training and its blueprint to success

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Facts tell. Stories sell. That’s old news. You’re well-experienced, sales-savvy and have been around the block (more than once) when it comes to landing big clients, closing deals and driving sales like you stole the car. But now you’re finding yourself in the passenger seat with a sales team behind the wheel that just isn’t hitting the mark, and you don’t know why. In your opinion they’re great, hell they may even be the best – you hired them for a reason, didn’t you? But inconsistent sales, long sales cycles and a disconnect between your sales team, your business and your selling proposition are making a huge dent in your plans for early retirement.

Are you ready to do something about it?

In this all-you-can-read buffet, you’ll cover everything your sales team needs to know to drive more sales, sell with conviction, shorten sales cycles and have an unfair advantage above even your toughest competitors. If you haven’t guessed it from the title, it’s through sales narrative training – your golden ticket to the conversion factory.

Salespeople are boring, prove us wrong.

We said it, they’re boring. They talk about themselves too much, they come across as too pitchy and their ego from their last big sale rarely matches the reality of their inconsistent monthly sale metrics.

Consumers don’t care much for ‘good’ anymore, they need exceptional and exceptional looks like this:

  •  A team who is in tune with each other and the business goals
  • Consistent top performers who are catching the attention of recruiters because when they get down to business, people know it’s a done deal
  • Filled with growth-opportunity clients and 30-60 day sale cycles
  • It looks like sales, and weak narratives cost you sales, end-of

So this begs the question; is your sales team exceptional or are you settling for good? If you’re satisfied with your team’s performance and you feel that there is absolutely zero room for improvement – kudos! But how much time are you personally spending on micro-managing them or putting out daily fires to keep the engine running?

Sales narrative training separates the good from the exceptional, so you can focus on your job, and your sales team can get better at theirs.

Sales storytelling is about more than ‘oomph’, it’s about the right narrative

Everybody talks about ‘oomph’. That personal charm or magnetism that draws someone in and makes them notice, makes them stick around, makes them buy. Sales storytelling injects the ‘oomph’ back into your sales team, who either lost it along the ride or never truly had it to begin with. How? By taking them out of the story completely.

However, the importance of the right sales story goes far beyond simply giving your sales team more charisma or that special spark. Stories may be nice, but who buys nice? Sales storytelling, combined with the right narrative enables your team to tell the only story that matters – your clients. Not to make them feel good, to create a special bond or to make small talk easier, but to drive emotion. Stories drive emotion. Emotion drives sales.

Right, but what does the right narrative look like? The perfect sales narrative takes the salesperson, the product and the benefits out of the story. It redefines the hero and *plot twist* it’s not the salesperson in the nice suit trying to sell them something. The right sales narrative recognises that the client’s story is the only one that matters and the only one that sells

Luck won’t do it, but sales narrative training will

No winning team has ever included ‘catching a lucky break’ in their acceptance speech. Anything worth achieving is worth pursuing with purpose. The same applies to sales narrative training. Your sales team might have the most well-versed story to date, but if it’s not following the right narrative, which makes the client the hero, it won’t do much. A winning team needs a strong strategy, and that means knowing how to craft the perfect sales narrative. One that doesn’t fail when the going gets tough.

Your sales narrative training is your team’s go-to strategy and their true north when making any sale worth mentioning. It taps into two different goals: the goals you have for your sales team and the goals you have for your sales. The one doesn’t work without the other.

For the sales team, effective sales narrative training:

  • Ensures that your company has a properly defined and unique value proposition that each team member understands and can communicate effectively and efficiently
  • Aligns the sales team with the needs of your target market and matches the right products/benefits with the right client
  • Unifies the sales team and enables them to utilise sales storytelling to meet sales objectives in full confidence
  • Aligns what is being communicated by your sales team with the thriving reality of your organisation
  • Ensures that the entire sales team understands the WHY and the HOW of your organisation
  • Teaches them to sell with conviction through presentation skills that match the core message of your unique sales story

For your sales targets, effective sales narrative training:

  • Cultivates consistent top performers because they all rely on the same strategic blueprint that drives sales
  • Shortens sales cycles as your sales team no longer wastes time and resources making themselves the main focus of the sales story
  • Lands strategic client with growth capability because your monthly targets are consistent and reliable
  • Includes high-quality deals in the pipeline as there is continuity between all departments within the organisation who utilise each other strengths instead of working in siloes.

