From the course: Selling with Stories, Part 2: Stories Great Sales People Tell

Explaining what you do, simply

From the course: Selling with Stories, Part 2: Stories Great Sales People Tell

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Explaining what you do, simply

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- What's the earliest opportunity you have to tell a story in sales? The moment you introduce yourself. For example you might be trading business cards with someone at a trade show who may or may not turn out to be a prospect. And the first question you get asked in a situation like that is always the same, so what do you do for a living. And the way you answer that question will determine whether or not they have any desire to listen to anything else you have to say. Now what you need to do at that moment is explain what you do for a living in a way that's meaningful if your audience happens to be a prospect but without putting them to sleep if they're not. In other words you need the kind of story that avoids this kind of a corporate yawner, I represent a company that's best in class at emissions testing and chemical analysis that delivers zero down time environmental compliance certifications. Right, whatever. That's the kind of management speak that's guaranteed to leave you standing alone at the hors d'oeuvres table. Now sure the details of what your company does might be complex and sophisticated but giving someone you just met a rough idea of what that is doesn't have to be. Instead of that what if you said something like this. Let's say you work at a manufacturing plant, you've probably got a few of those big smoke stacks coming out the top. Well as you might imagine the EPA has all kinds of regulations about exactly how much of what kind of stuff can be in the smoke coming out of those things. And if you've got more then you're supposed to they can shut you down until you get it fixed. So what we do is come in and do all the testing to figure out where you're at now and if you've got a problem we can work with you to fix it before the EPA comes in and shuts you down. You see how much more clear and interesting that was. Now sure it took a few seconds longer but so what. I mean who would rather endure 10 seconds of unhelpful, overly scripted boredom then 30 seconds of a genuine conversational and even entertaining story that actually answers the question. All right now more importantly which of those two types of answers is likely to get you invited to the buyers office for a sales call. Exactly. So if your what I do for a living answer sounds more like the management speak one develop this kind of story for yourself. Now here's how. First invent a main character who's in a typical industry you serve. All right that was the part that went, let's say you work at a manufacturing plant. All right then describe a plausible series of events that results in the problem your product or service is designed to fix. All right that was the part about having smoke stacks and EPA regulations. All right then finish with a one sentence description of what you do to solve that problem. All right that was the part about testing and fixing your problems before the EPA shuts you down. Now you'll know you've got it about right when you can tell the story to your mom, your spouse, or your kids and then can understand what you do for a living.

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