Storytelling, the art of selling with stories

"Once upon a time there was a kingdom that lay next to a dark and dangerous forest" The Grimm brothers

Have you attended a digital sales meeting and watched PowerPoint slide after slide flash by on the screen? Texts, graphs and numbers at the same time as the salesperson talks. Most of us don't have time, there is too much information coming too quickly. We check out of the meeting. If the mailbox pings, it's tempting to look and see if it was something important. When the meeting is coming to an end, just at the point when the salesperson is about to conclude, someone on the customer side interrupts: "Can you send the presentation so we can take a position internally?" The sales meeting is over, the energy is gone, the customer has pressed the pause button and the deal has stalled. When I was invited to coach a sales team at a SaaS company, they had over 50 deals that stopped right here, after the salesperson had sent the powerpoint presentation. "Death by powerpoint" said one of the salesmen and continued: "The customer wants a presentation and I don't know how to create a dialogue!" He was frustrated. Imagine if you yourself sat and made 10 digital customer meetings week in and day out, all of which ended with the customer wanting your presentation, not buying from you. All the hours the salesperson spent creating a selling presentation are wasted. The vast majority of salespeople I work with have a complex message to convey. It's a big challenge to capture all the important details - that's why it's so tempting to use powerpoint. But the risk is great that your main message will be lost, that your idea will pass by too quickly at the meeting, that it won't take hold in the customer's head and heart. I remember when Sweden applied to host the Summer Olympics. I ended up by chance at the official presentation of our sales pitch. I remember that we sat in the Rival movie theater in Stockholm. It was packed with politicians, business leaders and athletes. On stage were those responsible for the application, ready to present the results of their hard work. A lot of prestige and money was at stake. Now everyone who contributed should feel: "Damn, we're good - we're going to bring home the Olympics".

I will never forget what happened next. First to speak is the project manager. He starts his computer and shows picture after picture: how they planned, the timeline, project goals, pictures of different arenas to be built. The excitement and energy that was in the room is quickly running out. The phones discreetly move forward, someone in the audience clears their throat and looks at the clock. Then something unexpected happened. The chairman of the Swedish Olympic Committee switches off the projector. He looks out over the audience in the salon, completely silent. A minute passes. The energy in the room rises again, anticipation rises. He leans casually against the table on the stage, one hand in his trouser pocket. “We have a dream. To be the center of sport that the world needs. To show off Sweden, to invite you to dance. All the hours, days, months and years of hard work, endless meetings, travels, ups and downs have led to this moment, dear friends. He holds a stack of papers high in the air for all to see: "Here is our application, here is our ticket to host the Olympics for the first time since 1904." Everyone in the audience stands up and applauds. As I write these lines, I can feel the feeling of Europhoria, of victory, although I am not at all interested in the Olympics or sports. But the feeling that the chairman managed to create in a few minutes, it took me by storm. When the applause has died down, he turns to his team and says: “Thank you, thank you for your work. I think we are ready to take a look at what our proposal should look like now.” Now the timing was right for the project manager to show the details, now that we were infected with the idea behind the application. This example is not a normal sales situation that you and I encounter. But I wanted to share this experience to show how important it is to create a feeling before diving into the details.

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The best salespeople are great storytellers

Mike Bosworth, the founder of the Solution Selling concept, told me that he had a rough start to his sales career. As a 28-year-old technician, he was given an assignment to sell a newly developed advanced IT system to manufacturing industries. The typical customer was a man, around 50 years old, who had worked in the industry for a long time. When Mike came out to his first sales meetings, he was met with a sigh. The customer thought: "Another salesperson, time wasted." Mike said: “Every meeting was a pain, a humiliation. I felt worthless. I went to my boss to get my old job back, I wasn't a sales person. But the manager convinced me to visit some of the customers who have already bought the system, interview these people about what problems they solved and what profit they got. He also asked me to ask them if they wanted to be references. I did as the boss said. Now I began to understand what we were actually selling, it wasn't a system, it was lower costs but above all control over the stock and a good night's sleep. I changed strategy, no more presentations. My next customer meeting was the start of something new, it was my ticket to the title of best salesperson of the year. The moment the customer discovered he was going to meet a young salesman, just before he looked at his watch, I said, “Let me tell you about Bob who is the manager of the warehouse at the factory next door. He had problems with (…).” Now the customer listened to me, started asking questions, asked to meet with Bob to get ideas. The deals started coming. The most important thing I learned was that the customer doesn't buy your product, they buy a solution to a problem. To get them to open up, you have to give them a story that they recognize.”

