If you’re in sales, you know that one of your most important ways to build credibility is through success stories.

However, many success stories are more like success reports. They often consist of lifeless facts that every salesperson in the organization is told to present to every prospect. As such, they are usually presented as boiler plates, with bullet-pointed facts that are more relevant to a general audience than any audience in specific.

Here’s a somewhat tired template that you may be familiar with.

•State The Problem

i.e. “Life Charities was having a difficult time generating donations”

•State The Solution

i.e. “We showed them how to increase their donations through our car donation program.”

•Show Measurable Results.

i.e Life Charities increased their donations 3-fold in one year.

Oftentimes, the measurable results part is played up more than any other facet of the success story. This happens despite the fact that success is often achieved through a number of factors outside our control. Most audiences know better than to give you 100% credit for the success you are claiming as your own.

Also keep in mind that whenever you tell a success story, people expect it to have a happy ending. We don’t call them success stories because they give us a chance to wax on about our failures. I bring this up not to diminish the importance of results. In fact, don’t. However, if you’ve ever taped a sporting event or watched a movie where you know how it ends, you know that the real interest in any story comes from events leading up to the results, and not just the results themselves. How you stage those events can say more about you and your company than the actual results you’ve achieved.

A story is something that arouses emotion, while engaging, inspiring and motivating its audience. Using the 3-R’s approach to structuring and telling a success story will help you engage your audience far better than the standard problem, solution, and results triumvirate. Using this approach will turn a lifeless, factual success report into something that will involve your audience by helping them imagine a similar success.

The 3-R’s of a powerful sales success story. The three R’s stand for Relate, Rescue, and Resolve. Here’s how to put the 3R’s to work:

RELATE

Success stories are effective to the extent your audience can relate to them. It is critical that you be able to draw parallels between the problem you are describing and a problem or problems that your prospect is experiencing. Do otherwise and your presentation will be an invitation to mentally check out. It is arguably better to have no success story at all than to have one that has nothing to do with your prospect’s situation.

Don’t leave it up to your prospect to find the relevance between the problem you solved and the problem they want solved. Use words like “just like you,” or “similar to what you’re currently experiencing…” For this reason, the “You” word is one of the most important, if not the most important word in your presentation.

Just make sure you’ve done your homework. You’ll gain points by having equipped yourself with facts about your prospect’s current problem, but you could blow-up your entire presentation with a set of wrong facts or worse yet, faulty assumptions.

However you can, don’t make the company you worked with the centerpiece of your story. People relate to people more than they relate to companies. ABC Lugnuts Inc. may have had a problem, but talk more about Mr. Lugnuts, what he was experiencing and how he felt being faced with his problem. Perhaps he was frustrated with what had been tried in the past? Perhaps he was perplexed, confused, or convinced that there was just no workable solution to his problem. Again, RELATE: Any good story conveys emotions its audience can identify with.

Don’t gloss over the problem you were faced with. One of the big reasons stories are more interesting than reports is that stories are comprised of conflicts that need to be overcome. Do what you can to help your prospect feel the pain that your client or customer was experiencing. Beware however. Don’t go overboard. There’s no need for big drama – in fact, avoid it. Your audience does not have the time nor the patience for a sideshow. A question like “Have you ever experienced a 20% drop in sales over the course of a month,?” can suffice. If your prospect answers yes, they know the pain. If they answer no, help them imagine what that pain feels like.

RESCUE

Don’t think that simplifying your solution is always the best route to take. A statement like “All it took was our product to turn things around,” is an overstatement that will lose your audience entirely. Talk about some of the difficulties you experienced before finding the best solution. This is an opportunity to show your prospect how you work as much as it is a way to show them that you can solve problems. You want your audience to hear angles singing in the background when talk when you describe the rescue. Skip through your success story without talking much about the rescue, and the only thing your audience will hear are thoughts wishing you were done.

Use dialogue. Nothing makes a story more interesting than dialogue. One of the reasons for this is that dialogue allows your audience to experience the situation as opposed to being told about it. “And then he said Jim, that just won’t work,” is much more interesting that telling your audience that at first, your client resisted your solution.

If you can, talk about the specific insight or realization you helped your client come to. Bring your audience to the doorstep of your “aha” moment. Help them see how you got there. However, maintain a sense of humility. It’s better to say something like, “after struggling with this a bit, it suddenly dawned on me,” than “the solution was obvious.” If you can, use “We” instead of “I,” by all means, do so.

If possible, show how you made your client a partner in coming up with the solution. Demonstrate that you are collaborative and work with, not for your clients.

Above all else, show how your solution is similar to a solution that your audience would be interested in. Help your audience see themselves sharing the same insight.

RESOLVE

Again, your audience knows that this story is going to have a happy ending. Otherwise you wouldn’t be talking about it. Measurable results are important. But even more important are the changed feelings that were experienced. Go beyond the numbers to explain the long-term effect your solution had on sentiments that were felt, like new optimism or an improved sense of purpose.

If you’re interested in learning more ways to use storytelling as a sales tool, visit Storytelling For Sales Workshops.

Click here to learn more about how to tell your brand story!

Much has been written about storytelling as a business tool. And for good reason. Storytelling can be an extremely powerful way to influence, motivate and inspire others. However, it is common for storytelling trainers to err by disregarding differences between business storytelling and recital storytelling.

Stylistically, business storytelling should be more casual than careful.  Indeed, like recital storytelling, business storytelling is used to engage listeners, facilitate interest, and gain emotional reactions. However, when telling a story in a business setting, you should not try to become the next Mark Twain. As a business tool, storytelling should be more  “informance” than performance.  Otherwise, it will do more harm than good.

