In the last Storytelling Program blog post, we talked about the importance of your customer in brand storytelling. And it is essential. But ultimately, in business, you’re looking to make sales. You are offering products or services that are of value to your customers, so you’ve got to hone your selling techniques.
In this blog post, we’re going to look at how to develop a sales mindset so you can confidently tell your business story in a way that will get results…
Sales is not a dirty word
“Sales” is not a dirty word. The sales process should not make you cringe.
I get it, at some stage or another we have all felt sold to. And it didn’t feel good. Random phone calls, offering some product or service you don’t want, while you’re trying to cook dinner or deal with screaming children. It’s frustrating! This type of experience gives sales a bad rep.
But I hope that, like me, you’ve also had good sales experiences. Maybe you remember a time when you had a problem or you found a product or service that perfectly fulfilled a need, and it was delivered through customer service that exceeded your expectations. It made you feel good. So good in fact, that you were inspired to tell your friends and family and encouraged them to buy one too…
So how do we make our customers feel that good?
The first thing we need to do, believe it or not, is develop a sales mindset.
I really like this quote by Gary Vaynerchuck, from his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook:
“A great marketing story is one that sells stuff. It creates an emotion that makes consumers want to do what you ask them to do. Your story isn’t powerful enough if all it does is lead the horse to water; it has to inspire the horse to drink, too.”
To deliver marketing stories that sell, you need to develop a business culture around a sales mindset. For us at Narrative Marketing, that means embracing the process of selling with zero cringe factor.
The number one way we achieve this is by being confident in the value of our services – we feel proud to promote it.
Our sales mindset
I can only tell you about our sales mindset. And I hope it will serve as a useful example to you of something you can adapt and employ in your business.
Our sales mindset cares about connection, values relationships, and wants to help others unlock the superpower of storytelling. We do this by providing services that help people do this. Some of them are free and some of them are not.
We encourage our community to become better storytellers through the valuable information we share on our blog, through our Be The Drop podcast, via our social media channels and free resources. For those that want to take it a step further, we provide strategy, content and training solutions – as much or as little as suits their business.
In developing the Narrative Marketing sales mindset, I did some work around developing our sales language. When selling, the language you use and the philosophy behind your sales discussions is incredibly important.
Developing a documented sales approach and sales language will provide your team with a consistent format when talking about how you do business. It’ll help you to be more genuine and make your sales process more organic.
Now ask yourself…
- How do you tell your story when selling?
- What sort of language do you use?
- Is this consistent across your business?
- Is this a conversation you need to have within your business to make sure you’re all on the same page with your sales approach?
That’s all for now – thank you for reading!
If you loved this blog post, we think you’ll love our Be The Drop podcast interview with the king of sales Paul Kitching, we chat about the importance of relationships and storytelling in sales, and his top tips learnt in the 1980’s when working in sales at Country Road.
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