I agree with Mike. When he told me how he started as a salesman, I recognized myself. My ticket to the shops wasn't our fancy brochures, it was my stories that sold. I was 25 years old and had no sales experience at all. I would sell sales training to sales managers and CEOs at smaller companies. Before my first day on the job, I had never met any of these managers. In fact, I had never had a regular job, except for my three months on the assembly line at the SAAB car factory. Almost everyone who was hired at the same time as me quit or got fired after 6 months. They failed to sell. I toiled like a dog during the day, booked appointments, met with clients, got away, got kicked out. In the evenings I went to the home of the most talented consultant, Susanne Einhorn, to absorb her knowledge, her stories. On weekends I forced my colleague, Mikael Lindstr?m, to give me feedback on my stories, the ones I had just learned. I stopped, like Mike Bosworth, presenting our courses. I told stories about how customers solved their sales problems and became successful. It sold. I became rookie of the year, the fact is that I built my career on telling stories. As you can see, this book is full of them. The theory behind MEDDICC? is simple, it is the examples that make you use the method in your sales and get the success you deserve.

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The art of telling a story that sells

I have spent many hours finding models for storytelling, the Internet is full of rhetorical methods, complicated flowcharts and other methods. But sales is not a theater performance or a movie where you have room for finlir. You never know how a sales meeting will turn out, there may be new participants, time is shortened, priorities change, anything can happen. Therefore, the model must be easy to remember. In order to quickly tell the right story, you must have trained your flexibility so that you can quickly change or adapt your story to the recipients. You need to have a library of stories. You probably need to write them down. Ask your colleagues to do the same so you can share them with each other, you create collective knowledge. By telling your stories, knowledge is passed on, just as it has been for generations around the campfire, long before the art of writing was invented.

I have found a simple model that I use in all sales meetings, in my courses and in the teams of good friends. It was at a cultural festival, Burning Man 2016, that I ran on it for the first time. We sat there in the dusty desert heat and were taught the five-finger model of storytelling. The teacher held up a picture of a hand and explained: "The thumb is the problem to be solved, the index finger is the solution, the middle finger is the new thing that is happening, the ring finger is the value and the little finger is the start of the change". With the short instruction, we were tasked with choosing a situation in life and creating a story using the five-finger model. The model helped us to sort our thoughts, to select the most important thing in the story, not to lose ourselves in details. I thought the five-finger model was so good, so easy to remember, that I started using it in my sales meetings. It could sound like this: "I worked with a sales team that, despite many customer meetings, did not reach its sales targets. Customers found their solution too expensive and complicated. We trained the salespeople in how to create an ROI calculation together with their customer. The effect was that customers became more involved and contributed to building their own business case. They were able to increase their sales by 300% in 12 months. But the start was simple, we developed a simple ROI model.” If you read my story at a leisurely pace, it takes about 33, 64 seconds. Getting the same message across using powerpoint images would probably take at least a quarter of an hour. I taught one of the salespeople, Charlie, on a team that really sells big and complicated solutions, to stop showing powerpoints and instead tell stories. They help large property owners make their office properties more energy efficient. He started driving around and looking at the properties that the client owns. He went in to see what it looked like inside the house and which companies rented the premises. He read up on the company's finances, their business concept. Then he booked a meeting with one of the top managers and used the five-finger model to tell a story about how other property owners solved their energy problems. But he went further than that, he told how the other customers were able to create a feeling with their premises, a feeling of prestige, which attracted the tenants who want the best premises, who were willing to pay a higher rent. In less than a minute, Charlie got the customer to open up and book a meeting to discuss further.

