Sales professionals often face a variety of challenges when trying to capture the attention and loyalty of potential customers. It’s not enough to simply present a product or service – that’s where the power of storytelling comes in. Storytelling involves taking a product or service and crafting compelling stories that resonate with a target market to evoke emotions. After listening to the inspiring “The Goal Digger” podcast by Jenna Kutcher featuring Colin Boyd, we had to share this powerful message!
How Do I Get Comfortable With Selling in General?
To be a successful entrepreneur, learning how to sell is inevitable. Over time, experience helps make selling more comfortable, but it also involves a mind-shift about what selling is all about. A great starting place is to begin thinking of sales as not just selling something, but attracting the right person to the right offer. Instead of creating a product and simply talking about the experience, try creating a full experience from start to finish that your audience can immerse themselves in.
The spectrum in learning how to feel confident in an offer:
As Colin Boyd mentions in his “From Storytelling to Sales” guest appearance on the Goal Digger Podcast, a spectrum can help define how confident someone is in their offer. The spectrum goes as such:
Level of Certainty: In order to feel confident in what you are selling an entrepreneur has to go through the transformation themselves. It’s about experiencing something on such a deep level that it has to be shared with everyone. Remember – consumers buy a feeling, not a product.
Clarity on How it Occurred: What are the steps followed to create that feeling? This has to be involved when pitching an offer. Consumers want to know what the entire experience was that made you feel so strongly about it.
Enough Social Proof: Once you have the experience down, it comes to the social proof of others. How has this experience transformed other consumers' lives?
How Do I Begin Storytelling in Sales?
Ultimately stories create relatability. It’s important to remember that when pitching an offer, the audience sees you at a higher level. The key point of storytelling is showing the audience that you can relate to what they have gone through. The story isn’t about selling a product, it’s about showing a time you were in the same position as they were, the obstacles you had to overcome, and the solution that solved your problems.
Colin Boyd also mentioned in his guest podcast 3 things every story should answer:
Are you like me? Is your story relatable to your audience? A story should be conveying how you were in the same position they were before a product or service. Your audience wants to know that you have felt the same struggles and feelings they are dealing with.
Can you lead me? Can you lead them to a solution for their struggles? A story can never be open ended. Always include the solution and final experiences and how they are still helping you today.
Did what you go through follow a path? When storytelling in sales, always take the time to share the entire experience from start to finish. What is the path you took to get the desired solution?
Storytelling in sales is a powerful tool every entrepreneur should be utilizing in their strategy. Storytelling taps into the emotions of an audience to help build trust and loyalty. Consumers buy feelings and emotions – not products. Focus on creating an experience that ultimately transforms your audience's lives. 30|90 Marketing takes value in improving its storytelling framework by listening to podcasts such as “The Goal Digger Podcast”. For more help on bringing storytelling into your sales, contact 30|90 Marketing today!
