They may not often get the spotlight, but salespeople are some of the most powerful people in the world. They listen, inform, influence, and lead important people to action. Those are astonishing skills — and they’re always on display in selling conversations.
These conversations usually involve the sales rep:
• understanding context through prospect research
• asking great questions
• sharing information, usually in the form of stories
In fact, stories are the most powerful tool a salesperson can wield in a sales cycle. They deliver invaluable leverage points by presenting insights, anecdotes, quotes, “aha” moments, ideas, timely research, memorable analogies, best practices and more.
Deals are won and lost on how well those conversations unfold … and how well those stories are told.
Unfortunately, sales teams rarely engage in systematically great sales conversations — and Sales 
VPs know it. In our recent survey of 100 Sales VPs, respondents usually graded them a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. Ouch.
It’s pretty surprising, then, that so little attention and training is focused directly on improving conversation quality, and mastering the stories that make these conversations successful. By ignoring these problems in internal sales meetings, reps are blowing deals in the field.
Fortunately, there are easy ways to fix this. This series of blog posts outlines 10 best practices proven to help your entire sales team become great storytellers and consistently engage in winning sales conversations.
____________________________
Paul McGhee founded SharperAx in 2013. SharperAx develops role-play automation software.
____________________________
This article is an excerpt from “10 Best Practices for a Great Storytelling Program,” an eBook written by Paul McGhee, based on years of research and practice in delivering great story programs. To download the entire eBook from Sharperax.com click below:
{{cta(‘c2b3ce51-a4fe-43f8-b078-25aa0ebc58f6’)}}
