CHAPTER 8

Sharpening Your Sales Story

Think for a minute. What makes a story interesting or compelling?

Stories that pique our interest and garner our attention are those that draw us in. Wouldn’t you agree the stories that are most captivating are the ones where you can imagine yourself as part of the story, or perhaps feel jealous that you are not?

The same applies when dealing with our sales story. I benefited from having mentors like my dad and my boss, Danny Abraham, the chairman and CEO of Slim-Fast. Both men were absolute masters at framing the story. The customer was always the main character and centerpiece of their sales pitch. But as I began to observe other salespeople, I noticed most were not very good when it came to telling their story. In fact, most of them had a hard time grasping and maintaining a buyer’s attention. The biggest difference was that, unlike Danny or my dad, these salespeople were totally focused on their product and why it was so wonderful as opposed to issues important to the customer. When I transitioned into sales, I followed the lead of my mentors, whose effectiveness convinced me that selling was about the customer and their needs, desires, and issues. As my career progressed and I had more sales calls under my belt, I became more and more convinced that most customers couldn’t care less about what we do. However, they were incredibly interested in what our products or service could do for them.

Our Story Must Pass the “So What?” Test

As important as this profound sales truth is when dealing with existing customers, it’s magnified exponentially when trying to gain the attention of a prospect. So many people in sales lead with statements such as “We make” or “We are suppliers” or “We do this, that, and the other thing.” And when salespeople lead in this manner, buyers are almost immediately thinking: “So what?”

I encourage you to try the “so what” test. Listen to another salesperson on the phone attempting to earn an appointment with a tough prospect. Or accompany a rep on sales call. Every time the salesperson makes a statement, simply ask yourself, “So what?” It’s very convincing when we begin to realize how much of what we regularly say is self-focused drivel that has no real meaning to the customer.

What happens when we the start our pitch by talking about what we do? The prospect thinks or may even say aloud, “We already have that.” We already have a banking relationship. We already have a widget supplier. We already have an advertising agency. We already have someone cleaning our data center. Fill in what your company does: We already have a _________. In all likelihood, your prospects think they have it covered.

Bestselling author Jill Konrath speaks about the challenge of getting the attention of today’s crazy-busy prospects in her superb book SNAP Selling. I love the mental picture created by the phrase crazy-busy prospects. We are not earning a spot on a crazy-busy prospect’s calendar by talking about our offerings (with a possible exception if there is an Apple logo on our product). Breaking into a prospect’s world is only going to happen when we talk about something that matters to them.

Three Critical Building Blocks for a Compelling Story

There are three critical sections, or building blocks, to a compelling sales story:

1.   Client issues addressed

2.   Offerings

3.   Differentiators

Customer/client issues, the first building block and bedrock of our compelling sales story, refers to:

  Customer pains we remove

  Client problems we solve

  Opportunities we help customers capture

  Results we achieve for clients

Offerings, our second building block, simply state what we sell (emphasis on simply). Our offerings are what we do—the services, solutions, or products for which we bill customers.

Differentiators, the third building block, explain why we are better and different from other alternatives. This final building block provides solid reasons why we are the best choice to address the client’s issues, as listed in the first section of the story.

These three building blocks are all necessary to craft a succinct, compelling, client-focused sales story. And the sequence matters—a lot! As important as the actual components themselves is the order in which we use them.

Why Lead with Client Issues?

The issues we address for clients serve as the lead-in to our sales story because that’s where the power is derived. Client issues are the sharp tip of our sales spear. No one cares what we do, how smart we are, or how special we think our company is. Sad, but true. It’s not about us. Prospects are interested in one thing: What’s in it for them. We lead with the pains we remove, the problems we solve, and the results we achieve for customers because those things are important to them. They’re relevant. These issues draw people in. They shake prospects out of their slumber and help delay their reflex resistance to our sales pitch.

A whole lot of salespeople make the mistake of leading with their offerings. That’s the worst thing we can do. It screams “commodity” to the buyer. It also communicates that the most important part of the conversation is about what we sell. “I’m the sales rep and I am here to tell you about we do.” Awful. And way too common.

Some salespeople like to lead with differentiators, which I’ll admit is better than charging into battle with your product front and center. But differentiators are still about us and why we’re so great. If there are dramatic reasons our solution is better and different, it’s possible we’ll capture a prospect’s attention. But there’s still a good chance that our differentiators are not meaningful to the prospect. And there remains the risk that we’ll be viewed as self-absorbed braggarts only concerned with expounding on why we’re so great.

