Tell stories, close sales
SaiKalyan Chakravarthy Anupindi
??PhD Research Scholar | ? Digital Marketing Since 2005 ??e4m 40Under40, 2020 ? ? Founder at Filesie, A Digital Marketing Agency ? Featured on Forbes, Fortune & Entrepreneur
If you want to sell, you have to make people want to listen to you. Not only listen—but want to listen.
Storytelling has been long before documented history. It has been the successful way with which people have passed information from generation to generation.
Let me put it in this way, we connect with people in terms of stories we tell them, the information we share with them. But the stories are much effective only if we tell them in a long narrative way. It won’t fly if it’s a dry piece of facts.
Stories, what a beautiful way to gain attention! We are not new to stories. We were introduced to stories by our parents or grandparents. The way we gain attention and in fact we ask them to repeat the same story again and again because we are connected to it.
Stories. We remember them. That cartoon you were watching when you were five. Storytelling in the park along with other children. Heck, you probably still have some recollection of that story about how the London bridge is falling down, My fair lady
When facts and information are outlined within a convincing story, you will hold the audience's interest and help them connect bits and pieces of the story to their context.
This results in better retention—something we want in our prospects.
Stories are an enormously powerful and effective way for sales teams to make the listeners remember or recollect them or their product when in need. Storytelling is now used far and wide across different industries.
There are specialized training programs for sales teams to learn about the concept of storytelling.
A study by London Business School found that
People retain 65 to 70 percent of information shared through stories while only 5 to10 percent of information is retained through dry presentation of data and statistics.
Did you know, Stories connect human beings at an emotional level too. When listening to stories with rich imagery and meaning, the brain is stimulated as a whole. When this happens, emotions and logic are in play. Subjective biases are tapped and are considered when thinking.
When demos and even just conversations are comprised of stories, the human brain is attached.
A salesperson who knows how to use storytelling to engage and lock in a prospect is one who can close by making prospects feel
Everybody loves a story but not being sold.
Big and small brands use storytelling to pull in people. It makes the sales process human, relieves us of dry communication.
Successful inside sales professionals know how to use available information and bring them to life through stories. There’s no shortage of experience on the side of your company and that of your prospects. You just need to develop a keen eye on the information that will figure in neatly along with your stories.
---------Storytelling is a must-have sales skill---------
Make the prospect the hero and make them see how their concerns can be solved by your product without having to force the prospect to buy the product.