Storytelling in Business - Drive More Engagement With Prospects | Salesman Podcast

The everyday sales pitch is boring.

Running through features, hitting on target metrics, going through product slide after product slide after produ…

Truth be told, the everyday sales pitch sucks. And your buyers think so too.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can deliver a powerful, effective message while driving engagement, stirring emotions, and generating real buying intent.

And it’s all thanks to storytelling in business.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to incorporate compelling stories during your sales pitch using a simple five-point framework. I’ll also cover why business storytelling drives serious selling success, pro tips for how to tell a good story, and three goals every sales story should have.

Now, let’s dive into this potent sales technique

Why Storytelling in Business Just Plain Works

If there’s one thing that unites all humans, it’s that no one likes change. It can be scary. And adapting to it takes work. So, why should you go through the necessary changes to bring storytelling into your processes?

As it turns out, there are four reasons in particular why a business story just plain works.

A) Engaging on a Fundamental Level

First and foremost, a compelling story is engaging. And not just “meh” engaging. But engaging on a fundamental, biological level.

See, we’ve been hard-wired for thousands, even tens of thousands of years to pass on important information via storytelling. In fact, some of the earliest evidence of stories come from cave drawings in France that go back as far as 30,000 years.

Studies have shown that how character-driven a story is can predict how much people are willing to donate to charitable causes. A message wrapped in a well-constructed story is more likely to be understood (and even recalled weeks later). And even our conception of ourselves, our own identity, is built on a storytelling foundation.

Humans are storytellers and story-listeners. And when you incorporate that nature into your selling process, you’re tapping into that biological underpinning.

B) Taps Into Emotions

Logic is an important aspect of any sale. If you can’t make the numbers, the buyer isn’t going to bother giving you a try. Hey, it’s just business.

But sales is about emotion too. Sometimes it’s even more important than logic.

Emotion is the driving factor behind decision-making. It’s the excitement, the trust, the gravitational pull that causes buyers to say, “Yes! I want this.” And logic, while important, is more about justifying that purchase decision.

When you’re telling your great story to prospects, you’re helping them feel the same ups and downs as your “characters” or past buyers. And as a result, you’re priming their emotions to make a purchase decision.

“Fundamentally, we make decisions emotionally, and if all we're doing is spouting features and benefits, we're really engaging the logical part of the brain. The logical part of the brain does not make decisions. But analyses and captures information to weigh pros and cons, but decisions are made emotionally. And what stories do is they tap into the emotional center of the listener, and that's where the decisions are made.” – Interview with Adrian Davis, President & CEO of Whetstone Inc.

C) Lets the Buyer Feel Like the Hero

In the same vein as the last point, when your buyer feels the emotions of your narrative’s hero, they start feeling like the hero themselves. And that is key to driving real action.

Unfortunately, a lot of sales reps don’t get this point until far later in their careers. They try to make themselves look like the hero—the rep who...