This week I was rewatching the Steve Jobs presentation from 2007 where Apple released a piece of technology that perhaps you have heard of. They called it the iPhone. Maybe you are like me and wonder how it is possible that 18 years have passed since then. I still remember having dinner in Philadelphia with a work colleague who had just bought the first version of the iPhone. I remember looking at it and saying, “I don’t think this is something that people are going to buy.” I might have been off base with that prediction.
Steve Jobs was a masterful storyteller. Just go back and watch any of his presentations where Apple was releasing a new product. Storytelling in sales is a trait great salespeople have mastered. Peter Guber said this in his book Tell to Win: “stories provide emotional transportation.” The key takeaway from that quote is that stories are capable of moving people. Stories are capable of inspiring people. If you are good at storytelling, you can move people from where they are today (presumably dealing with a problem or a villain) to where they might be in the future after they have overcome that problem or villain. And when that happens, your prospect becomes their own hero.
The Power of Emotion in Storytelling in Sales
The key to storytelling in sales is to harness the power of emotion. At Anthony Cole Training Group, we have known for quite some time that people buy emotionally and justify with logic. I completely agree that your technical skills need to be excellent and that you need to be a subject matter expert. But that is not what moves people to the point of taking action to solve their problems. What makes that happen is when emotion enters the equation and your prospect self-discovers that they must act. Fear, disappointment, and frustration are examples of just a few of the more powerful emotions that your prospect might be facing.
Probably the most powerful emotion in life (after the emotion of love) is the emotion of hate. And to be clear, there is too much hate in the world. For my money, I believe there are only three things that are okay to hate:
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Cancer
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Racism
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Alzheimer’s
These are villains that everyone is against and for good reasons. Steve Jobs was a believer that the best storytellers always give their prospect a villain to root against or a problem to hate so much that the prospect feels compelled to fight for a better future.
Stop talking about things your prospects don’t care about. Give them a villain to conquer. Some prospects are just waiting to become a hero. They just need something to root against. That is a conversation worth having.
