Selling Through Story Telling

Struggling to sell your courses?

We know this pain. But there is an easier way. Sometimes it can feel like an endless slog listing the benefits and features of your courses into what seems like a void. But when you start selling your courses with the power of storytelling, you can influence and persuade audiences to buy what you’re selling.

Storytelling is the most powerful tool you have in your arsenal. Stories, be they your own or the stories of others, give meaning to your courses.

While your competitors are using the same old tools and techniques to try and fill your courses, you are telling stories that inspire potential attendees to make decisions based on their emotions, rather than pure logic. When you can tap into that side of your customers, you’re almost guaranteed to see better conversions, more closes and courses filled to the rafters with your dream learners. Stories are all around us. We all have a story we can tell, and our clients and customers have their own stories to tell, too. The key to selling effectively through these is to deploy them at the most opportune moments.

When you use the correct story at the correct moment, you can spark a feeling or even inspire an action from the person you are talking to.

For example, when you want to communicate your vision or inspire your listener to act you could tell them about how your courses saved a client. By keying into the emotional aspect of this story, you can tap into the fears and dreams of the person you are talking to. Perhaps the client’s staff were underperforming, the company was losing money, and by taking the course they were able to turn it all around? Or, a previous client had tried every diet on the market and had ended up gaining weight, until they took your weight loss course, and now they have reached their goal weight, found a partner and got married.

This type of story is a Vision Story and its purpose is to tap into the emotion of the person you are talking to. It allows to prod and poke around in their wounds…and if you do it right, you’re more likely to hear them saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’.

There is a plethora of stories out there, waiting for you to tell them. And only you will know the ins and outs of them and how they will impact on your different audiences. But you can use your stories in presentations, while selling, when introducing yourself or even when delivering a course!

Take some time to think about the stories you have to tell. These shouldn’t be totally made up (that’s just plain lying), but it is possible to structure them in such a way that they are received in a positive manner. Just like a sales call, your stories need certain elements to spell success.

First comes the Hero, or the main character. This is a crucial element to any story as the listener should be able to connect with this main character on a sympathetic level. You want them to be able to put themselves into the Heroes shoes and situation in such a vivid way, they believe they actually could be them. Then comes the Stimulus. This is usually an event that takes them on their journey to resolution or transformation. Again, this needs to be truly relatable to the audience, so they remain a part of the story.

Every good story needs Conflict – as much as we all hate that word. In the example given above in the Vision stories, the conflict can come in the form of underperforming staff, loss of money, or weight gain. In short, something bad that the Hero must overcome.

After the conflict has arisen, your hero will find themselves at a Crossroad. Usually, this will be the Hero utilising your services in order to complete their transformation. It may sound quite long winded, but once you begin weaving your own details into these stories, you will find it is effortless. In fact, you’ve probably already been telling these stories, but without the same structure or delivering it in a compelling enough way that your audience identifies with. By spending some time refining your stories to fit this template, your sales pitch will be more compelling, refined and successful. And they all lived happily ever after.

The end!