Creating a narrative around your company’s brand is never a bad idea. There is always a story that can help to not only differentiate your organization from others in the industry but sometimes a good story is the best way to convey your product’s hold on the market or the overwhelming benefits reaped by other customers simply by selecting your solution.
A good sales story can help reinforce the foundation of a relationship with your prospect or client. Stories help make you, as the salesperson, your product, and the brand more relatable, provide an intimate perspective, and give the prospect or client a different perspective or approach to the problem they are having.
These stories also stick with the client or prospect for a longer period after you have left the room or signed off your web meeting. The purpose isn’t so that they remember that joke you told, but rather that they remember the most important aspects of the product, how you explained their needs will be met, and your commitment to making their business operate more efficiently.
In a B2B sales situation, the salesperson is presenting a solution through an arsenal of tools to the superhero, aka. The client. It is the salesperson’s job, as the secondary character in the room, to make sure the hero is successful in their endeavor to obtain a solution that meets the needs of the business, is under budget, and meets or beats the project timeline.
Building the Hero’s Story
The salesperson can use storytelling to identify the client’s status and the challenges they are facing. From there, the salesperson can provide options to the client that they can action in order to increase the likelihood of their success. Finally, the salesperson will close the sale by supporting the client in their decision to adopt the product, sign the contract, or schedule a future meeting with stakeholders.
Strategic stories like the hero’s story can help to build a trusting relationship between the salesperson and the client or prospect, uncover the issues and business pains that need to be remedied, and suggest an easily obtainable solution that meets the aforementioned needs. These stories can directly impact the decision making sections of the stakeholder’s brain, by allowing them to make an emotional connection and decision supported by facts.
While not all salespeople are storytellers, the notion of storytelling can be trained by simply framing the sales pitch as a way to solve the client’s problem, rather than trying to sell them a product or service.
Test this theory of sharing stories to build relationships by gathering your team of sales professionals in a room. Ask them to share their own origin story (how they got to where they are today). After each person has had a chance to tell their story, survey the room. Participants should report feeling closer to one another, be able to find common ground with a colleague with whom they had not been able to previously, or be able to commiserate about similar or shared experiences in the field/industry.
Storytelling techniques in the sales field will help your team close deals by making the client or prospect the hero of the story using your products or services to solve their problem. Bringing facts, data, and compelling testimonials or other client experiences to the table helps to further frame your story and allows the client/prospect to connect personally with elements of the story. The end result is a closed deal and long-term retention.
In the modern world where everything is a pitch, sometimes it is refreshing to make the sales process more human by sharing a story. It’s an imperative sales skill that your team is missing. Check out the Agent FAQs page or Click here to learn more about working with Insured Solutions.