Another example of how effective storytelling can be was when a salesperson received an inquiry from a customer. The seller immediately understood that the customer was only looking for a price, so they could squeeze their current supplier. Submitting a quote would be a waste of time. The seller did research on the customer and found that they had another customer with a similar business. The seller called and asked the customer to tell them what problems they solved, why they chose the seller's solution and what they earned from the deal. Now the seller had enough on his feet to create a story. He asked for a meeting to be able to give the correct price. Instead of presenting a quote, he told the story from the other customer, the problems they solved, the solution they chose, the impact and how they got started. It was a short story. After several meetings, the seller got the deal, the customer realized that they didn't take the total cost into account, but just stared blindly at the purchase prices. The seller presented his arguments in a better way through his story.

The five-finger model

I hope you are now sufficiently convinced of the value of telling stories instead of showing powerpoints, they will be needed later in the sales process, when you have the customer's full attention. The five-finger model is very easy to remember. All you have to do is take a look at your right or left hand, assuming you haven't lost any fingers.

The thumb, the problem to be solved

A good story always begins with the problem to be solved, with the drama. It should capture the customer, make him recognize himself, make him sweat a little. Tell about how the problem arose, what caused it and what consequences it had for the decision maker and the organization. This is where you should put the most gunpowder.

The index finger, the solution

Tell as simply as you can about the solution. Keep it comprehensive: "The customer chose to let us manage the accounting" or "The customer hired our consultants to test the software" or "the solution was to investigate the risk of a data breach". Avoid details and what the different phases of the project looked like. Then you lose the interest you built up. You will certainly come back to the solution later.

The middle finger, the change

Now you must tell about what was different, how the customer was helped by your solution. Here are some examples: "When our consultants took care of the management of the customer's old system, their developers could spend all their time on product development", or "The energy analysis helped the customer to see which properties should be prioritized, where to invest", or "The new CRM system gave the sellers increased opportunities for cross-selling. They saw what the customer didn't buy and were able to make a sales pitch to sell new services to the old customers". Build on details, how it felt, how the days could be used more efficiently, how the customer's business became more efficient.

The ring finger, the value of the change

An organization invests to increase revenue, lower its costs and to manage risk. You need to tell how the solution and the change provided or provides increased value for the customer. Link the investment to some of the metrics, M in MEDDICC?, that you know are important to your customer. Here are some examples: "The customer was able to launch their new products 6 months faster, which resulted in business worth SEK 100 million" or "A lower workload reduced sickness absence by 30%, which saved the company SEK 2 million annually." or "With an environmental certification, the customer meets the requirements from the municipality and avoids fines".

Pinkie finger, call to action

A good story always contains a call to action, a way to get started. You want to get the customer to take the next step in your sales process. The easiest is to tell about what the other customer did to get started, or if you sell new solutions and lack suitable references, tell how your customer can get started, what is the next step together with you. Here are some examples: "Our client asked us to analyze all their properties and come up with a proposal on where it was most profitable to start" or "The client hired one of our consulting teams to take over the management, within a few days they were up and running ” or “a good way to start is to let us interview your salespeople and then present a report on improvement opportunities”.

An example of a story with the five-finger model might sound like this:

"One of our customers had major problems with their sales, they had difficulty booking meetings with new customers, only one in 10 accepted a meeting. The sales team had only managed to reach 25% of their new sales budget after 6 months. We developed a new sales pitch for them to practice on. The sellers felt safe, got better fluency in their conversations and much better response from the customers. After a few weeks, their meeting hit rate had increased by 300% and the value of their sales pipeline by 89%. The first thing we did was listen to some of their conversations and give feedback”.

Practice makes perfect

As you'll soon notice, it's not just your story that sells, it's how you tell it, how much emotion you put into it, and how much you believe in what you're saying. Everything you feel, the customer will feel, something I will touch on in the next chapter, if you how to ask questions the right way. Combining stories with questions is the best way to get the customer to open up. Train with your colleagues, record and listen to your conversations, get help from customers, colleagues and suppliers to build your stories. Do as I; write them down and post them on Linkedin.

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Summary

I could write a whole book about the art of telling stories that sell, maybe that will be the subject of the next book. Once you start storytelling, you'll never want to stop. You will notice how effective it is, how much faster you can create a dialogue with the customer, how much more effectively you can get the essence of what you can help with. Publish your stories on Linkedin – they are perfect magnets for generating leads.

Jens Edgren, MEDDICC Master Instructor, CEO

[email protected] www.meddicc.se