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PRAISE FOR SELL WITH A STORY
“A must-read for anyone who wants to captivate attention and win business.”
—Lisa McLeod, sales consultant and author of
Selling with a Noble Purpose
“Incredibly insightful and practical beyond words. A must-read for anyone who
wants to be more persuasive.”
—Dr. Jeffrey Docking, president, Adrian College
“A game-changer essential to taking your sales skills to the next level.”
—Michael Miller, president and CEO of Primo Solutions, LLC and author of
Selling at Combat Speed and Stop Selling and Start Caring
“Anyone who thinks that storytelling can’t be learned hasn’t read this book. Sell
with A Story will teach you how to persuade your prospects with the same
techniques that Hollywood screenwriters use to captivate audiences.”
—Logan Strain, digital content specialist, NextGen Leads
“There are a lot of books out there telling the reader what storytelling is. Paul not
only does that, but he tells you the how’s, the why’s, and the when’s to use
storytelling. As a salesperson, you will finally get what storytelling is, and how
to use it to create transfer of ownership and shorten the sale.”
—Skip Miller, author of ProActive Selling
SELL
WITH A
STORY
HOW TO CAPTURE ATTENTION,
BUILD TRUST, AND
CLOSE THE SALE
PAUL SMITH
To my father, Robert Smith, who spent more time listening
to sales stories than anyone I know.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Mike Weinberg
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: What Is a Sales Story?
CHAPTER 2: Why Tell Sales Stories?
PART I
What Sales Stories You Need and When to Tell Them
CHAPTER 3: Introducing Yourself
CHAPTER 4: Stories You Tell Yourself
CHAPTER 5: Getting Buyers to Tell Their Story
CHAPTER 6: Building Rapport
CHAPTER 7: The Main Sales Pitch
CHAPTER 8: Handling Objections
CHAPTER 9: Closing the Sale
CHAPTER 10: Storytelling After the Sale
PART II
How to Craft Sales Stories
CHAPTER 11: Elements of a Great Story
CHAPTER 12: Choosing the Right Story to Tell
CHAPTER 13: Story Structure
CHAPTER 14: The Hook (Transition In)
CHAPTER 15: Context
CHAPTER 16: Challenge, Conflict, Resolution
CHAPTER 17: Lesson and Action (Transition Out)
CHAPTER 18: Emotion
CHAPTER 19: Surprise
CHAPTER 20: Dialogue, Details, and Length
CHAPTER 21: Delivery
CHAPTER 22: Telling Stories with Data
CHAPTER 23: Stretching the Truth
CHAPTER 24: Finding Great Stories
CHAPTER 25: Practicing and Saving Your Stories
CHAPTER 26: Getting Started
Appendix A: 25 Stories Salespeople Need
Appendix B: Selling Story Roadmap
Appendix C: Story Structure Template
Appendix D: List of Sales Stories
Additional Reading
Endnotes
Index
Free Sample from Lead with a Story by Paul Smith
About AMACOM
FOREWORD
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
tell 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, many lack the essential components to even
qualify as a “story.”
A great sales story changes everything. It causes buyers to put down their
defenses. It helps them relax. 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 has pulled from procurement people),
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 allows buyers to open up
and share theirs. Nothing encourages 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 showing 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, making
presentations, handling objections, closing sales, and servicing customers
afterward 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 put these valuable principles to use. 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, and he has earned the right to ask
you to 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 AMACOM Bestsellers
New Sales. Simplified. and Sales Management. Simplified.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST, I’D LIKE TO thank the people whose names and stories grace the pages of
this book. I’m grateful to all of you for sharing your experience and wisdom so
that others could benefit from them.
For most, your names are already included elsewhere in the book, so I won’t
repeat them here. But I am just as humbled by those who contributed their time
and expertise in lengthy interviews and conversations but whose names do not
show up as characters in one of the stories. You include: Ray Brook, Kevin
Canfield, Charlie Collins, Jeff Docking, Dan Dorr, Elliott Feldman, Paul
Johnson, Tim Linehan, Mark McKay, James Mounter, Kristin Pedemonti, Rudy
Pollan, Ed Tanguay, Andrew Tarvin, and Paul Wesselmann.
