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

A story for every step of the sale

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

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A story for every step of the sale

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- People don't make the logical, rational decisions we'd like to think we do. Now, more often it turns out, we make subconscious, emotional decisions in one place in our brains and then justify those decisions rationally and logically in another part of our brain. If you wanna influence people's decision making, it turns out you need to speak to both parts, but facts and logic and data only speak to one part. Stories, however, speak to both and that's why people who can tell a good sales story will always sell more than people who can't. I'm Paul Smith, author of the book, Sell with a Story, How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale. Now, I've interviewed sales people at dozens of companies around the world. Companies like Hewlett-Packard and Costco, Abercrombie and Fitch, Microsoft, Huntington Bank, Xerox and others. Now, what I found out was that great sales people are using storytelling throughout the entire sales process. From the moment they meet a new prospect, to when they build rapport, to the main sales pitch itself, to resolving objections, to closing the sale, and even customer service after the sale. In all, I've documented 25 specific types of stories that sales people should have in their repertoire. By the way, when I say a story, I don't mean good talking points or great presentation slides. I mean actual stories about something that happened to someone. Narratives with a time, a place, a main character facing some kind of a struggle. That's what real stories are and if you want the unique benefits of storytelling, things like memorability, engaging-ness, you need to actually be telling real stories. In part one of this course, we talked about how to craft sales stories. In part two, which is the course you're watching now, we'll focus on understanding which specific stories you need to tell. Now, I'll share a compelling example of each one and give you formulas to come up with your own. Let's get started.

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