Sell
with a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale
by
Paul Smith
Despite
all the high-tech tools available to salespeople, the most personal method still
works best.
Storytelling
packs the emotional punch to turn routine presentations into productive
relationships. It explains products or services in ways that resonate; it
connects people and creates momentum. Stories speak to the part of the brain where
decisions are made. Paul Smith, author of the acclaimed Lead with a Story,
shifts his best-selling formula to the sales arena. In Sell with a Story, he
identifies the ingredients of the most effective sales stories and reveals how
to:
Select
the right story; Craft a compelling and memorable narrative; Incorporate
challenge, conflict, and resolution; Use stories to introduce yourself, build
rapport, address objections, add value, bring data to life, create a sense of
urgency, and more
Complete
with model stories, skill-building exercises, and enlightening examples from
Microsoft, Costco, Xerox, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hewlett Packard, and other
top companies, this powerful and practical guide gives you the tools you need
to turn your experiences into stories that sell.
Top Customer Reviews
I’ve
long enjoyed the impact of a story to drive a position, but have never had a
model to fully develop a quality story. This genuinely reads like someone that
has put in the 10,000 hours plus of bringing the concept into the field, and
subsequently perfected the model. The overall model itself makes story
development seamless. And this was something that I and my business needed
urgently. This book has helped me both personally and professionally. But I
want to speak to the area of greatest impact. As a small business owner, this
book is a game changer for two critical problems we’ve faced.
First,
we are a company with 40+ years of history. We’ve seen a lot of growth and
change in our own industry and the industries we serve. And we struggle with
telling the stories of our experiences. We have no repository of any, and when
something in alignment comes up in a sales meeting, we have missed
opportunities.
At
my company, we have a great story to tell overall about who we are, what we do,
and why. I've spent the past year struggling with getting something on paper. I
didn’t have to read far to get there (page 30), and in ten minutes, we have an
elevator story to tell anyone, from the POTUS to my 9-year old niece what we
do. Running through our experiences over the years, we have a list of somewhere
around 10 different scenarios we face when meeting with a prospect. And we have
more than 10 great stories we can have ready at the helm.
Then
the surprising, expected, and welcome outcome is solving problem #2. Our second
problem is with employee engagement. Among the many wins from this book, this
was the unexpected. My partners and I came to realize a year or so ago that one
of our challenges of engagement is our need to articulate the magnitude that
our employees have on solving problems for our clients. But it is not as simple
as saying, “Hey Will, you solved a fifty-thousand-dollar problem today for
Widget Co!” For the client, the impact is apparent, but employees in all
companies often do not understand the impact of their efforts. But armed with a
story, and all the tools imparted by Smith, we now have a powerful way to express
our gratitude to our employees.
This
book gets right to action. I enjoy that Smith executes the argument for the
concept itself flawlessly, and then moves on. I find it frustrating when an
author spends the bulk of their content reminding us of the validity of their
original claim(s). The examples offered and the execution about each component
drive buy-in without you having to revisit the original claim.
This is a book should be on the shelf of every business person that has something worth saying and something worth buying.
This is a book should be on the shelf of every business person that has something worth saying and something worth buying.
