Your weekly disruption

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

Today we are going to zone into the second step of the sales process that being ‘establishing credibility’.

Building credibility could also be called building trust. Business guru David Maister sums up the dimensions of building and maintaining trust in the above simple formula.

If you want to build trust, you have to act in a way that triggers stories of credibility, reliability and intimacy. And because sales is about trusting the company, take whatever opportunity you can tell stories of the great things your firm has done. But remember: negative events beat positive ones at a ratio of about ten to one. So be careful not to be self-interested and spark stories of your self-serving actions.

Success stories are an important part of your repertoire here and is essential once you have built your repertoire.

Sellers need lots of success stories to tell. Case studies are a good resource, but they are typically too general and impersonal, and need to be translated into good oral stories. Most success stories are just ones you hear or read and can retell easily – you just need to remember them. That said, sometimes it’s useful to use a specific story pattern to ensure you have an effective success story.

Here’s how to craft great success stories:

In our working lives, the standard mantra is to avoid emotion because it has no place in business. However, emotions are a fundamental part of human nature, a key part of our DNA – we can’t just switch them off. In fact, we can use emotion to unlock people’s experiences (stories). Don’t be afraid to use words like ‘angry’, ‘happy’, ‘frustrated’, ‘excited’, ‘proud’, ‘shocked’, ‘disappointed’, ‘nervous’, ‘valued’, and so on in your questions.