If used during a sales presentation, storytelling to customers can be a powerful rapport-building tool or it can blow up in your face.
Read on to find out why…
Storytelling is a powerful tool for building relationships with potential customers. The reason most people don’t get the most out of it is because most people tell horrible stories that they think are really interesting.
I’ll give you a quick example quoting both ways.
Let’s say you decide to tell a story that you think will break the ice between you and your prospect. If you can recall that you told the story and the response was, “you know something like that happened to me, except I had twice as many cars on the road crash.”
So her story meant nothing, or worse, did more harm than good.
Most likely they weren’t even listening.
That’s the kind of story: the story that you haven’t tried in front of someone, trying to communicate, how you communicate it. Usually, people tell stories in a sale because they are not sure what is necessary for the sales presentation.
On the other hand, stories can work to your advantage.
Storytelling dates back to tribal culture, when before recorded history, storytelling was used to teach lessons, entertain, and preserve historical accounts.
Even in contemporary times, most people love a good story.
When you are building relationships or trying to make a sale to a client, stories humanize you, especially if you tell a story that is especially relevant to the person and is often self-deprecating in humor.
In other words, tuck yourself in!
I tell a story and if it bothers me; I have to confess, this is how I did a lot of sales when I was in face-to-face sales for advertising. I did a lot of self-deprecating stories.
They were very short, tight, 2-minute stories. Shorter stories make the listener less likely to get bored, especially if they have really cute and great endings, all very true and very real.
If you, as a marketing consultant, want a quick way to build rapport with customers, learn how to tell a good story. You will move far ahead of the competition, and may even build a relationship for life.
