Sell with a Story: How to Capture
Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale
by
Paul Smith
Despite
all the high-tech tools available to salespeople, the most personal method still
works best.
Storytelling
packs the emotional punch to turn routine presentations into productive
relationships. It explains products or services in ways that resonate; it
connects people and creates momentum. Stories speak to the part of the brain where
decisions are made. Paul Smith, author of the acclaimed Lead with a Story,
shifts his best-selling formula to the sales arena. In Sell with a Story, he
identifies the ingredients of the most effective sales stories and reveals how
to:
Select
the right story; Craft a compelling and memorable narrative; Incorporate
challenge, conflict, and resolution; Use stories to introduce yourself, build
rapport, address objections, add value, bring data to life, create a sense of
urgency, and more
Complete
with model stories, skill-building exercises, and enlightening examples from
Microsoft, Costco, Xerox, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hewlett Packard, and other
top companies, this powerful and practical guide gives you the tools you need
to turn your experiences into stories that sell.
Top Customer Reviews
I’ve
long enjoyed the impact of a story to drive a position, but have never had a
model to fully develop a quality story. This genuinely reads like someone that
has put in the 10,000 hours plus of bringing the concept into the field, and
subsequently perfected the model. The overall model itself makes story
development seamless. And this was something that I and my business needed
urgently. This book has helped me both personally and professionally. But I
want to speak to the area of greatest impact. As a small business owner, this
book is a game changer for two critical problems we’ve faced.
First,
we are a company with 40+ years of history. We’ve seen a lot of growth and
change in our own industry and the industries we serve. And we struggle with
telling the stories of our experiences. We have no repository of any, and when
something in alignment comes up in a sales meeting, we have missed
opportunities.
At
my company, we have a great story to tell overall about who we are, what we do,
and why. I've spent the past year struggling with getting something on paper. I
didn’t have to read far to get there (page 30), and in ten minutes, we have an
elevator story to tell anyone, from the POTUS to my 9-year old niece what we
do. Running through our experiences over the years, we have a list of somewhere
around 10 different scenarios we face when meeting with a prospect. And we have
more than 10 great stories we can have ready at the helm.
Then
the surprising, expected, and welcome outcome is solving problem #2. Our second
problem is with employee engagement. Among the many wins from this book, this
was the unexpected. My partners and I came to realize a year or so ago that one
of our challenges of engagement is our need to articulate the magnitude that
our employees have on solving problems for our clients. But it is not as simple
as saying, “Hey Will, you solved a fifty-thousand-dollar problem today for
Widget Co!” For the client, the impact is apparent, but employees in all
companies often do not understand the impact of their efforts. But armed with a
story, and all the tools imparted by Smith, we now have a powerful way to express
our gratitude to our employees.
This
book gets right to action. I enjoy that Smith executes the argument for the
concept itself flawlessly, and then moves on. I find it frustrating when an
author spends the bulk of their content reminding us of the validity of their
original claim(s). The examples offered and the execution about each component
drive buy-in without you having to revisit the original claim.
This is a book should be on the shelf of every business person that has something worth saying and something worth buying.
This is a book should be on the shelf of every business person that has something worth saying and something worth buying.
As
a storyteller, I naturally love books on the subject. Smith's book is more than
a book on storytelling. It is a workbook that you can use to craft the 25 sales
stories every salesperson needs (and who knew that you needed that many?). Not
to worry about the workload, Smith makes it incredibly easy to work through the
stories you already have, crafting them into compelling vignettes you can put
to work immediately. I love actionable books, and this is that kind of book.
You will be a better storyteller after reading this book. You'll be amazing
after doing the exercises!
In sales for over 15 years and this
is a great sales book. The ideas in the book are very applicable in the real
world of selling ANYTHING. Great work Paul.
I firmly believe that this book can
help transform your sales results. So much so, that this instant sales classic
should be required reading for anyone who sells for a living, leads salespeople
or simply finds themselves occasionally having to persuade someone to do
something. As the person who was honored and happy to contribute the foreword
to Sell with a Story, I feel like I'm in a unique position to recommend this
great book to you. Rather than trying to come up with a new "second
impression" after rereading the book, it seemed better to simply post the
actual foreword here as a review. This will provide insight as to why I love
this book (and topic) so much and hopefully convince you why you'll benefit
from it, too.
Paul Smith’s first book, Lead with a
Story – A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and
Inspire, dramatically increased my effectiveness as a speaker and consultant.
So you can imagine my excitement upon learning that Smith was applying his
storytelling expertise to a new book on my favorite topic – selling. I spend my
days helping sales leaders and salespeople develop new business and acquire new
customers. More than any other topic or sales skill, the area where sellers
require the most help is with telling their story. Almost every day I am
proclaiming to anyone who will listen that “your story is your most critical
sales weapon.” Yet, executives and salespeople tend to be awful at
storytelling. Just awful. Their stories are boring, confusing, often pointless,
and almost always self-focused. In fact, as you’ll read in Chapter 1, according
to Smith, many lack the essential components to even qualify as a “story.”
A great sales story changes
everything. It causes buyers to put down their defense shields. It helps them
relax (Chapter 2). It engages their minds and their hearts by appealing to both
their intellect and emotions. A great story builds credibility and properly
positions you in the eye of the buyer. Instead of being viewed as a pitchman
(see the pearls of wisdom Smith pulled from procurement people in Chapter 25),
a compelling story helps you come across as the value-creator, professional
problem-solver and consultant you so badly want to be.
Possibly even more important, your
powerful story opens up buyers to share theirs (Chapter 5.) Nothing softens
prospective clients to answer your probing questions and reveal their problems,
needs, desired results, frustrations, and opportunities better than your
ability to tell a relevant story in the appropriate way at just the right time!
Too often, we blow quickly through the discovery phase because buyers are not
forthcoming when it comes to sharing information. Typically, our probing isn’t
effective because we haven’t warmed up the prospect, built credibility, or
earned the right to ask provocative questions – all things a great story can
accomplish for us.
Sell with a Story delivers on the
promise of its subtitle, How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the
Sale, by relaying how real salespeople tell stories throughout every stage of
the sales process. These authentic stories (of how sellers deploy their own
stories when building rapport, presenting, handling objections, closing, and
servicing customers after the sale) are worth the price of admission alone.
One of the most interesting facets of
this book is that while it’s highly entertaining and easy to read (because it’s
filled with intriguing stories!), it also helps you get to work putting these
valuable principles to use. Smith implores readers to treat this as a workbook:
keep a pen and pad handy; download the templates; identify the narratives you
need and then craft them into compelling stories you can use. The author did
his homework (interviewing hundreds of people for this book), and he has earned
the right to ask you do yours.If you’re serious about increasing your
effectiveness as a communicator and looking to transform your sales results,
Sell with a Story is for you. This book empowered and energized me, and I know
it will do the same for you.
Mike Weinberg - Consultant, Speaker,
and Author of the Amazon Bestsellers New Sales. Simplified. and Sales
Management. Simplified.