Thanks also to the amazing staff at AMACOM Books who continue to be
fabulous partners, specifically my editor, Stephen S. Power; the publicity
director, Irene Majuk; and the rights and international sales director, Therese
Mausser. Also thanks to my copyeditors at Neuwirth & Associates, and to my
literary agent, Maryann Karinch, for connecting me with such a great team.
Last, thank you to my wife, Lisa, and sons, Matt and Ben, for your constant
love and support as I continue to follow my dreams.
SELL
WITH A
STORY
INTRODUCTION
IN MAY 2015, my wife, Lisa, convinced me to attend a juried art fair with her at
Coney Island in Cincinnati, Ohio. As an artist herself, she has a sophisticated
appreciation for fine art that I don’t. She can spend hours on end lazily drifting
from one booth to the next, studying each piece and talking to the artists about
their inspiration, medium, and techniques. Me, I just like to look at the pictures.
As the day dragged on, we arrived at the booth of Chris Gug (pronounced
“Goog”), a photographer known for his awe-inspiring images of marine life. His
gallery is full of breathtaking underwater shots of anemones, corals, sea turtles,
and whales. On a mission to find a piece for our boys’ bathroom at home, Lisa
eyed a picture that looked about as out of place as a pig in the ocean. It was a
picture of a pig in the ocean. She described it as inspired genius—a cute little
baby piglet, up to its nostrils in the salt water, snout covered with sand, dog-
paddling its way straight into the camera lens. I thought it was a picture of a pig
in the ocean.
The artist joined us as we admired his piece—Lisa admiring it in her way
while I admired it in mine. I asked him what on Earth that pig was doing in the
ocean. And that’s when the magic started.
Gug explained that the picture was taken in the Caribbean, just off the beach
of an uninhabited Bahamian island officially named Big Major Cay. He told us
that years ago, a local entrepreneur brought a drove of pigs to the island to raise
for bacon. Gug went on:
But, as you can see in the picture, there’s not much more than cactus on the island for them to
eat. And pigs don’t much like cactus. I guess in typical laid-back Bahamian fashion, the
entrepreneur failed to plan that far ahead. So the pigs weren’t doing very well. But at some point, a
restaurant owner on a nearby island started bringing his kitchen refuse by boat over to Big Major
Cay and dumping it a few dozen yards off shore. The hungry pigs eventually learned to swim to get
to the food. Each generation of pigs followed suit, and now all the pigs on the island can swim. As a
result, today the island is more commonly known as Pig Island.
Gug went on to describe how the pigs learned that approaching boats meant
food, so they eagerly swim up to anyone arriving by boat. And that’s what
allowed him to more easily get the close-up shot of the cute little sandy-nosed,
dog-paddling piglet.
I handed him my credit card and said, “We’ll take it!”
Why my change of heart? The moment before he shared his story (to me at
least), the photo was just a picture of a pig in the ocean, worth little more than
the paper it was reproduced on. But two minutes later, it was no longer just a
picture. It was a story—a story I would be reminded of every time I looked at it.
The story turned the picture into a conversation piece—a unique combination of
geography lesson, history lesson, and animal psychology lesson all in one.
In the two minutes it took Gug to tell us that story, the value of that picture
increased immensely. Perhaps for an art aficionado like my wife, it was already
a valuable piece. But for me, my interest in and willingness to pay good money
for that picture increased exponentially as a result of the story.1
Stories sell. And the people who can tell a good sales story sell more than
people who can’t.
This book will help you tell better sales stories.
PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK
If you’re looking for a comprehensive book on selling, this is not it. Nor does
this book offer an entirely new selling process to replace the one you’re using
today.
What it does offer is a new skill to add to whatever process you’re currently
using. That skill is storytelling.
Many people assume that a talent for storytelling is the kind of thing you’re
either born with or you’ll never have. And while it’s true that some people are
born with a natural ability to tell stories, it’s not true that you can’t learn it.
Storytelling is like any other skill, such as playing music. Some people are
natural-born musicians. But even if you’re not one of them, if you take guitar
lessons for a few months, you could probably learn to play a few songs.
Treat storytelling like any other professional skill. If you invest the time to
learn how to do it well, and then practice it, you can master it. This book is your
