How Sales Stories Differentiate Your Business From The Competition
If there is one problem that perplexes business owners more than others
, it's, "How do I differentiate my business from the competition?" This is a particularly challenging issue for services businesses.
So how can a consultant, advisor, or other services provider differentiate themselves from the competition? What's the best way to stand out in an ever increasingly competitive world? For many of the most successful companies the answer is increasingly to focus on telling stories. If you want more referrals or word-of-mouth buzz, telling stories about who you are, what you do and the benefits your clients receive by working with you, is one of the most powerful marketing strategies you can implement.
Unique sales stores can be used on your website, in your sales letters and your stay-in-touch communications. One of the great benefits of marketing using sales stories is that you can reuse one story multiple times without it losing its effectiveness. What the companies that receive the greatest amount of referral all have in common is that they are adept at developing and disseminating stories about their business.
What makes stories such powerful tool if your goal is to generate more referrals for your business? The primary reason is that stories are so much easier to remember than facts. If I tell you that an architectural firm has offices in Atlanta, St. Louis and San Diego, that information is likely to go in one proverbial ear and out the other.
However if I tell you a story about how the Atlanta office successfully bid on a project by drawing from the talents of one of their team members in the St. Louis office who had worked on the venerable St. Louis arch, and another from the San Diego office who had an intimate understanding of environmental design from work she had done at the San Diego zoo-the dynamics have changed.
First you are much more likely to actually remember the story. This is crucial. Not surprisingly the first step to getting referrals is having people actually remembering what it is that you do. Although this sounds simple and obvious, it's actually pretty difficult to get your business remembered amid all the noise that exists in the world. Stories help enormously in that regard.
However, stories go far beyond simply increasing the likelihood that people will remember who you are. The true power of stories is that they intrigue people and make them curious to learn more. By engaging this natural curiosity, sales stories motivate readers and listeners to want to learn more. This is what is often referred to as selling invisibly.
Here is an interesting example for how this actually works. The sales letter that is credited with generating the largest amount of revenues is one that was written well over 40 years ago for the Wall Street Journal. This is how it began:
"Take two men. Both graduates of good universities. Both hardworking and ambitious.
Flash forward twenty years and one is in the corner office commanding the attention and respect of hundreds. The other toils amid the legions of middle managers in a largely obscure position. Why did one ascend to great heights and the other plateau so early?"
What made this letter so effective? The answer is simple. It told a story. As a result it creating curiosity and engaged the imagination of the reader. They want to learn more. They sincerely want to learn the answer to: "Why did one ascend to great heights and the other plateau so early?"
Not surprisingly, this is one of the most widely copied sales letters. It has been used to sell everything from consulting services to copiers, to higher education.
So what types of stories could you tell about your company? What are the success stories that others would be interested in learning more about?
Creating excellent unique sales stories is both an art and a science. It is certainly far more than just simply sitting down and starting to type. There's a process and system that makes stories interesting and memorable. It takes a bit of an investment of time and education in order to create stories that aren't flat or lifeless. However, for virtually all business owners it is an investment that is well worth making.
by: Mark Satterfield
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