Becoming A Top-Down Storytelling Culture
- Dan Greenberg
- Sep 17
- 6 min read
As sales leaders, we talk about it all the time. The best way to influence buyers is through telling stories. The idea is to create a beginning, middle, and end, where the buyer is the protagonist and your seller is a consultative supporter along the way. The only problem is, we don’t really do much as organizations to help prepare sellers to act on this type of sales methodology.
Think about it; when we train sellers, we train them on products and features, when we ask sellers about their pipeline, we want to know how quickly deals are moving and when they will get to the next checkpoint, and when we talk about goals and numbers, all we want to know is what is closing and when. None of this helps sellers, or incentivizes them to stop and develop consultative story based approaches for their sales engagements and relationship building.
So, the question is; how do you get your team to tell stories instead of hawking products? How do you get your team to think about the buyer’s buying journey instead of only focusing on the selling checkpoints? How do you get your team to focus on the long term cultivation of good potential clients instead of racing towards short term deals that may not even be more likely to close?
The reason that sales is about storytelling is because people make big decisions based on emotion and then justify those decisions with intellect. So, in order to be influential we must tap into that emotion, and the only way to do that is through storytelling. People do not listen to facts, and data and get moved emotionally. Stories move people emotionally. The facts and data need to be there so that the buyer feels that risk is alleviated, and can feel comfortable in explaining their rationale for the decision, but the actual decision is made based on the emotion and not the facts.
Even the description I just gave about the use of data and facts to justify decisions helps prove the point. The data and facts are used by the decision maker to alleviate the isolation and fear inherent in being the person responsible for the decision. The decision maker is using the data and facts to solve an emotional problem; fear.
Take some time to think about the last number of client pitches that you have sat in on or been a part of preparing. We all fall into the familiar pattern; the rut, of showing products on slides. We tell the client about their problem, and then we explain how the solutions will fix the problem. But that leads to two big problems. First, the buyer is not the protagonist, the solutions are, and second, there is no story; no beginning, middle, and end. It is a stagnant picture of now, and a stagnant picture of a potential solve, but talked about out of context with no vision of the outcome it is driving. We consistently use similar presentation tactics and formats, and then we wonder why there is no material improvement in our teams’ ability to close deals over time.
Sometimes the issue is that the seller does not know how to tell a story, and sometimes the issue is that the seller does not know what story to tell, but let‘s talk through those issues and how to solve them for your teams.
I have mentioned this breakdown in past articles, but it is a good framework for talking about storytelling in this context. Bad sellers sell products; good sellers sell solutions; great sellers sell outcomes, and the best sellers sell value. The traditional slide presentation talks about problems and then matches them up with solutions. For the purposes of this conversation, let’s talk about how to get from solutions to outcomes.
How do you illustrate an outcome? It is abstract. A product is easily perceivable, a solution is understandable because it presumably links back to and solves a problem. An outcome is harder to understand because humans don’t always have the ability to perceive a state of being that is not the one they currently exist in. A conversation about outcomes changes helps them to envision a new state of being that they have a part in bringing into existence. It helps them visualize something that is not currently perceivable. In order to do this we have to encourage our sellers to be creative and dynamic and to spend time conversing with clients outside of the construct of solution slides that match up to problem assessments.
Sales is the most creative of professions because the only way to illustrate an outcome is through telling a story. Sellers should be encouraged to whiteboard and ad lib conversations and concepts in every sales interaction because talking about slides is not communicating. It is simply showing a buyer a solution that they could have researched on their own. Instead, sellers should be telling a story in which the buyer is the protagonist and they can eventually achieve an outcome that is a fundamental shift in relation to the current reality. For that reason it has to be a story where the beginning is the current reality. The current reality has to be proven to be an issue that must be overcome. If a seller cannot sell the need for a new reality or a new set of outcomes, then the seller will never be able to sell any specific solution or set of solutions.
This is where discovery and insights come in. The seller must understand which story they are going to tell, and only by understanding the most vivid and pressing issues, can a seller understand where to start the story and how to progress it. Asking the right questions, and earning the right to ask those questions by providing insights that are not related to specific products and solutions will help the seller understand exactly what story to tell.
Once the seller knows what story they want to tell, it has to be constructed. There are a number of ways to go about building a good story. I have opted for one specific model most often, but there are plenty of other good ways to do it.
I have previously written about the four components of a sales story, but I would like to do so today in the context of the continuity of the story itself. I would also like to do so in the context of training sellers to use this methodology.
The first section is the intro and the hook. In this section your sellers explain who they are and why they deserve to be in the room; this is not about the company or the solutions, but about them personally. The goal is to establish the client’s belief in their right to be there and be part of the conversation.
The second section is the problem section. The goal of the problem section is to ascertain agreement from the buyer on the fact that there is a problem, learn how the client describes, characterizes and values the problem, and gain buy-in from the client on the reality of the issues being caused by the status quo. That is to say; your seller should be kicking off the story by painting a picture of the current reality and all of the human problems that are caused by it.
The third section is the outcome section. The outcome section is meant to understand the client’s expectation and desired outcome, and the goal of the section is to allow the client to paint that picture, and to introduce the idea that there is a singular solution that can bridge the gap from problem to desired outcome. Notice that in this part of the story, your seller should be allowing the client to participate in the creation of the story on the fly, and they should be showing a linear progression, not from problem to solution, but from current reality to new reality, that is being driven by the buyer and the buyer’s team.
The fourth, and final section is the resolution section. The resolution must set the client’s mind at ease and tell them that the sales process and the implementation process are not complicated or difficult. The goal is to ascertain buy-in from the client on next steps and their goals and to make sure that they have the information they need to tell your story when you are no longer in the room.
In order to foster an environment where sellers approach interactions in the way we are discussing above, we need to spend more time training on questions to ask, insights to bring, the ability to paint a verbal picture of the current reality for clients, and the ability to paint a verbal picture of the client’s desired outcome. We need to consistently be talking to our sellers about bridging the gap between status quo and desired outcome, not the gap between problem and solution. The path between problem and solution is paved by facts and information, while the path between the status quo and the desired outcome is paved by human obstacles, the fear of not overcoming those obstacles, and the hope of ending up in a better reality.
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