How to use storytelling to increase sales and customer success #salestraining #salestips #customersuccesstips #techsales

If you're in sales or a customer success account management role, one of the most powerful things that you can learn is how to tell a story. We call this third party story telling or social validation. This is where you take another customer, maybe in their same industry, a competitor, a well-known customer, and you tell a story about what else they might be doing with your product, the other party. Hey, they just did, I was just talking to So-and-So about this last week, and what they're doing is XYZ, or I've been working with So-and-So company for years, and first they started here, then they did this, and then they did this. And what you're doing is you're positioning yourself as a trusted advisor, but you are not directly selling and saying, "Hey, you need to do this because I said so." You're using social validation, social proof, and storytelling to paint a picture of what's possible for that new customer. And then that starts to spark ideas in their head about what they should be doing to make their business better. And then you can then say, "We'll have you ever thought about doing something like that." And they're like, "Well, no, because of XYZ." Or yes, because of XYZ, and that will then lead you down the path to go deeper with that new customer, or that existing customer that you're trying to expand, or the customer that you're trying to get to an adopt another piece of your product. If you don't already know the stories to tell, meaning you haven't been at the company long enough, or no one's trained you, or you haven't had these specific customers that you've worked with for a long periods of time. Go read your company's case studies, go meet with another salesperson that's been there for a long period of time and ask them, "Hey, what story?" Like, here, just give me one, maybe two stories that I could start telling my customers, and use other people's stories for a while until you have your own.