How Storytelling made a client’s ‘rational value sell’ stick like Velcro.
Room for Improvement: Intelliresponse’s sales team was second to none at rationally selling the value of their offering with facts and quotes from authorities. And they did achieve success, but not the level of success that they felt their offering deserved. They felt that they were losing too many deals to the Buyer deciding to do nothing (see video below).
What they discovered was that the rational value sell had two fundamental flaws: 1) The Buyers they were selling to also had their own set of authorities, statistics and experiences. So, during their presentations, the Buyer was arguing with them in their heads. That’s a tough argument to win when the Buyer is both judge and jury, and; 2) even if they did persuade the Buyer how great their offering was, they only did so on an intellectual basis. They realized that this wasn’t good enough because Buyers are not inspired to act on reason alone.
Captain Kirk makes decisions, Spock justifies them: What Intelliresponse learned to do in the StorySelling Workshop was to wrap their rational value sell up with enough emotion so that their offering would stick like Velcro and thereby result in fewer deals being lost to no decision. Think about it, have you ever not acted on something that didn’t feel right even though you thought that it was right?
Why not do it yourself? Persuading with story is hard. Sure it takes an intelligent salesperson to build a rational argument for your offering but it doesn’t require a great deal of creativity. It does, however, require creativity, insight and Storytelling skill to wrap your rational value sell up with enough emotion to make it stick like Velcro. That’s why Paul, ex- VP of Sales at PeopleSoft and someone who ran their own sales process company for 5-years, decided not to do it himself. We’re all smart people he said, but we have day jobs. And because a VP of Sales day job is so tactical, the pressure to advance sales opportunities will get in the way so they’ll never get around to doing something strategic like Storytelling (click for video).
You can’t fake it: But I believe the real benefit of Storytelling is that your salespeople will process your Value Props in their heads when they create a series of mini customer stories in the Storytelling Workshop. This will allow them to internalize your offering and make it their own. This, I believe, is what’s needed for salespeople to finally Ditch the Pitch and have Business Conversations. Don’t you agree that you can’t fake being a businessperson, you have to earn it?
Your Story: But that’s Intelliresponse’s Story, what’s yours? Maybe you need to further refine your rational sales message, and if that’s the case, we can help in our Sales Messaging Workshop.
Next Steps: Whatever your story is, I’d love to hear it. Please call or email so that we can see how we can get your Value Props to stick like Velcro so that you lose fewer deals to no decision.
Regards
Michael
PS: Here’s a gift basket Paul sent from Intelliresponse to say thanks for the training.
Max, my son, said when it arrived: “Papa, I can’t believe you got this, it’s heaven.” Within an hour, the kids had worked their way through half of it.