Sales Tactic # 3- Telling Stories
From Chris Chalmers
“Story telling offers the power to transform your product from a nebulous idea into real vision for your prospects.
Features certainly have little selling power. Benefits give you a bit more selling power than features do. It is story telling though that packs the big punch because it wraps the what, why, and how of your product all together into an entertaining package that holds their attention.
Stories don’t have to be long. Very effective sales stories need only be a sentence or two. In Chris’s case, the stories were short:
“interspersed with short stories about how other customers were using it”
…because his sales team wanted to stay on their agenda of asking questions and finding all about the prospect’s proposed use of their product. This was a very smart move because when you tell longer stories, you risk losing control of the sales call if you let the prospect ask you a lot of questions.
Stories position you and your company as capable experts. You imbue yourself with the success of your customers. Your prospect sees what is possible and believes that you can help them get what they want because you are discussing a customer who is getting their desired results.
Learn from Chris Chalmers’ example. Incorporate more stories into your selling and improve your questioning techniques to find out what your prospects want, why they want it, and what they will do with it. Work on these skills and closing gets so easy its almost a nonevent.”
