Your weekly disruption

Last week we dug in deep into the third part of the sales process, and introduced the ‘clarity’ story.

Today we are going to zone into the last step of the sales process that being ‘asking for the business’.

For every point a seller makes and every story a seller tells, the buyer is conjuring what we call anti-stories to beat them. The art of selling then is to move yourself and the buyer so that you share the same story. The core principles to understand here is a simple one: you can’t beat a story with a fact; you can only beat it with a better story.

The first step is to uncover the buyer’s anti stories. You will need to ask story-eliciting questions, which we explored before, such as, “When I share these examples, what examples pop into your mind, either good or bad”? Once the anti-stories are on the table, you can search your own repertoire of stories to find ones that help the buyer see things from a different perspective.

It is important not to argue against the buyer’s story. Rather, you need to show them a new, more-positive way of looking at things. We call this an influence story.

With an influence story you should start by acknowledging the anti-story. Then tell a story that presents a plausible alternative. Then make your case. To acknowledge the anti-story you can say “You might be thinking…” or “I understand that last year we tried something similar”. This strategy then requires you to have at least one story (though preferably several stories) of a plausible alternative, where things did work out well under similar circumstances. The number of stories in your favour create a weight of evidence.

It’s only when you’ve told the alternative story that you can make your reasoned, logical case. If you start with the case, you are just emplying a push strategy, that the buyer will push back in your face. Remember: story first, argument second.

The best way to paint a picture of the future is to tell stories about how, elsewhere, that future is already happening. You might find these stories inside the organization you are selling to, or at a similar organization. Sometimes the best future stories come from an altogether different industry and application.

Stories about things that are already happening are a much better way of illustrating the future because they are real and concrete, not made up. In most cases, fictitious futures fail the plausibility test.