How to construct your sales story

Summary: Your customers don’t think in terms of needing your product or service—they think about solving their problems. They wonder how they can increase sales, or do their work in fewer steps, or simplify their processes. This is why it’s so essential that you present your offering — your sales story — from their perspective. You need a story where they see themselves and their problems, and how you will solve them. There are various ways to build that story; following is how I learned to do it and how I continue to do it, breaking it down into three parts: (1) an opening statement that defines your customer’s challenge; (2) a brief overview of how you solve that challenge; and (3) what makes you different. That’s the SparkNotes version; for the details, read on.

Two important lessons

I have benefited from many mentors over the years. One I found particularly influential was Irwin Schinkel. Irwin taught me an important lesson — 2 lessons, in fact — for building a solid sales story.

After leaving our family business in 1994, I spent a year working for Irwin’s sales consulting company, Unique Development. My job was telephone prospecting — working the phone to develop leads. While I can’t recall how long it took to get my first prospect to express actual interest, it was definitely weeks and not days.

But I clearly remember the prospect. He was the owner/president of a small business, and he asked me to send him more details on the sales development program I was trying to sell him. I got busy drafting a sales letter.

Irwin asked me to run the draft past him prior to sending it to the prospect. It took 5 drafts. Yes, 5 drafts, which at the time felt excessive, but in hindsight, were such a valuable exercise.

There were 2 main lessons learned through Irwin’s feedback. The first was that there is no ‘i’ in sales (the first two rewrites). The second theme, which required three rewrites, revolved around the concept of selling the outcome, not the product or service.

It’s all about the outcome — and meeting basic human needs

The takeaway here is that people buy the transformation your product or service brings them. Let me restate that for clarity: The root of product value is the transformation the product or service enables. This is the cheat code for how you should present your offer to the world.

Because the fact is that, as humans, while we might live in different places and speak different languages, we have in common certain basic needs.

Steven Reiss, an American psychologist, has it down to 16 needs. Reiss studied human needs for years and, with his team, surveyed 6,000 people from 4 continents. He found that all people, regardless of race, language, religious beliefs, or place of birth, share the following needs and desires:?

Power | Independence | Curiosity | Acceptance

Romance | Eating | Order | Status

Saving | Idealism | Social contact | Family

Vengeance | Honour | Tranquility | Physical activity

Every business makes money by solving its customers' problems and satisfying their needs— and these above are what you must consider when you’re positioning your offer.

See it from your customer’s point of view

While this all sounds like common sense, many companies fail to effectively communicate how they actually meet customers’ needs.

But consider that most CEOs don’t wake up in the morning thinking “I need to buy new software today” or “We should consider building a new mobile app this month”.

CEOs do, however, wake up wondering “How do we execute our order entry process in fewer steps to reduce the time it takes to get our products into our customer's hands?” And it’s entirely possible that your software or mobile app would be beneficial in meeting that challenge.

Build a story that sees it their way

So, how do we develop a great sales story? And by the way, there are various terms often used interchangeably with “sales story” — elevator pitch and value proposition are two that come to mind. Right now, what you call it really isn’t important. What is important is the structure of that story and how you develop it.

My starting point with clients looking to build their sales story is typically workshops and/or brainstorming sessions. From these sessions, we identify and/or clarify:

• Their customer’s key challenges and pain points
• Their offering
• Their differentiators

Most clients are already good at defining their offerings (phew!). Similarly, it does not take long to establish a list of what differentiates them. We typically spend the most time on client issues.

To uncover these issues, we start by asking questions such as:

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

You can also get some outside help by contacting your best customers and walking them through these questions. Read carefully here as you may get bonus information to add to your differentiator list.

Structuring your story: the 3 components

Below are the 3 components that make up the structure of your sales story. (Remember our last post where we talked about clearly defining your ideal customer profile? That profile will help with this exercise.)

1/ Your opening statement – This is where you define the pain point, then pivot to connect that pain to your offering. What do I mean by pivot? See the bolded type in my Navisant sales story below.

“We work with the CEOs and business leaders of mid-sized companies when they are struggling to build out their systems, improve their business and sales processes, and ultimately increase their value as a foundation for growth and for successfully exiting their business when they eventually choose to do so. We bring to our customers over 20 years of sales leadership, business development, and exit strategy expertise.”

The pivot takes the statement from “we” (“We work with…”) to “they”—the customer. It’s now about them.

2/ Your offering – You’re describing your product or service, but again, through your customer’s lens (because of your pivot). See the bolded copy below.

“We work with the CEOs and business leaders of mid-sized companies when they are looking to build out their systems, improve their business and sales processes, and ultimately increase their value as a foundation for growth and for successfully exiting their business when they eventually choose to do so. We bring to our customers over 20 years of sales leadership, business development, and exit strategy expertise.”

3/ Your differentiator – You’re now elaborating on your offering by telling your customer why they should be choosing you over your competitor.?

“We work with the CEOs and business leaders of mid-sized companies when they are looking to build out their systems, improve their business and sales processes, and ultimately increase their value as a foundation for growth and for successfully exiting their business when they eventually choose to do so. We bring to our customers over 20 years of sales leadership, business development, and exit strategy expertise.”?

I hope you find this helpful — the series continues here in 2 weeks!

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