When we lead with client issues, we get a prospect’s attention fast. We’re talking about what’s likely on the other person’s mind. We also set ourselves up as problem solvers. By talking about the clients’ needs first, we position ourselves as professionals who can address their issues.

Another benefit of leading with client issues is that it sets us up to ask probing questions about those very issues later in the sales process. In a sense, we foreshadow where we plan on taking the sales conversation. When the first things out of our mouth (or in writing) communicate to the prospect that we are all about addressing their issues, the dynamic of the sales dance radically changes. We’re no longer viewed as the typical product-pitching sales rep that buyers try to avoid at all cost. Instead, we’re seen as experts with solutions positioned to open a dialogue about the issues on the prospect’s mind.

Leading our sales story with issues has one final practical application: It helps us qualify the prospect. If potential customers have no pain, no problems in need of solving, and are not trying to achieve a different result, then why would they make a change? If nothing is wrong or in need of improvement, why bother? Businesses and people don’t change direction for no reason. If we take our best shot describing the reasons our customers turned to us and can’t get a reaction or interest from the buyer, then the sales conversation is pretty much over. No Issues = No Sale. If the issues we address don’t interest them, there’s no reason to talk about what we do or why we’re different. Just move on to the next prospect.

Drafting the Power Statement

I created what I call “The Power Statement” as my answer to the elevator pitch and the value proposition, two annoyingly overused expressions that mean different things to different people. Last time I checked, there was not a whole lot of business being transacted in elevators. So it doesn’t make sense trying to cram our sales story into a format designed for use between the lobby and the ninth floor.

Something wonderful, powerful, and magical happens when combining the three building blocks of our story under a brief headline and a transitional phrase. I’ve used this formula with more than fifty companies and continually receive unanimous positive feedback on its transformative power. Once complete, the power statement serves as a one-page, two- to three-minute encapsulation of our sales story. It can be used by itself in full form when speaking with someone face-to-face (on sales calls) or when elements from the power statement are excerpted for use in other sales weapons (telephone, voice mail, e-mail, presentations, proposals, etc.).

Let’s take a look at the construction of the power statement and then review two examples.

Headline

The headline is a one- to two-sentence introduction. It helps provide context and allows your audience to place you in a category to better digest your story.

Transitional Phrase

This brief phrase sets the stage to grab your contact’s attention. It opens the door to share the client issues your business addresses. It starts with either the type of business you are pursuing or the position of the contact you are addressing. For example:

GHI companies turn to (Your Company Name Here) when….

Or:

Senior marketing executives look to us (or Your Company Name Here) when they….

This type of lead-in is a shrewd technique that allows us to speak in the third person about what we accomplish for our customers. Instead of simply declaring our results in a brash or braggadocio fashion, we make compelling points about why our customers look to us for help. In a sense, the transitional phrase couches our strongest selling points as if they were a testimonial coming from our best clients.

Client Issues / Pains Removed / Problems Solved / Results Achieved

This section of the power statement lists between three and seven client issues we address. Use a conversational, bulleted format, describing each issue briefly using provocative or emotionally charged words. For instance:

  Striving to achieve Result 1.

  Frustrated from dealing with Pain 2 and ready to take action.

  Under significant pressure to eliminate Problem 3.

  Committed to accomplishing Result 4.

  They’ve had it with Pain 5.

  Facing threats (or regulatory pressure) from Issue 6.

  They are finally tired of living with Problem 7 and want help tackling it.

Offerings

This very brief section of the power statement is where we rattle off what it is we actually sell. It works best to simply describe our offerings in a few sentences, being careful not to embellish or oversell here. Our offerings are the least compelling component of our story, and that is why this section is short and sandwiched between the client issues we address and our differentiators.

Differentiators

The power statement concludes with a strong list of reasons that we are the best choice to address the client issues we previously described. This is our opportunity to brag and declare why our offerings are better than other options available to the customer. I suggest leading into a list of at least five differentiators with an intriguing sentence. For example:

(Your Company Name) continues to grow (or dominate our space) because we are very different from what you will find in the marketplace…

Differentiator 1

Differentiator 2

Differentiator 3

Differentiator 4

Differentiator 5

A Couple of Sample Power Statements

The best way to help prepare you to create your own power statement is to share a couple of real-life examples. This first one is from a longtime client headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The company, which I’ve fictitiously renamed Allsafe Security, provides a full gamut of security services to business clients across Canada. Allsafe maintains offices in Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, and the large sales team is comprised mostly of former security officers who moved up through the ranks. The company has a stellar reputation in the marketplace. Commensurately, its services are priced at a significant premium and Allsafe faces regular price-cutting attacks from competitors.

