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This blew me away. Even though I’ve been in sales for a long time, and been a student of building credibility, I had never approached the company story in this format.

This week, I’m going to give you some insights from Mike Weinberg’s New Sales Simplified. Today I’m going to go over the essential components of how you tell your “sales story,” how what you say makes a big difference in customer engagement, and some examples that you can use.

The “sales story” is how you explain what you and your company does. Most times our story is in the form of “look how awesome we are!” Queue in Charlie Brown’s teacher droning on and on. No one wants to hear about that. Do you know why? Because no one cares about what you do or how awesome your company is. For those of you in direct sales, most people unless they are really close to you, don’t care about even how your life is changed. They are too busy caring about their own problems and issues. And they don’t want to be sold something that they don’t really want to buy.

In order to be seen as an expert, and catch their attention, you have to be different than every other boring, self-absorbed person they know. According to Weinberg, there are 5 building blocks to your sales story, and I think it’s just plain brilliant.

  1. Headline. This is a 1-2 sentence intro.
  2. Transitional Phrase. It grabs attention and opens the door to address issues.
  3. Issues addressed. This has to be the first of the major components. Since customers only care about themselves, it makes sense to start with the issues that your product or services address. We want to lead with the pain we remove, the problem we solve, or the results we achieve. Ultimately, everything we do is all to serve the customer. This leads us to be seen as experts as opposed to someone doing a pitch. If our prospect doesn’t respond emotionally, or you don’t see their head nodding, it’s an easy way to qualify. You just aren’t a good fit if they don’t have the issues you talk about. You will want to give anywhere from three to seven of these.
  4. Offerings. This is the shortest section since it’s not nearly as important as the other two sections. This is just a few sentences.
  5. Differentiators. This is four or five bullets on why you are the best choice.

I know that’s pretty theoretical so I’m going to explain when you would use your sales story, and give you an example. There are two times where your sales story will show up. The first is (hopefully) obviously during your full sales conversation, which is your class or a 1-on-1 appointment. It would be during your company background section, or what I like to call, the credibility section. The second is to write an abbreviated version for prospecting and gaining interest to schedule appointments. I’ll go over examples for both.

This example is a labor of love for my Doterra peeps. Feel free to use this and share this blog post or podcast with your team. For those of you in a different business, this will serve as a great example that you can follow and use as a guide to craft your own.

  1. Headline: Doterra is one of the largest essential oils distributor in the world. We work with families to use natural solutions for their everyday life.
  2. Transitional Phrase: Moms turn to us when…
  3. Issues Addressed: Their current approach to health is not achieving the results it was supposed to, they are tired of using chemical concoctions for literally everything, they are confused by all of the natural options out there and they will never have time to research it all, they want more energy to do the things they love without the side effects of stimulants, and they want to increase the overall quality of life for their family.
  4. Offerings: Doterra offers a full line of essential oil kits to support your family’s health goals, whatever they are.
  5. Differentiators: Doterra has raised the bar in the essential oils industry. There are no fillers, no artificial ingredients, and no dilution. The plants are grown in their ideal environments, and the oils go through five levels of testing to ensure purity and potency. This means that when you see the Doterra label, you can be assured you will see the highest health benefits.

Boom! That’s what you would use for your credibility section. Did you feel yourself nodding your head during the issues addressed? Hopefully you felt yourself saying, “oh my gosh, that’s totally me.” Now you are paying attention to what the solution might be.

Now obviously you aren’t going to say all of that in conversation or trying to schedule a 1-on-1. Let’s do a slimmed down version that can roll off your tongue anywhere. We are just going to use the most engaging issue, and one of the best differentiators. This cuts right to the chase.

  • Doterra is one of the largest essential oils distributors in the world. We work with families to use natural solutions for their everyday life. Moms turn to us when they are tired of using chemical concoctions for literally everything. Doterra has different kits to help any family’s health goals. It’s different than what you see in the grocery store because there no fillers, no artificial ingredients, and no dilution.

So there it is, one chapter out of Mike Weinberg’s New Sales Simplified. It does focus on business to business sales, but this chapter definitely applies to every conversation we have with our potential customers.

Good news, I am now coaching full-time. You can set your first complimentary coaching session straight from the website, which is pretty cool, and you can check out the different coaching packages that are available. I look forward to chatting with you next week. Don’t be a stranger! Drop me a line at tasha@emergesalestraining.com.