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

Why I do what I do

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

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Why I do what I do

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- [Instructor] What drew you to the profession or the company you work for? Now I ask because those reasons say something about who you are as a person, and the passion you show or the lack of it, will influence the buyer's natural affection for you. I mean, after all who doesn't wanna do business with someone who loves what they do? And that's why this should be one of your earliest stories. Here's an example from a guy named Chris Powers. Now Chris had wanted to make partner at the consulting firm where he works since the day he joined the company. Well, eight years later in 1998, he was about to get his wish. He'd made the cut. All those hours, and hard work paid off. The promotion was scheduled to go through on April 1st of that year. Well, when that day finally arrived, he walked into his boss' office and he quit. His boss must have thought he was crazy, right? I mean, what could make a guy do something like that? And the answer was Keith Krach. Keith was the co-founder and CEO of Ariba, one of the early pioneers of using the internet to streamline the procurement process. Well, Keith had met with Chris and offered him a job as one of Ariba's first sales reps. So it obviously wasn't the job title that lured Chris away. So what was it? Well, Chris explained it this way. He said, my dad was a high school basketball coach. He played for John Wooden in both high school and college, so I grew up loving sports and I play them all. But once I started my career, after school, I started to miss the fun and comradery of the team environment, of playing together as a team, and winning together. Well, Keith must have had similar experiences because in one of our first conversations, he convinced me of three things that made it impossible to say no to him. First he said, we're gonna work hard here, but we're gonna have fun doing it. He made it clear that I was gonna be part of culture that sounded like the one I was missing from sports. Second, he showed me that Ariba had some game-changing technology that was really gonna impact how businesses bought and sold from one another, and how we could help them do that faster, more reliably, and save them money at the same time. The internet was still relatively new and absolutely nobody was doing what they were doing. That was really exciting to me. And third, he said, I was gonna personally be able to influence my customers and their business results, just like I was as a consultant, but that I'd be doing it as part of a real team effort. Now Chris explained that that sort of sales call that Ariba conducts, wasn't the typical solo salesperson in the room with a buyer type of sales call. It was usually two or three people in the room with a buyer, all with specific roles to play, just like in sports. He said, it was a no-brainer. I traded in my partnership to become employee number 92 in a company that grew to over 2,000. And it was absolutely the best decision I ever made. Now one of Chris' early customers in that job was Debbie Manos-McHenry. Now at the time, she was director of operations at KeyBank in Cleveland. And she actually remembers listening to Chris tell that story in one of their first meetings. And she described it as both inspired and inspiring. Okay, when's the last time a buyer described your opening words in a meeting as inspiring? Never? Well, that's okay because they will if you start telling your own story like this. So ask yourself, what inspired you to do the work that you do, to work for the company you work for? Think about that moment that you made that decision, craft a story around it, and share it with your next prospect.

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