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I was doing a Lead Generation Health Check this morning with a lady who provides consulting services. She had been struggling to win work against competition. When I asked her to tell me her story of how she can to do what she currently does my jaw almost hit the floor! It was amazing to hear some of the people she had worked with in the past. Her abilities were miles ahead of her competitors. Not only that, we discovered relatively unexploited areas of the market for her services that require people to be at the top of the game. So why was this talented lady struggling to pay the mortgage?
Well, my best answer is that she was focused too much on finding work and not enough on finding a niche for herself. She was clearly in a different league and needed to go looking for specific unresolved problems that needed someone with her talents to fix. She has the talent. She has the credibility. There are plenty of opportunities around for her specific field of expertise. She just needs to focus on them.
When her focus moved in this way we came close to opportunity overload! It was then a case of narrowing down the options and creating a lead generation process and action plan. If she keeps up the activity and focus, her sales growth will be transformed in the next 90 days.
In a competitive world we all need to find a niche and I find that this niche is normally revealed when I ask people’s story or the story of how the business started. It’s the very first question I ever ask when coaching! Why not write out your story of how you got to this point today and see if you can find some real gems for yourself.
I came across this excellent article by Seth Godin, a marketing thought leader and author of 10 books including the pioneering ‘Permission Marketing’ which has now considered mainstream. In each of Seth’s latest books, the importance of having a good story in marketing has been emphasised.
Sales people may be natural at telling stories but crafting a story so it sells provides the opportunity to take their impact to a whole new level. These are my tips for crafting stories for lead generation:
Your objective is getting the other person to relate to the situation in the story.
Assuming you are talking to a decision maker, tell your stories from the perspective of the decision maker from another client company in a similar situation.
Focus on the drama of the situation before you started talking to them. If they say ‘That’s just like me!’ then you know you are hitting home
Emphasise how the decision maker was feeling.
Minimise the details of what your company specifically did (unless appropriate) and go to the happy ending! If they ask how you did it then you know you have them hooked!
You should be looking to paint pictures in their mind so that they can relate to the situation in the story and also see the solution too.
Its ok to embellish a story but remember to only use stories you can back up if required or it may backfire and do more harm than good!
Storytelling makes selling fun and its so easy once you get the hang of it!
I regularly find myself recommending a particular book to business owners and people who want to understand different selling styles and how to focus on playing to sales strengths. Its a great book that I came across a few years ago. Its called ‘Selling the Wheel’ by Jeff Cox and Howard Stevens . I also found it useful in distinguishing where my own personality and selling style was most effective.
Its a great business novel that helps the reader to learn about the different types of selling applying to different stages in a products life cycle. The main character is an inventor called Max and his wife Minnie. Max invents the wheel and the story goes from no one being interested in the Wheel to it becoming a commodity in four stages. The salesman who was successful at the begining of each stage struggles when it gets to the next stage.
It gives a clear message as to how to recognise these different stages from a sales and marketing strategy point of view and although it is product focused, it is still fairly clear how professional services would fit into the model.
I read it over a weekend, which is a good sign for me. I don’t know why all how-to books are not written as stories.
Its another good example at the power of using stories in presenting ideas. If you read it I am sure you will be both entertained AND ’sold’ on the idea of different selling styles!
The hair on the back of your neck stands on end and you feel strangely spooky. You have just seen and heard something that you are sure you have experienced before. Was it a dream? Was it a premonition? Was it an event just forgotten about? Science is still struggling to explain and reproduce the déjà vu phenomenon.
There is a different form of déjà vu that is simple to reproduce, although slightly less easy to explain. Top performers in most walks of life and especially in sport use it every day. It is a standard ability that we are all born with and most people use fleetingly without realising its true potential. It’s the ability to use your mind’s eye to repeatedly imagine what you want until it happens. At the highest level of sporting achievement, in activities as diverse as golf, football, running, karate, and even table tennis, sports coaches are seeing the dramatic improvements in performance that can come from using mental rehearsal. In this article we look at how you can start to harness the power of mental rehearsal to further boost your sales results.
Daydream your way to success
Mental rehearsal is as natural as daydreaming and a powerful resource to any sales person open minded enough to begin experimenting with it. Using mental rehearsal regularly, little and often, can have a profound impact on results. Mental rehearsal can be easily learned and can help improve many different areas in sales performance, such as:
Integrating newly learned skills and techniques so they become habitual;
Improving self image and boosting confidence;
Making personal and performance goals more compelling and increasing the
likelihood of success;
Changing automatic emotional responses to certain events (including
rejection);
Increasing performance levels of new skills, especially inter-personal
skills; and
Preparing for sales meetings including potentially difficult circumstances.
