Storytelling

by Keith Coleman

  Ask any successful salesperson the secret of their success and they are most likely to reply with the fact that they don’t sell but establish a rapport with their prospective buyers. Instead of simply selling, they help their customers buy. Storytelling contributes majorly to the rapport building process. It makes the salesperson come across less of a machine parroting the features and benefits of his/her product and more human, likable and relatable. Why do you see a sudden surge of advertisements and promotions where people are offering a first-person account of their experience with the product? Think Dove and other brands.

  While rookie salespersons will focus on the product features, benefits and functionality, veterans will concentrate more on building a relationship through personal stories and anecdotes with their potential clients. You don’t drive sales by talking non-stop about the product. Sales are driven by more emotional, impulsive decisions, which are a direct result of tugging at people’s emotions.

  For instance, if you narrate a story to a mother how a product related to children benefitted another child; she will be driven to make the purchase decision for her child at an emotional level. People care less about the products and more about people. If they can establish a human connection with you, they’re sold.

  The best salespeople are ingenious storytellers. They know how to weave artistic tales around the big picture or their customer’s biggest problems, fears or aspirations. These people know how to gradually but surely draw them into a narrative about a sophisticated solution for their problem. Some of these people will not even speak about the products or services until several meetings. They will offer details only when they are certain the client is hooked and refusing is not an option.

  Let’s look at an example. Say you are a salesperson selling a bulk emailing software. It’s a fully loaded, complete bells and whistles product that is ideal for your email marketing campaigns. You approach new and established companies with your world-class application.

  The wrong pitch would definitely be how wonderful the product is, its inbuilt features and so on. Honestly, there are a thousand similar products and the client cares a lark about your bells and whistles. You are doing nothing but adding to their confusion of whom to purchase from. Thus, to prevent themselves from making a bad decision, they will most likely not purchase from anyone and wait for the noise to settle. Bad for you!

  Contrast these accounts how your last five customers clocked a 10x return on their product investment because they were able to target several email users ethically. When you offer case studies or examples how someone in the same industry achieved a result the prospective client is struggling to accomplish in specific terms, you’ve slain it. Think about this, an employee will want to buy the application to appear smart and solve his/her organization’s problems.

  Have you spotted the difference? In the earlier example, it was all about your products and services – its features, benefits, uses, etc. In the second, it is about your customer or telling them stories about how other clients solved similar problems using your products and services. You will almost always win people when you make things about them and not about yourself.

  In the latter example, you grab their attention by clarifying metrics about their enterprise to help prospective clients paint a more vivid picture of what they can expect after using your products or services. In comparison with merely telling them what they can accomplish, you are demonstrating what they accomplish through examples. It is also more attention-grabbing when you tell them how it is going to be a huge financial victory for them in the long run. Minimize their risk of appearing foolish by buying your product, and instead narrate a story or example to show them how it’s one of the wisest decisions they can ever make. Do your homework before approaching clients. Figure out what exactly the client wants before you approach them. What are the main pain points? What are they seeking a solution for? How are you going to tackle their main pain points? How are you going to appear smarter by offering your prospective customers an elegant solution to their problems?

  Think of yourself not as a salesperson, but as a competent creator such as William Shakespeare weaving a tale or Da Vinci create artistic brush strokes. In essence, people don’t like to be sold to. They want people to find solutions for their problems. Stories and examples make them feel like they are accomplishing a personal win, wielding a clever decision or solving a clear problem. The more effectively you weave a story with the given pain points and needs, the higher are your chances of getting the customer to take action in your favor.

  Personal stories and testimonials have a lot of power when it comes to selling. It is of little wonder that you have brands clamoring to you for sharing your experiences with their products and services. It is fairly easy to strike a chord with prospective customers using personal stories.

  The method is simple. Take the people step by step through a challenge that you encountered, and how you managed to accomplish desired results that the prospective customer is looking for. Share a personal story to establish a connection with people to essentially tell them that you were sailing in the same boat as them, and managed to find a solution to their problem. Instead of telling them how they can accomplish the desired result, tell them how you did it.

  Let us say you are selling an acne reduction cream, you can talk about your own painful experience with acne. What it was like to live with a sensitive skin or acne breakouts? You’ll probably talk about the pain, hurt, rejection and humiliation you went it. The personal account will have the emotional, physical and psychological ramifications of acne. How you tried different methods but nothing gave you relief. Talking about the horrors of living with acne will help prospective customers (people suffering from acne) identify with your pain. Then, finally, you’ll talk about how the product you are selling (acne cream) brought you the desired result.

