Selling with a Story.!

In May 2015, my wife and I went to an art fair in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was looking for a picture for our sons’ bathroom at home.

We got to the booth of an underwater photographer named Chris Gug. His gallery is full of breathtaking underwater shots of anemones, corals, sea turtles, and whales. My wife got attached to a picture that, to me, looked about as out of place as a pig in the ocean. It was a picture of a pig in the ocean. She described it as inspired genius—a cute little baby piglet, up to its nostrils in the saltwater, snout covered with sand, dog-paddling its way straight into the camera lens. I thought it was a picture of a pig in the ocean.

When I finally got a chance to ask the artist a question, I asked him what on Earth that pig was doing in the ocean. And that’s when the magic started.

Chris explained that the picture was taken in the Caribbean, just off the beach of an uninhabited Bahamian island officially named Big Major Cay. He told us that years ago, a local entrepreneur brought a drove of pigs to the island to raise for bacon. Gug went on:

But, as you can see in the picture, there’s not much more than cactus on the island for them to eat. And pigs don’t much like cactus. So the pigs weren’t doing very well. But at some point, a restaurant owner on a nearby island started bringing his kitchen refuse by boat over to Big Major Cay and dumping it a few dozen yards off shore. The hungry pigs eventually learned to swim to get to the food. Each generation of pigs followed suit, and now all the pigs on the island can swim. As a result, today the island is more commonly known as Pig Island.

Gug went on to describe how the pigs learned that approaching boats meant food, so they eagerly swim up to anyone arriving by boat. And that’s what allowed him to more easily get the close-up shot of the cute little sandy-nosed, dog-paddling piglet.

I handed him my credit card and said, “We’ll take it!”

Isn't this a great sales story.? Of-course Yes.

I came across this story when I was reading Paul Smith's book 'Sell with a Story' a great business storytelling book, well explained by Mr. Smith.