For example, how do you make sure your kids don’t take candy from a stranger? You tell them a horrific story of kidnapping and permanent separation of course! (side note: if you are looking for inspiration, Beverly Goldberg from the Goldbergs is a good place to start) Any way you look at it, the right story told well can ignite specific action.
But what’s the right story when it comes to sales?
The answer to that is NOT YOUR STORY! There is a story that matters, a story worth selling – and that my friends is your customers’ story. That’s the story they give a shit about. Your job as a salesperson is to NOT tell your customers the story of your past (this isn’t a googled cake recipe), but sell them a new story of their future.
A story in which you and your product play a part.
Now, for a momentary science break!
Listen to the facts people:
- 65% of daily conversations revolve around stories.
- Listening to a well-told story triggers empathy-inducing chemicals in the brain, making it feel like we’re part of the narrative. (According to Princeton University… fancy)
- Research shows our brains are wired to understand and remember stories, not dry facts.
- Wrapped in a story, facts become 22X more memorable
Let’s give it up for science everyone! What this is basically saying, is that stories are smugglers. You know your clients have a problem that you can fix, problem is, they don’t know that. Which makes it impossible to win or close a deal.
Selling the right story makes it brutally clear in your clients’ minds that they have a serious problem and that your product is uniquely positioned to solve that problem.
If your customers fail to see the pain, you fail to gain. Why else would they sign on the dotted line? Simple as that. For these reasons, selling the right story is the Missing Link (see what I did there) between you and winning better deals faster.
We’ve loved working with our clients, firstly by understanding their customers’ stories, secondly by uncovering the pain points and problems their customers are facing, and then finally building a new sales story and conversational presentation around those key points. We then use storytelling to prove the validity of these points.
If you want a piece of that action and enable yourself and your team to leverage the powerful tool of storytelling then…