  See what we did there? We wove a story around your personal experience rather than simply listing the features and benefits of the product. You shared your own story that will resonate with people suffering from acne. It makes you more identifiable and relatable as a salesperson. You aren’t just selling a cream, but selling hope in the form of a product by narrating a personal story.

  Like I mentioned earlier, purchase decisions are almost always driven by emotional impulses. The prospective customer is sold if you are able to tap into their inherent emotions through the power of stories. You take prospective customers through the highs and lows of your experience with acne to finally end on a positive note, which makes them feel that there’s finally a remedy for their acne problem. Take them through the worst of the problem, while finally leading them to how the issue was resolved. You are likely to close your sale in no time.

  Another trick is to use stories that make other people feel good or special. Some of the world’s best business, sales, and political leaders realize the importance of telling stories that make other people feel good about themselves to sell products and services. These stories may have an aspiration value attached to it.

  How do you think travel and lifestyle brands manage to clock heavy duty sales even during a recession? They tell stories about people fulfilling their dreams, accomplishing a better work-life balance, achieving their financial goals and in general living a fuller life. Give people hope and aspirations through stories. Make them feel good about themselves.

  Sales and marketing people who show a keen interest in people’s lives, their success and overall well-being almost always manage to close the sale. Discover the prospect’s interests, passions, preferences, background, views, fears, and aspirations to weave a story around it. It becomes easier to connect with them when you have more information about their “hot buttons” or what drives them. Once you have this valuable information, it will be easier to weave stories around their “emotional drivers.”

  One of the best sales tips I’ve picked up is to remember details about your previous interaction with a customer, something most sales
people usually don’t. The prospective customer will not expect you to remember tiny details of your previous interaction.

  Sweep them off their feet by recalling something they said earlier or letting them know their preference for so and so. They’ll almost always buy from you. By remembering minute details of your previous interactions, you are making the other person feel valued and special. On a psychological level, this instills feelings of likeability towards you. Once you become likeable and relatable, they’re likely to take action.

  In sales, stories act as a social proof. Humans are social creatures. When they realize someone like them is doing something to eliminate or reduce challenges they themselves are facing, they are likely to take action in the desired direction. It’s a bandwagon effect.

  Let us say for instance you are trying to sell an expensive set of encyclopedias to parents. Now, if you simply tell them that the books are invaluable sources of knowledge for their children, the printing and pages are high quality etc., they won’t be as impressed. However, try rattling off the names of people in the neighborhood who’ve purchased them and how their children have benefitted from it (shared in the form of feedback) and they’ll be likelier to think “Oh! I don’t want my child to be left out.”

  The herd mentality rarely fails when it comes to getting people to do what you want. Use the power of stories to make people aware of how others are benefitting from something, and if they don’t want to be left behind, they take quick action as well. There is a deep, subconscious need to be like everyone else, which makes us want to fit in. Use stories that tell prospective customers how they’ll fit in perfectly with your products or services.

  I once had a salesperson approach me for selling customized children’s storybooks. I’d never even heard of them until then or knew they existed. The storybooks have your child’s name as the central character, which is guaranteed to make reading more enjoyable. Your child obviously feels special. Since I wasn’t familiar with these books, I hesitated in making a decision. The salesperson then launched into a narrative about how other co-workers and neighbors have ordered these books as exclusive and unique Christmas presents for the children. He even went on about how parents who were initially hesitant were delighted with their children’s response and reading habits and went on to order even more of these books.

  Now, that really got me thinking. I began by thinking it was nothing much than the usual commercial, Christmas time hypes. I am certainly not paying that much for my child to read a story that’s been read a million times just to see her name in print. However, hearing detailed stories about Mr. And Mrs. XYZ purchasing these exclusive presents for the children made me feel why shouldn’t I gift my child something special, unique and exclusive? Why should I deprive my little one of this wonderful experience when all other children will enjoy it? I know examples and stories are a clever sales manipulation technique, but I couldn’t help it and be still sold. I didn’t want my child to be left out.

  Let’s say you want to dine at a fancy restaurant on a first date with a person you’ve been crushing on for long. There are two amazing fine-dine restaurants you’ve zeroed down on but can’t seem to make up your mind over which one to pick. You browse through Yelp and realize that while has bagged several positive reviews for the food and service, the other has more than a few accounts of how the restaurant ruined a perfect date or anniversary celebration due to bad service. You’ll obviously stay miles away from the second restaurant. Why do you think reviews are so effective when it comes to making purchase-related decisions? Reviews are nothing but personal feedback and stories about people’s experiences or stories about the product or service, which help you decide whether it is suitable for you. Stories are a form of validation that other people have used or are using something successfully.

