Crafting Your Sales Story

To begin crafting the sales story, gather all marketing collateral and materials from various sources. Bring together all relevant team members for brainstorming. Start with three blank sheets of paper and write down every thought that comes to mind without overthinking. Later, you can eliminate poor ideas and refine the good ones to sound compelling.

1. Client Issues:
2. Answer the following questions to identify client issues:

Question set 1:

• Why did your best customers initially come to you?
• What business problems were they facing?
• What results were they looking to achieve?

Question set 2:

• What pains are our potential customers likely to experience by choosing or staying with the wrong provider? (Identify competition.)
• What problems do you see prospects experiencing from trying to do for themselves what we should be handling for them? (Self-performing versus outsourcing)
• Which opportunities might they miss, or which results will fall short because they are not our customer? (Opportunity cost of not working with us)

Reach out to customers and ask for their help in sharpening the sales story.

Ask:

Question set 3:

• Why did you come to us in the first place?
• What were you looking to achieve?
• What issues were you looking to address?
• Why do we still have your business?

Listen for differentiators in their answers that can be used.

1. Scan through marketing materials:
2. Find statements that highlight what we achieve for customers and how we help them, rather than just boosting our egos. Create a master sheet around 7 client issue bullets and start wordsmithing to format them smoothly, following the transitional phrase.

For example:

• XYZ companies turn to WORKMATE when looking to...
• XYZ companies look to us when facing...

Use provocative phrases where possible, such as:

• Customers are exhausted from, challenged by, done with, fearful of, pressured to, desperately trying to achieve...

Differentiators:

1.List all the reasons why we believe our solution is better. This can include cultural issues, technical expertise, proprietary processes, service guarantees, and personal differentiators as a salesperson. Toot your own horn here and highlight your expertise, sole attention to clients, successful leadership in similar projects, etc.

1. Offerings:
2. Ensure everyone is clear on what we sell. Craft a couple of direct sentences about our offerings and insert them between the client issue and differentiator sections.

This is the first draft of the sales story. It will require a few weeks of tinkering and revising. Carry it around, get comfortable with it, and practice it.