Shoppers Abandon Recitations,

Prefer A Good “Benefits” Story!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

      If you “Tweet” on Twitter,  you’re already an expert at headlines and titles. If you’ve read my recent blog post on “I” “Me” “My”  then you’re well on your way to mastering the structure of storytelling for sales (or as I call it, “Storyselling”).

     Actually,  a good storyseller© can sell virtually anything at anytime to anybody under almost any circumstances. You’ve heard about being able to sell ice cubes to Eskimos and being able to sell the stuff that bears do in the woods, on a shingle? Well there you are! Storyselling.     

     The ancient song  from my parents’ days, “Accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative” gives us a key corner-piece of the jigsaw puzzle. Focus your storyselling on the benefits to be derived (instead of the features, which serve only to justify the purchase that is based on benefits and triggered by an emotion).

     Tell a story  that engages the imagination and triggers a dominant emotion. That’s it! Bingo! S~A~L~E~! It doesn’t matter if what you’re selling is alive or dead, big or small, hot or cold, heavy or light, costs ten cents or ten million dollars. The purchase decision will be made emotionally and justified rationally.

     That means sell the benefits,  not the features.

That means your story needs to zero in on answering the customer’s question: “What’s in it for me?” That means your story needs to entertain and educate/ inform… but be brief and to the point (like the 140-character Tweets). 

     Your story needs to paint a picture!  Listen to your kids; they know how to do it. Why? Because they’re uninhibited. You can be too, you know. It just takes a little practice. Tell stories. Tell stories. Tell stories. SHORT stories. (Save the full-length novels for your friends!)

     Still doubtful, eh?  Well, just ask yourself when was the last time YOU purchased ANYthing because someone pushed the features at you? When was the last time you bought ANYthing that didn’t come with SOME kind of story attached? Be honest here, and think hard.

     So, you want to pump up  your sales skills, practice writing 140-character Twitter “Tweets” and practice telling stories. Yes, good-taste jokes are a fine example of a great way to practice STORYSELLING. Name one great salesperson — from Paul Harvey to Zig Ziglar — who ever lived, who couldn’t make you crack a smile. There are none.

     Oh, and Storysellers  who smile while they storysell, sell more. So ;<)’s aren’t a bad idea either! 

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