There are other differences, as well. For instance, recital storytelling travels from the speaker’s mouth to the listener’s ears.  By contrast, in a business setting,  storytelling can and should be a two-way street.  In fact, one can benefit as much from eliciting as they can from telling stories.

Consider, for instance, the salesperson interviewing a prospect who is considering a change in vendors. Typical questions that the salesperson might ask are, “Why are you considering a change in vendors?” or “What are you looking for that you are not receiving from your current supplier?” Using questions like these will likely yield a direct answer and provide some understanding of what the prospect is looking for.  However, by eliciting a story, additional insights can be gained.

Instead of asking for reasons why, consider what would happen with quesitons like, ” When did you decide to change vendors?” or “ What happened to cause you to reconsider your current arrangement?”  By asking for the event or events leading up to the reason,  a story would be elicited.  And, instead of receiving a direct answer like, “We are looking for someone who can provide faster responses to our requests,” it’s more likely that prospect would say something like,”When we first started working with them they were Johnny-on-the-spot.  But now it takes 5 or 6 phone calls before anyone gets back to us. Last  year, they were acquired by a bigger company.  And following that acquisition, we got lost in the shuffle.  Being one of their smaller accounts, we just didn’t seem as important anymore.”   As the story unfolds, the emotional component of the problem rises to the surface. Besides the directly stated more rational reason why behind the considered switch, we also learn that the prospect has been feeling left out in the cold and wants to feel important regardless of the size of his business.

This is but one example of how eliciting stories can be more helpful than just the fact gathering. It takes some practice.  But here are some things to consider when developing your ability to elicit stories:

1. Go for the “time stamp.”   Stories, by definition describe events that occurred at one time or another.   Be mindful of this as you ask questions.  Always ask for the “when” or  “what happened” instead of asking for a direct reason why.
2. Learn about the setting.    When describing where something happened, you are likely to elicit a story, as well.  i.e “where did the process start falling apart?” or  “where did you first start to see changes occur?”
3. Avoid “why” questions if you can.  Certainly knowing why someone believes the way they do is important.  But, again, “why,” more often than not, will yield opinions or theories that are often rational in natural.  Stories generally reveal the emotions that underly the facts.
4. Be aware of assertion or opinion cues.  Whenever someone says or implies what they think, you should know you are not being told a story.
5. If you get an assertion, go for the underlying story.   Instead of asking, “why do you believe that to be true?” ask, “Did something occur to cause you to feel that way?”   This will inevitably yield far more useful information than the assertion alone. Just remember, a story is not a story unless an event is described.

Learn more about brand storytelling here!

I would never even think of telling someone they have an ugly baby. Moreover, I’m not the guy who will admit that you really do look fat in those jeans if asked. However, if you believe that you should cast your customers as the hero of your brand’s story, my conscience obliges me to risk a possible insult. At the very least, I urge you to reconsider.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that all customers are important. Customers who aren’t, are like 39th birthdays. They only come around once. However, to regard them as important is one thing. To dress them up in the clothes of a hero is quite another.

Consider first what the word “hero” implies. Heroes are people who solve the big problem or resolve the burdening tension that few others can. They are the dragon slayers, the courageous visionaries, the people who take huge risks to accomplish unimaginable feats. As such, they become objects of admiration and emulation. Okay, you nor I might be able to do what Michael Jordan did on the courts, what Chesley Sullenberger did on the Hudson River or what a first responder does while putting life on the line for victims of some tragedy. However, these and others we designate as heroes become symbols of principles, ideals and causes we revere and choose to support.

So, if you still think your customers are heroes, perhaps you should stop trying to sell them and hire them instead.

Learn The Important Differences Between Storytelling And Storybranding

The countervailing point of view is that brands, not customers, should play the role of hero in the brand story. Taking into consideration the requirements of heroism, this too may be an overreach. However, it is possible for brands to become hero-like. Because like heroes, brands have the potential to symbolize ideals or causes people belong to and support.  People don’t wear Harley Davidson tattoo’s, become walking ads for North Face or decal their car bumpers with the name of a favorite political candidate because they are paid to do so.

 In fact, providing customers with ideals worth rooting for is one of the most important functions a brand can perform. For this reason, and in addition to becoming known for a unique functional benefit, an equal or even greater effort should be put against associating a brand with ideals it stands for.  As a matter of fact, functional benefits are eventually copied or they go the way of the typewriter, the Walkman or Windows v 1.0. However, ideals like perfection, persistence, independence, responsiveness, just to name a few–these do not have expiration dates.

It should also be said that becoming associated with an ideal does not come about through lip service.  It requires an unabiding commitment by management.  This explains how Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Howard Shultz and others turned their brands into best-selling stories. It’s also worth noting that in each of these cases, they committed to something greater than making money.  Certainly their fortunes didn’t come about by ignoring the importance of profitability.  But through ups and downs, their efforts to stand up, stand firm and stand for something meaningful remained steadfast.

Something too should be said about the need for authenticity once a brand sets out to become associated with some ideal. David Ogilvy once admonished, “Your customer is not stupid. She’s your wife.” Today’s consumer (and a certain wife I know) are not easily fooled. Authenticity demands an honest and passionate conviction.  Otherwise,  you’ll be found out.  For this reason, it’s important to let the voice that is saying “THIS is what I believe in” be the voice that leads your quest.  In case you are having difficulty hearing that voice, it could be because it’s being drowned out by the voice of that customer you refer to as “hero.” Asking your customers what you should stand for is like asking your children how to be a good parent.

Learn more about telling your Brand Story here!