Making sense of it all
The unconscious mind is the realm of the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. When we experience things, they get stored in the five senses. When we recall a memory, we recall these senses. The secret that sports psychologists have discovered is that imagination works with the senses too and where performance is concerned, the unconscious does not differentiate between an experience that has really happened and one that has been imagined. Your mind is the only place where you are guaranteed to do things perfectly whilst you are still developing your skills. Real experience plus mental rehearsal can greatly accelerate your skill level. Amazingly, you can actually programme your neurological system to do an activity just by rehearsing it in your mind’s eye over and over again.
Sports coaches also encourage their performers to mentally rehearse winning competitions and events as they have found that we unconsciously begin to move towards compelling goals that we vividly imagine. The practice of mental rehearsal is supported by decades of research into personal success factors from all walks of life, including sales.
Become a director of your own movies
When mentally rehearsing, it is good to think of the process similar to creating a digital movie in your mind. This is not an ordinary movie where you are just a character. It is a virtual reality movie where you experience everything as if it was real. You have all the options available to movie makers such as freeze frame, cut and paste, fast forward. Changing some of the qualities of the mental movie can have a dramatic impact on how compelling the virtual reality experience is. Things like colour, brightness, zooming in and out, sound, texture, smell and sensations are all a matter of personal
preference and something to experiment with.
In your movie you can slow down things that are normally performed for real in a split second (such as making eye contact) to a frame-by-frame basis if necessary. Alternatively, you can speed up things that take time to do in reality, such as giving a sales presentation. This way you can give the presentation in your mind perfectly hundreds of times in the time it would take you to do it once for
real.
Design a happy ending first
Unless you are mentally rehearsing a fixed procedure, it is normally easier to start to design your movie by selecting the final scene first and work back to the beginning. The great thing about designing your own movies is that you can make sure you always have a happy ending! Here’s an example of a final scene from an important meeting with a hot prospect:
You imagine you are sitting in your car driving out of the customer’s car park. You glance over to the passenger seat where you can see a copy of the signed contract. You are on a high as everything has worked out just right. You congratulate yourself at how you skilfully managed to overcome the objections that arose and still managed to close the deal. You are looking forward to celebrating this significant deal with your workmates.
Now go back in time and create some more scenes from key parts of the meeting. Keep working backwards until you get to the beginning. Once you have all the scenes in place, play the movie from beginning to end. After running through the whole movie a few times you will be able to run through it much faster whilst still getting the same impact.
Getting into the mood
While you can do mental rehearsal anywhere, it seems to work best when you are relaxed and in a slightly dreamy state - Just like daydreaming. First thing in the morning is a great time - when you are just beginning to wake up and before you are fully awake. Snooze alarms are great devices for mental rehearsal! For most people mental imagery will come most easily in this state and for that reason it is prime time. There are other ways of getting into a dreamy state, however, which do not require a period of sleep first!
One method of getting into the right state for mental rehearsal takes less than five minutes for most people. Sit in a quiet area with your hands lightly on your knees, close your eyes and take some slow deep breaths from your diaphragm area. Breathe in slowly through your nose and breathe out slowly through your mouth. Focus your attention on the sound of your breath. As your breathing begins to get slower you will notice the sound of your breathing, you become aware of the sensation of your knees beneath your hands, the feeling of your legs on your seat and your feet on the ground. As you continue to relax, and focus your attention on your breathing you will notice how breathing becomes increasingly still and effortless.
With a little practice this state can be achieved very quickly, anytime and anywhere. This means you can use time before appointments, on a train or any spare moment you have to mentally rehearse something many times over.
Getting down to it
Mental rehearsal is easy for anyone to do and can produce powerful results. The down side is that it is also easy not to do. Just like in sport, non-directive coaching from a supportive and encouraging sales manager or external coach can really help to develop and nurture this all-important habit in others. The best way for sales managers to coach in mental rehearsal is to use the process themselves. Mental rehearsal can be just as useful as a tool for sales managers as for sales people. Whatever type of performance you are engaged in, why not make déjà vu experiences work for you?
Case studies produced by IT companies are normally dry enough to send a prospect to sleep! Sales presentations are little better. How is it that two key tools in the sales process lack the sparkle and charisma normally associated with sales people?. How do we make them more engaging and entertaining? The answer is actually child’s play! By taking lessons from story telling and using metaphor we can bring our case studies and presentations to life.
Good stories and metaphors engage our imaginations. They create pictures in our minds and also enable us to visualise complex concepts. We relate to the characters in a story and follow with interest how they overcome their struggles. Stories and metaphors can therefore be a very powerful way of helping our prospects to appreciate the value of our products and services, understand what we are like as a company and imagine what the future will be like when they are a customer.