When my partner Donnie and I were brought in, the sales force was demoralized from several sales leadership transitions and failures. But the team was committed to succeeding, and it was obvious right away how much these guys loved Allsafe. Because the salespeople had come up through the ranks, they were experts in the business, and passionate about the services they offered. All this sales organization needed was love, direction, focus, and a much improved sales story to justify the premium pricing.

We facilitated a few sales meetings to begin reenergizing the team. I rode shotgun with a few of the better reps and sat in on a dozen or so sales calls to get a flavor of the business. We scanned a few winning and losing proposals and reviewed every available piece of sales literature. Then we tackled their bloated, grandiose, pompous, and self-absorbed sales story. After conducting a few exercises to garner everyone’s best thoughts, here’s the power statement we came up with.

Before continuing with the final two components of Allsafe’s story, let’s pause here to drive home a few points. What struck you when reading through this critical part of their story?

The two-sentence headline is simple, direct, and clear. Allsafe is not confused about what it does or the market it serves. Anyone unfamiliar with the company would quickly grasp the basics and have context to process the balance of the story. It seems like a no-brainer, but I’m continually amazed how challenging it is for many salespeople and executives to succinctly articulate exactly what it is their company does. And if we can’t explain it clearly, then we should not expect a prospect to understand it, either.

It’s been years since we crafted this power statement, and I still get excited reading that client issues section. Let me ask you to imagine yourself as the senior property manager for a major corporate campus. The buck stops at your desk for all matters related to the safety and protection of 3,000 employees who work for the corporate clients at your site. Would that list of issues Allsafe addresses grab your attention and draw you in? You bet it would, because those are the very things on your mind every day.

What else struck you about the client issues section of the power statement? Isn’t it interesting that there’s not one single thing about Allsafe? Not one word about what Allsafe does or how the great the company is. Every single syllable is focused on issues that matter deeply to the prospective customer. Never forget that the power in the power statement comes from listing the pains we remove, the problems we solve, and the results we help clients achieve. After sharing these issues, prospective customers are much more likely to listen to the balance of what we have to say and more willing to answer our probing questions. We’ve successfully set the stage, and possibly the hook. Let’s continue with the final two pieces of Allsafe’s power statement.

Of all the clients I have been blessed to consult, Allsafe was probably the most energizing and fun. The team took to coaching well and was primed to deliver impressive results. Everything felt right, and in our second year of the engagement, the CEO challenged us to give up some fee in consideration for a significant bonus based on net new business acquired. We believed in the sales talent and the company’s ability to deliver, so we jumped at the chance to have skin in the game. It turned out to be a brilliant decision. We earned more stamps in our passport than we could count and a bonus that was more than double what we would have made from a straight fee. I credit a good portion of that team’s sales success to the formidable story we created and each salesperson’s willingness to incorporate it into the sales attack.

 

As a coach, I am happy to take my own medicine and practice what I preach. In order to provide another example, here is the power statement I am currently using for my own business. Now that you have the gist, I’ll leave out the section titles.

For what I sell, it has been effective to stick with fewer, broader client issues and provide a more detailed list of differentiators. I think that’s due to the fact that almost every company experiences some of the pains and problems I outline. It’s relatively easy to draw a prospect in by listing those issues. Everyone wants more sales, and most teams are not firing on all cylinders.

However, because there are so many trainers and sales improvement gurus out there, I find that most CEOs want to understand why I’m different and more effective at solving a sales organization’s problems than all the others claiming to have the answers.

My power statement does exactly what I need it to. It gives me confidence to talk with anyone about what I do. It positions me as someone who understands the issues facing sales teams today. It’s compelling enough to draw potential customers into a dialogue. It paves the way to ask opportunity-seeking questions. And it keeps me on message. My story is my story is my story.

The Sales Story Exercise

After you’ve read these two examples of compelling sales stories, my hope is that you’re chomping at the bit to begin work on yours. It can be a messy process, but I promise that the result is well worth your time and energy.

