Story sales is a sales strategy that uses meaningful stories to connect customers to products or services and convince them to make a purchase. This is a great strategy because it can take advantage of what we all do emotionally when we do it right: the story.
As long as you have characters, plots, conflicts and a good ending, you can create a story that drives sales every time.
Character: Choose Heroes and Little People
Without solid characters, there is no story. Story sales are no different.
At least, you need a hero or protagonist (the protagonist). Your clients should always be the hero of your story. That’s how they really feel the story. When they are the protagonists, they will become much easier.
Then, each hero needs a villain to make things interesting. In a story, the main goal is to prompt that sales must be a problem, not a person.
For example, if the story is related to your product, then the villain is the problem your product solves. If you sell software that helps recruit and recruit, it may be difficult for a villain to find top talent. If you sell high-top basketball shoes, the villain may get injured.
All in all, your clients are the heroes of your story, and the villains are the problems they face.
Plot: What are your clients going through?
Together with the sequence of the characters, events that occur or plot, there is also a story. The storyline is everything. That’s what attracts us or shuts us down altogether. There are too many details in the plot, and the story will be delayed forever. Without enough details, the story feels incomplete.
Even if it is very loose, your plot should follow the traditional structure to ensure it has the most important details in it and has a good pace:
- Expo– The beginning of the story that introduces the characters and the initial storyline
- The rise of action– Conflict comes in and develops
- climax– The most critical part of the story, conflicts have occurred, things have changed
- Action drop– When everything starts to fall into place, the conflict begins to fade
- solve– The ending of the story is to completely resolve conflicts and everything makes sense
More importantly, your plot should be consistent with the client’s experience. Tell the story from their perspective or keeping them in mind. Show your clients that you really understand them and the range of situations they face and include that into your narrative.
Your plot needs to be a series of events that really resonate with the client. This will help them get them in this way to “Hey, that’s exactly what I’m going through and the solution I might need to provide at the end of this story.”
Conflict: The pain points of the client on the harp
Things get juicy in the story of the conflict. I’ve never experienced a perfect story, and never anything bad or challenging happened. These stories are boring. The last thing you want to do is people who are tired of buying things from you.
Generate some tension and add depth to your story. Remember the villain I talked about above? What kind of conflict does it bring to your customers? Even better, what kind of damage does it cause in their lives? You can also go into the reasons that prevent them from solving the problem.
I’ll use the high top shoe example again. Your clients love playing basketball. However, the game is often taken away, not due to an ankle injury.
You’ll scream out just after recovering from another sprain that happened a few weeks ago, and that’s different. They want new shoes that better protect their ankle, but the best option is too expensive.
You do want to tap into the challenges your customers are experiencing and the emotions that come with them. When you flesh out this conflict in the right way, it should perfectly lead to your product or service being the answer. In other words, a good ending.
Ending: You are the answer the customer is looking for
I like a good ending for a story, and so do most people. Really good people will give you something. They remind you of getting up and doing something, especially if you feel like the protagonist throughout the story. This is exactly what the story wants when selling.
Abandon cliffs, complex endings and sad results. Stick to victory, and how your customers stand out with the help of the product or service you are trying to sell.
The person in the story bought your high shoes and never suffered an ankle injury since then. They bought your recruitment and recruitment software, found the person who is best for the job, and doubled their profits. They hired you as a personal fitness coach and lost 60 pounds, diabetes reversal.
Your customers end up being the heroes in your story, but your product or service is the answer that brings them there.
How do you use stories to sell?
Create a good story with great characters, thick plot, juicy conflict and a good ending. Tell the story in a fascinating way, and then Look! Sale. OK, there are more.
To use a story to sell, you have to hammer one thing home: your product or service is the reason for the happy ending of this story. That’s why the main characters are thriving now. That’s why all their pain points disappear.
In addition to positioning a product or service as a solution, you also need to tell the right story to inspire action.
What kind of story is the most influential to tell customers?
You might want to tell every story, but it’s not realistic. Creating them isn’t all the time and effort, either, as the focus on stories that will make the biggest impact and drive sales is more productive:
Here is a short list of these stories:
- Stories that inspire your entrepreneurial entrepreneurs/customers
- How the most unlikely person becomes a customer
- Product stories that truly illustrate how customer lives change
- Stories about the biggest pain points customers have
How long should the story last?
You may hear some vague sounds, such as short time, enough to get someone’s attention, but long enough to illustrate important details. However, I want to give you something more specific based on the medium that businesses use most for story sales:
- If this is a written story for a blog or websitekeep it at 800-2,000 words based on the story you tell.
- If this is a video story, Keep short videos for less than 2 minutes while long videos for less than 10 minutes.
- If this is a social media post, Number of title characters used for a specific platform. Instagram allows 2200 characters (365-468 words), but usually shortens the subtitles with 125 characters, and people have to click on it to read the rest of the characters. Facebook’s role limit is 5,000 (800-1,000 words). X has a limit of 280 characters (40-50 words). LinkedIn gives you 700 characters (130-150 words).
- If it is a carousel, Use no more than 10 slides on each slide, and each slide uses 1-2 sentences on each slide.
- If it is an infographic, Make it a one-page illustration. The six parts or points assigned to each image shall not exceed six parts or points.
Why is storytelling so powerful?
The storytelling is so powerful for a few reasons. You may have heard of this before, but our brains retain the information that is provided to us through stories, much more than just the straight data and statistics we are fed.
So when you weave a product or service into a story, one might remember it. In addition, people resonate emotionally with the story they can see themselves, and emotions drive action.
The story is also easier to digest. You can better explain those complex concepts or difficult functions in the story, because you can illustrate how a person uses them in real life.
Finally, story sales sets you apart from many competitors that drown potential customers in “Buy!”. Story sales show that you care enough for them to understand their true experience before asking them for them. People like this love this kind of relationship in sales.
What is the golden rule of story sales?
The golden rule of storytelling is Make your customers a hero in the story, connect with them emotionally by highlighting pain points, and positioning your product or service as a solution to the problem.
A classic example of success story sales
Nike is one of the best sales stories. They talk directly to athletes or people who compete in sports and tell their stories well, especially in ads.
One of my favorites isFrom 2020, you can’t stop us”. It spreads a message of unity as we are all split. It also tells stories that many athletes have learned. You can’t do it alone and don’t have to.
They don’t mention their products at all in the ad. But everyone wears them. Everyone in the ad is thriving, fighting and achieving. Hopefully everyone watches their products to do with that.
Even if you don’t think, they tell the story so well that you just want to go out and support the brand. That’s all.