  Using Anecdotes in Speeches and Presentations

  Move over ultra-futuristic animated, presentations packed with data, and welcome powerful, simple, clear and effective anecdotes to articulate your point. You really don’t have to be a Silicon Valley head honcho to deliver a powerful speech or presentation. All you need is a clear, appropriate message, and a few amazing stories or anecdotes to illustrate it. Focus on a single theme to make the delivery more impactful.

  Instead of reading facts and figures, where the human connection is lost, identify a key message and weave some effective anecdotes around it. This is the shortest and best way to make any speech or presentation go from boring to dazzling. If you have actually experienced something, you will be able to convey it with authentic feelings and emotions. You’ll be able to narrate your experiences as if you are living those feelings and emotions, which come across as pretty powerful to the audience.

  Stories are sticky content. People will almost always remember a well-told story because at a certain level, it arouses strong feelings, and leads to the release of dopamine in the brain. This is precisely why stories stick in our memory far longer than facts or figures. In short, making people feel something is one of the best ways to make them remember the point you are trying to convey.

  Think of your stories and anecdotes as comprising three acts. The initial act is where you propose or present an idea, setting or situation that is created to engage the audience. Use something that has happened in the past which is of greater interest to your audience. The ideal, it should be related to a problem or challenging situation they are currently facing. Use the information that they aren’t aware of.

  For example, “Our buyer numbers have been plunging since the last 15 quarters, and today I learned that it’s officially down for the 16th quarter. We just cannot function like this anymore. There, now this is a problem they are facing, coupled with attention-grabbing information.”

  In the second act of the story, you simply lift the stakes of the initial idea you intend to communicate. It should be something that can’t be undone. “We are going to have to shut the manufacturing units in Sacramento and Boston.”

  Notice how you are separating your story into distinct parts to create the desired impact. This is the basic structure of a good story or narration.

  The third act of the story proposes a resolution. It is generally favorable. To turn this grim situation on its head, I am introducing a promising new line of products that will be a hit among our customers. It will get them crowding back into all our stores. You don’t announce that you are resolving the situation or offering a solution for the audience’s troubles. You convey that through your story or anecdote.

  The most effective resolution is when you can get the audience to take action by pulling them into the momentum of a highly persuasive moment. “I have placed a product from our new line under each of your chairs. Please feel free to try them.”

  This is pretty much the basic structure of a good story. You begin with a challenging issue or an unknown piece of information to grab the audience’s attention. This is followed by magnifying the problem even higher to create a compelling story arc in a speech or even conversation. Finally, you come up with a resolution or get the audience to take action in a positive direction.

  Now there are certain categories of stories in western society that can be effectively used to drive people into taking the intended/desired action. For instance, let us say as a business owner, project leader or manager you have to urge your team to embark on a challenging task of creating a new product. How responsive to do think they will be? It’s a long, tiresome and arduous journey. They’ll most likely crib about the long hours, low pay, higher stress, and other challenges along the way.

  However, if you narrate a quest or mission story the Wizard of Oz or Holy Grail, you’ll most likely tap into their subconscious mind to see themselves as heroes on a mission, where they emerge triumphant despite obstacles. They think of themselves as central characters in the story of their life, and how they win against all odds to accomplish their goals. This is how stories can be used to work on the audience’s subconscious and unconscious feel
ings and emotions. You are invoking thematic concepts and ideas through the speech to impress people and get them to do what you want. Never make the mistake of presenting yourself as the sole hero of the story. Always involve your audience. They should be able to view themselves as extraordinary too, if they have to take action in the desired direction.

  There are typical story categories that powerful orators use. Think rags to riches story.

  Using Story Telling in Training

  Let’s say you are training a group of innovative and strategic customer service solutions. You talk to them about different ways through which you can deliver a world-class customer service experience. However, the group will most likely forget a majority of customer service ideas and solutions you discussed during the training.

  Contrast this with a story. Each time my friend Jill faced an issue with her hosting service, she would contact the customer support team of the host company via live chat. Each tweeted about one such communication with the support team (nothing extraordinary a lot of people tweet these interactions if they happy or angry at the end of it). What did the web hosting company do next? They sent Jill the very same neckpiece she had pinned on her Pinterest board since long. Needless to say, the hosting company won a customer forever. Jill wasn’t just happy about their resolution, but also surprised at the touching gesture. She completely forgot about the initial technical issues she faced with the company.

  Do you think the group will forget this story? You’ve got them thinking about turning around a potentially negative customer experience as an opportunity to leave them floored. This is more powerful than any discussion about the elements of good customer service.

  Think about how effective stories can be on soft skill development and other training. Want to talk about faulty time management? Cinderella to the rescue!