You’ll need some blank paper and access to whatever sales and marketing literature you have (e.g., brochures, sell sheets, catalogs, recent proposals, and copy from your website). Experience shows that it’s helpful to go through this exercise with others. So if you’re part of a sales team, see if you can get everyone together for an hour-long initial session. If you’re not part of a team, try to gather a few key people from your company that have an interest in seeing you sell more. If you are a solo-practitioner like I am, it’s fine to do this exercise on your own. There are some key questions you can ask current and past clients whose answers will provide great fodder for your story.

Start with three blank sheets of paper. We’ll use them for a brain dump to create exhaustive lists for each of the three main sections of the power statement: one sheet each for client issues, offerings, and differentiators.

I like to tackle the client issues section first. It is the most critical and usually takes the most effort to get right. Most salespeople are accustomed to talking about their offerings and differentiators, so it often takes more practice to frame up the client issues list appropriately. As with any good brainstorming session, don’t overthink it. Write down every thought that comes to mind. There’s plenty of time to delete the dumb items and wordsmith the good ones later in the process. Even before scanning your sales and marketing literature or talking with clients, start by writing answers to these questions on your client issues sheet:

  Why did your best customers initially come to you?

  What business problems were they facing?

  What results were they looking to achieve?

Once you have a solid list started, move on to the next set of questions. These questions help you dig a little deeper into the client issues you address:

 

  What pains are your potential customers likely to experience by choosing or staying with the wrong provider (your competition)?

  What problems do you see prospects experiencing from trying to do for themselves what you should be handling for them (self-performing versus outsourcing)?

  Which opportunities might they miss or which results will fall short because they are not your customer? Said another way, what is the opportunity cost of not working with you?

Now that you, and possibly your teammates, have exhausted your creativity, it’s time to get some outside help. Call your absolute favorite customers, the ones who are advocates and raving fans. Don’t e-mail them but call them. You want to hear their voice inflection, emphasis, and emotion. Let them know you’re working on sharpening your sales story and would be honored if they would help. Ask these customers:

  Why did you come to us in the first place? What were you looking to achieve?

  What issues were you looking to address?

  Why do we still have your business? (Listen carefully to these answers because you might get some bonus material to use on your differentiators list.)

  How have we made your life and business better?

You should be on cloud nine after speaking with a few customers. If this feedback doesn’t increase your confidence, nothing will. What a double treat: Your customers are reminding themselves why they love you, and you get to incorporate their words into your sales story. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Finally, scan through your marketing materials. Pull out great phrases that speak to the business issues your company addresses for customers. Be careful not to get lulled into listing reasons your company is so wonderful. Find the gems describing what you achieve for customers and incorporate those into the giant list you’ve been creating.

At this point you likely have a page chock full of reasons that customers turn to your company. If you’re doing this exercise along with others, now is the time to have them share what they feel are their best items. I like to start a fresh Word document and project the compiled list onto a screen for the group to review, edit, delete, and combine bullets.

The sales group is usually amazed at how broad and strong are the reasons that customers look to/turn to/trust their company. Argue the list down to the seven or so best “client issue” bullets. Then you can start wordsmithing, nuancing each bullet into a format that nicely follows the transitional phrase: “X type of companies or Y type of contacts turn to Your Company Name when looking to…” or “They look to us when facing….” Make an effort to incorporate compelling, emotional, or provocative words or phrases to describe your client’s experience. For instance, customers are exhausted from, frustrated with, challenged by, have had it with, are fearful of, pressured to, or are desperately trying to achieve some result. (Okay, “desperately” might be a little over the top, but you get the idea.)

Once you’ve refined the list to the point where it is ready to insert into the power statement, move on to the differentiators section. This section tends to come more naturally and go faster than the client issues page. List all the reasons that you believe your company, product, service, or solution is better and different. Cover the gamut of reasons, from culture issues through technical expertise, proprietary processes, and service guarantees. Don’t forget to include yourself and the difference you bring to the table for clients. In some cases, the salesperson is one of the most significant differentiators in the equation. Toot your own horn if you’re helping to set your offering apart. Review, edit, and sharpen what you came up with until you have a strong list that you love.

The offerings section should take less than five minutes to complete. If you can’t rattle off exactly what it is you sell, what you send invoices for, then there’s a bigger problem. Craft a couple of direct sentences and insert them between the client issues section and the differentiators.

Congratulations. You now have the first draft of your much-improved sales story. In most cases, it takes a few weeks of tweaking and revising to get it where you want it. Carry it around for a while and keep tinkering with it. In one case, my client and I continued to play with their new power statement for about a month. After the fifth revision we both agreed that we had it nailed.

