Hiring a New Sales Pro? Hire a Storyteller

Have you ever met an amazing B2B sales professional who is a terrible storyteller?

It’s unlikely.

And that’s because storytelling is the key skill that separates the run-of-the-mill salesperson (or “business developer” as many have taken to calling themselves in recent years) from an outstanding one. If you look closely, regardless of industry, sales cycle, product or service, the sales teams who consistently exceed their goals or quotas or whatever metric is used to manage their performance are usually led by an exceedingly adept storyteller.

Now, before I get too far ahead of myself, let me be clear: I am NOT saying that a great B2B salesperson is ONLY a great storyteller. Great B2B salespeople almost always bring together an array of key skills in addition to being a talented raconteur such as deep product knowledge, a keen understanding of the ins and outs of their client prospects and their respective internal challenges and processes, an almost obsessive ability to keep things moving and following up, and, of course, a big dose of charm and overall friendliness. ?

All these traits and characteristics are fairly obvious. But it’s the storytelling ability that is often overlooked.

In fact, have you ever seen a job posting for a sales or bizdev professional that mentioned “storytelling” in the job description or requirement? Probably not.

Now let me tell you a story.

Back in 2009 I moved from New York City to Angola to help launch the country’s first private television station. And by 2011, when that job was coming to an end, I received an invitation to stay in the country and take on a completely new challenge: starting the country’s first major Fashion Mall.

The project, which was called the Luanda Fashion Center, had a very heavy B2B component to it. The main goal was to centrally source quality women’s fashion, footwear, and accessories from around the world and sell them wholesale to individual stores and boutique owners across the country. Up until then, these store owners were spending several weeks a year traveling overseas to China, Dubai, Turkey, Brazil and other places just to buy items for their stores. It was a costly endeavor; it took them away from their businesses for weeks on end, and forced them to deal with international payments, logistics, shipping, customs and a whole host of potential problem areas way outside of their core business – selling women’s fashion. Luanda Fashion Center, or LFC as it became known, was going to streamline that whole process.

In any case, when it came time to hire the salespeople, the woman who was leading the sales team – a Brazilian who came out of fashion retail sales in S?o Paulo (let’s call her Carol as her real name doesn’t really matter) – began interviewing potential salespeople. If I recall correctly Carol and her team started with a list of over 400 names.

After the initial screening interviews, Carol established a short list of potential candidates. She invited them all back for a sales simulation in which she had the final candidates interact with a woman (let’s call her Dona Ana) who was actually a small boutique owner. Carol wanted to see how they acted in a real-life sales situation.

That’s when things got very interesting.

The young professionals who had made her short list were very convincing at touting the virtues of specific collections of footwear or talking about how appealing certain styles and fabrics were, or which celebrity wore what.

But not one of them asked Dona Ana about her business. Not one asked her about the challenges and issues she faced as a small boutique owner who had to leave her husband and small children behind sometimes up to six times a year for two or three weeks at a time to travel to China to buy her clothing. Not one person asked about the struggles of carrying loads of cash around and then having to place their trust in unknown middlemen.

Then came Jorge.

Jorge was one of the few men who had applied for a sales role and only one of two who had made it to the final round of interviews. He didn’t know much about fashion. And certainly not much about women’s fashion. But he knew about running a small business. He had grown up in a family-owned car repair shop. He knew how his father had struggled to get parts (all imported.) He understood cash flow and the impact it has on a family depending on weekly sales to put food on the table and pay for school and essentials.

Jorge connected with Dona Ana in an unbelievably strong way because he immediately sensed many of her challenges and frustrations. And he told her story after story from his own experiences that resonated with Dona Ana. His stories were funny and told with a bit of wit. He was self-deprecating and used wordplay to bring his stories to life. He understood story arc and how to convey only the most relevant parts of each story. And each anecdote had a payoff or lesson that linked directly back to Dona Ana’s own business and the business at hand, namely buying clothing from LFC.

Jorge was a natural storyteller.

Over the course of the 45 minutes or so they were together, he had Dona Ana in the palm of his hand. She trusted him. She had connected with him. She would have bought anything he was selling at that moment if it hadn’t been a simulation.

Needless to say, Jorge went on to be the most successful sales rep LFC ever had. In fact, less than a year later he was poached by a client who a separate business selling insurance. And from what I hear he has been very successful in that field as well.

What separated Jorge from everyone else was his storytelling ability.

And storytelling wasn’t even in the job description.

Next time you are hiring a sales professional, consider adding “storyteller” to the requirements.

B2B sales is storytelling.

This is Leveraged Storytelling.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

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