Salespeople as storytellers

By Andrea Hill

Think for a moment about the best storyteller you know. He (or she) has mastered the art of telling not too much detail and not too little. The only elements offered are those relevant to the story, meant to give context now or lay groundwork for later. The best storyteller I know is my dad, and now that I’ve heard him tell the same stories to adults that he told to us as children, I am aware that he tailors his stories to his audience, tweaking the setting, tone, and mood to be just the right amount of frightening, funny, or sad.

Contrast this artful weaving of information and building of suspense with a not-so-fortunate teller of stories: the person who meanders aimlessly through far too many details until he (and we) are lost in the numbing “muchness” of it.

This comparison between excellent and terrible storytellers is precisely the comparison between excellent and terrible salespeople. Think about the best salesperson you know. She is probably also a good storyteller.

Tailoring Stories

If you aren’t fortunate enough to know at least one excellent storyteller, the following fact may surprise you: Most storytellers do not make up stories on the fly. The best storytellers have carefully crafted a repertoire of stories that they practice, refine, present, and practice some more. They understand every nuance of their stories.

This is also an apt comparison to the best salespeople. Effective salespeople are intimately familiar with the features and benefits of what they have to sell. They study their products and services, practice presenting them, seek feedback on their presentation of product knowledge, and practice some more. They understand every nuance of their products and services.

Good storytellers are highly audience aware. When you hire a storyteller, they ask a lot of questions about who will be in the audience, what is interesting to the audience, which topics to stay away from, and what else the audience will be doing besides listening to the story. My friend Maureen is a professional storyteller, and she told me that the best thing about storytelling gatherings is being able to watch the audience listen to another storyteller before she goes on. She learns so much about the people from their reactions and the quality of their attention, and then she tailors her stories to the energy of the crowd.

The best salespeople are also audience-aware. A novice salesperson will launch into a sales pitch without spending any time getting to know the customer, and will use exactly the same pitch every time she makes a phone call or pays a visit. If, when I was seven years old, I heard my dad tell the story of the young Inuit boy Ookluk and the polar bear with the same ferocity I recently heard him tell it to my grown children, I would have required sleeping pills to remain in my bedroom alone at night. A strong salesperson takes time to get to know her prospect or customer. She understands that her product can mean different things to different customers, and she takes the time to understand which aspects of her products or services are most important to each account. Presenting a one-size-fits-all sales presentation will have a different but equally undesirable sleeping-pill effect.

Audience Awareness in Practice

I have a client in the software industry who developed a business software that is absolutely brilliant. The software solves a host of problems, but not all businesses have the whole host of problems it solves. In most cases, if a business has just one or two of the problems, the software will pay for itself in less than six months. So why, the client asked, were sales so terrible when everyone who purchased the software raved about it? He was willing to do whatever it took—dropping the price, repackaging, rebranding, anything—in order to move more product into the market. Well … almost anything.

After attending a few sales calls with him and his sales manager, I knew the problem. Their entire sales presentation was a mind-numbing mess of technical information, 45 minutes of every problem the software could possibly solve and the gyrations it goes through to solve them. I suggested that he toss his sales presentation and adopt a process of interviewing and conversing with the prospect, then tailoring each sales presentation to the prospect’s interests, technical proficiency, and actual business problems. The answer was, “No way!” He informed me that they had spent over a year perfecting that sales pitch and the PowerPoint presentation that went with it, and he wasn’t throwing it away.

Because I didn’t want to waste his money analyzing a different price structure or rebranding the product, we parted company. Then, about eight months later, he called back. “Let’s try it your way,” he said. So I helped them interview a prospect then showed them how to construct a precise, relevant sales discussion. That sale closed in less than half the time of their best close to date, and sales are up significantly this year. Good storytellers are highly audience-aware, which helps them pick and choose the details they need to share.

Building Relationships

I read somewhere that nearly all the spoken stories in the world are told from parent to child, and that many of those stories take place over months and years, the story gaining meaning and detail through the contributions of both teller and listener. So this is the last—and possibly the best—comparison between seller and customer. What we are talking about is a relationship—a relationship that often begins long before the first sale is made and continues long after. A salesperson who is studiously informed, attentive to her client’s needs, aware of which details are necessary (which also contributes to being respectful of her clients’ time), and invested in a long-term relationship will be successful. And not surprisingly, it won’t feel so much like work. It will feel a lot more like sharing a good story.