What We Can Do Now

There’s one important point about the power statement I’ve yet to mention. The power statement is an internal document, not a handout. It’s for internal use only. The power statement becomes an invaluable source document for creating other sales weapons. It provides the talking points or copy highlights we need in various situations. In fact, once we have a power statement we love, it’s amazing all we can do with it.

The power statement is a fantastic resource from which we’re able to pull excerpts. Need to write an introductory letter to a prospect? Grab the power statement and trim off just a touch of the fat. Put a salutation at the top, follow the same progression (a headline followed by client issues addressed, then the offerings, wrapped up by differentiators), and close the letter by letting the prospect know you would love to visit with the company, to see if you might be a fit to help with some of these very issues. Sign your name at the bottom, and boom, you have the strongest sales letter you’ve ever sent.

If you want to send a brief series of e-mails as part of a drip campaign, the power statement is where you start. You can personalize a brief introduction and then pivot to a transitional phrase before dropping in just a couple of key issues you address for clients. One slight alteration to the transitional phrase that works well in a brief e-mail goes something like this:

We serve logistics managers (or another appropriate contact position) who are telling us they’re facing Issue No. 1, which requires immediate attention, or they are working to solve Issue No. 2, which if not addressed is causing Issue No. 3.

I might choose to include an offering or two and possibly one differentiator, but I would stop there in an e-mail. You could follow up with a second e-mail a week later. This time repeat just one of the same client issues from the first e-mail and pick out a different issue from your power statement to go with it.

In the next chapter there’s a section dedicated to creating a mini power statement to use when proactively telephoning prospects. Strong talking points are an effective confidence booster for sales reps who are scared to call prospects on the phone. Not only can we arm the salesperson with a superb mini power statement, but the balance of the full version is available as a resource if the phone call develops into a full-blown sales conversation.

A completed power statement also serves as a perfect guide to craft probing questions for the discovery part of our sales calls. Start with the bullet points you wrote describing the client issues you address, then turn them around by rephrasing the statements as questions. Using Allsafe Security as the example, here are some easily created open-ended, issue-seeking questions:

  What do you wish your current security system could do that it isn’t doing now?

  Tell me about the last few significant safety events. Where was the security lapse, and what was the reaction of your tenants?

  We often hear about security guards embarrassing building management. What are some of the behaviors of your current guards that you would like to see changed or improved?

  Under your current setup, what happens when a true emergency strikes? Who will respond and how will it be handled?

The Commodity Antidote

My clients run the spectrum from high-end consulting and professional service firms to small manufacturers in businesses that are highly commoditized. I have a blast helping salespeople in commodity-type businesses use elements of their improved sales story to communicate value and differentiation to customers.

The power statement provides a way to articulate the meaningful reasons (other than price and availability) that customers buy from you. That’s a big deal when a buyer’s first two questions are “Do you have it in stock?” and “What’s your best price?” The reality is that very few products and services are true commodities. Although the product or service may be perceived as highly price sensitive, salespeople certainly don’t help themselves by jumping to the price conversation so quickly. But that doesn’t mean that price is the only factor influencing the buying decision.

Your power statement gives you ammunition. One of my clients has started to capitalize on a few selling points that its reps previously were taking for granted. The company is a small distributor of perceived commodity items in a niche business. Its competitors are giant organizations. When you call the competition for help you get the dreaded automated attendant. After angrily punching keys trying to get to a human being, your call is directed to a sales pool. In other words, no one there knows you. You have no consistent point of contact and must struggle through an interactive voice response system every time you call. My client has a real person answer 100 percent of the calls during business hours, and every customer is assigned to a dedicated account team. As part of the outbound sales call, the inside reps make darn sure to make prospects aware that “a lot of our ABC type customers look to us because they’ve had it with automated voice mail; they want to talk with a real person; and they come to really appreciate that we assign them a dedicated account team who gets know them and their business.” Following that client issue statement, they jump to a couple of differentiators: “We are ridiculously easy to work with, from instant account setup to low minimums. We’re looking for long-term relationships, not just orders. Our commitment is that we’ll never try to oversell you a more expensive piece of equipment or load you up with more supplies than you need.”

Yes, my client sells virtually the same product as its competitors. And most people it sells to are keenly interested in talking about price. The reps have begun to change the focus of sales conversations from price to the reasons companies buy from them. Let me ask, after hearing just a few snippets of their sales story, would you be willing to at least consider paying a few pennies more to buy from them? I would! Our sales story is our most important and most frequently used weapon. When we have a great story, it changes everything.