This all sounds grand, but how does one actually go about doing the above? Sales narrative training zooms in on these core goals and implements intentional support and training that sharpens your value offering, builds a winning sales narrative and pitch then equips your team with the skills to present it like professionals. But the market can be saturated with salespeople selling sales to salespeople and to be frank, separating the useful from the useless is a grueling task. Here’s some help!

7 Questions that sales narrative training ‘experts’ don’t want you to ask:

You’re a business leader and a damn good one at that. So, finding the right sales narrative training program for your team is essential to reap the benefits of sales storytelling. You understand that the importance of the right narrative outweighs the type of story you’re selling, so how do you go about ensuring that your team is trained by professionals who aren’t just selling YOU a nice story? Time to catch them out on their own narrative.

1. Do they have any experience in business psychology?

2. Who are their trainers and the facilitators of the program?

3. Who are they partnered with?

4. Do they have any experience in driving sales and can they prove it with results-based evidence?

5. What’s included in the program and is it designed for knowledge retention?

6. What’s the ROI?

7. Will Rich Mulholland be a facilitator? (We’d like to see them try to answer this one.)

 

You know your stuff, they should know theirs.

Your sales narrative training checklist. If it doesn’t deliver results, it didn’t do its job.

If you’ve decided on the right program for your sales team to kick-start their sales narrative training and bolster their sales, there are a couple of things that your program shouldn’t overlook. Ultimately, you’re going to need a training program that shows results, otherwise what’s the point? Here are the top elements your sales narrative training program should include to ensure knowledge retention and the ability to put theory to practice.

● It can leverage strengths

Each member of your team was hired due to their specific natural strengths. No program should try to fundamentally change who a person is. Rather, it should cover key topics, communicate the objectives and leverage the natural talents of your team to reach these objectives.

● It includes various modes of instruction

The way people process and retain information differs from each individual. Your sales narrative training course should accommodate various learning tools to aid your team in digesting the knowledge and applying it to their routine.

● It utilises technology for powerhouse presentations

Sure, you’ve nailed the craft of how to write the perfect sales narrative, but does your training program include and leverage the full power of technology? No one is keen on hearing a monotone monologue, not you, your sales team or your clients.

● It’s easy to digest

It’s chunked into key topics that follow a golden thread and relate to each other. It follows a structure that encourages learning and uses easy-to-understand language and key concepts.

● It’s customisable

It’s flexible and accommodates the pain points of your business as well as the challenges your sales team are currently facing. It provides intentional and applicable knowledge and tools that can be put into practice.

The proof is in the presentation

You can have the slickest sales narrative, you can spend thousands on nailing your pitch.

At the end of the day, the proof is in the presentation and weak presentation skills are where all your strategies and competitive edge go to die. There is no such thing as a boring topic, just lazy execution. For your sales team to truly benefit from the ROI of effective sales storytelling training, presentation skills need to be one of the core pillars.

What makes killer, results-driven presentations that change minds, win deals and get remembered?

  • Visuals that reinforce your message and your credibility
  • Effective delivery that builds drama and impact
  • The ability to keep each and every member of your audience in the palm of your hand

It’s a critical and valuable skill that’s hard to hire, but easy to learn!

Your competitors are lying about sales narrative training

Some things are worth sharing, others may make you lose your competitive edge. If your competition is telling you that sales narrative training didn’t work for them, they either didn’t do it right, or they’re lying. Sales narrative training is one of the most underutilised but cost-effective and beneficial tools to improve KPIs across the entire organisation. Ensuring that your employees understand the USP, target audience and sell with conviction and confidence, will enable you to utilise them in many other aspects of your business. Being a storyseller enables you to improve:

  • Internal communication
  • Customer services
  • Job satisfaction
  • Sales Prospecting
  • Customer Success

Furthermore, your sales narrative training will combine marketing efforts with what’s being communicated by your sales team so you know that whatever is being said, across any channel aligns with your core objectives, beliefs, goals and story.

Got what it takes? Challenge your team!

Selling’s not always pretty – but the results can be. If you think your team has what it takes to go from storytelling to storyselling, we’d like to propose a challenge. To get the absolute most out of the Storyseller program, you’re going to want to make sure they don’t hesitate when you ask them the following:

  • Are they willing to put the rock and roll back into selling?
  • Are they dedicated to putting in the time and effort if it means landing unicorn clients?
  • Are they willing to take themselves out of the story and make the client the real hero?
  • Do they consider themselves a vital part of the organisation’s overall success?
Bev Dormer

Learn 25+ years of sales techniques directly from the mind of Rich when you undertake the StorySeller program.

We teach you how to uncover your value proposition and sell it successfully through the power of narrative. 

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