Stories do not have to be brilliant works of fiction and we certainly do not need to kiss the Blarney stone!. Indeed, some of the best stories are based on real life. The beauty of real life stories is that they make it easy for the listener to relate to you and will often spark off memories from their own experience.
Adding spice to your case studies
Case studies are typically written in a very logical way, specifying the problem and the solution with a lot of techno-speak thrown in for good measure! They do little to help the prospect to create pictures in their mind of what actually happened. Instead of case studies, why not write customer stories instead? Tell the reader what actually happened like you would a true-life story. When describing the customer’s situation and the problems they were facing, make it personal. Include and refer to real characters from the client company and your company. Help the reader to imagine the situation that the main characters were facing and how your company came to the rescue.
XYZ Systems are good medicine for ADVA
John ran the busy accountsdepartment within the rapidly growing pharmaceutical company ADVA. The accounting system they used once worked well but after a string of mergers and acquisitions the system was now creaking at the seams. Every night after everyone else had gone home, John and his team was still there until dark, battling against the odds to get all their work done. The morale in the accounts department was at rock bottom. They were overloaded by the constant stream of requests for information from other parts of the business. John’s previous boss had already been fired and John was worried that he was next. Luckily, the new finance director, James, had previously worked for several large pharmaceutical companies and was familiar with the types of systems needed. He had used the market leading system by XYZ Systems in his previous company and the first thing he did when he joined ADVA was to call in Sandra Keys from XYZ Systems for a meeting. John and his team breathed a huge sigh of relief when………
In this first paragraph the scene is being set and two characters from the client are established - John and James and Sandra Keys from XYZ Systems. The finance system is the ‘monster’ and Sandra Keys and her colleagues will develop into the heroes that slay the monster and save John and his team from a grisly fate. Notice the use of descriptive language like ‘battling against the odds’ and ’string of mergers’.
Making presentations memorable for the right reasons
Sales presentations are often referred to as ‘death by PowerPoint’: emotionless monologues about the company, the products and potential solutions. Such presentations do little to engage the prospects’ imagination and help them to ’see’ what you mean and ’see’ how working with your company will solve their problems. Great communicators weave stories and metaphors into their presentations. Add some relevant customer stories to your presentation. Add your company’s own story such as how it got where it is today.
Joe Cummings founded XYZ Systems ten years ago on three key values:
1. To strive for the success of their clients;
2. To deliver renowned products and services to their clients; and
3. To maximise the potential of staff
Even during the bleakest times of the earlier years, when money was scarce, Joe held true to the values even when it seemed like financial suicide. "We’re not like other companies" Joe would say "We are going to stand for something".
It is an approach that clients of XYZ found refreshingly different and has meant that XYZ retained a very loyal customer base. Some of the earliest clients like Sally Biggs from ABC corporation are still singing their praises. "They may not be the cheapest option on the market" Sally loves to tell prospective clients "but I know where I stand with them. If they say they will do something then it’s as good as done! That counts for a lot in today’s world. Quality is cheaper in the long run!"
Joe has taken care over the years to ensure that as the company has grown to its current size, the values have not been diluted. Every product and every service has the core values at it’s heart like a stick of rock from Brighton…………
This short example includes two elements of human interest, Joe and Sally. It has some dialogue from Sally and Joe and they are both communicating important messages on behalf of the presenter. Stories with dialogue can be used as a powerful way to influence your prospects with selling messages indirectly.
Use Metaphor to simplify complex concepts Where there is something complex or difficult to understand, such as abstract concepts, metaphors can help the listener to ’see’ what you mean. It is almost impossible for the listener to make mental pictures of abstract concepts. Metaphors, however, will enable the listener to visualise the metaphor instead. For example, it may be difficult for a prospect to picture a multi-dimensional database but they could imagine a Rubix cube - you know, the toy puzzle with the coloured sides. You could liken a multi-dimensional database to a Rubix cube of data that you can rotate, allowing you to view the data from many different perspectives. Just like a Rubix cube, you can slice the data in different ways.
In the previous example, Brighton Rock is used as a metaphor to help create a mental image for the core values.
Stories and metaphor are great way to bring your case studies and presentations to life. You do not need to be a Steven Spielberg or JK Rowling to come up with simple, meaningful stories and metaphor that help your prospects and customers to ’see’ what you mean and relate to you and your company more easily. By adding real human interest and drama to your presentations and case studies, you will
differentiate yourselves from your competitors and ensure that the audience is deeply influenced by your delivery.
