Are You Sick And Tired Of Declining Sales?

How pros use stories to sell more products and services to their clients.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the virtual entrepreneur. If you're new to this podcast. Welcome. I am your host Herbert innocent and today we are talking about stories, we are finalising the talk from yesterday. So when our last episode, we had an interview with Graham, the brown. Right. And if you didn't hear that episode I want you to go and listen to that episode and then come back to this. Graham. He is a storyteller, he considers himself a storyteller and he explains in teaches how to write stories to sell your, your, your businesses, and your services and product. And today I wanted to summarise, if you really stuck, how you could get started with thinking in terms of using stories to sell your services to your customers and clients, and really the reason why you'd want to use stories in the first place is one simple reason right stories, allows us to relate to the products and services. Right. They allow us to be able to connect ourselves emotionally to something that we otherwise would not be able to connect ourselves emotionally.

Because if you think about it, our products and services. Some of them are tangible, some of them are intangible, but they're not human, they are not. Some of them are not even physical they are not, they don't have any emotions, to them, attached to them. And yet, when you sell your product or services you want people to invest money in that product, you want them to buy that product, buying is an emotional activity, right, we buy with emotions, and then justify our actions, logic. So the reason why you want to know how to tell stories is so you can arouse those emotions and desires, so that the clients or customers can buy your product, because the goal is to help them get where they want to, and you can't do that if you can't, inspire them.

If you notice, speeches, inspire people to take action, sales, you know, a salesperson inspires another person in a client a customer to take action which is buying, and so it's the same effect and using stories can be very effective. Now, I have been looking around learning remember in this podcast I'm investigating and there are really three key ways that I have seen people use stories very well and successfully to sell product, and I've used a few of these myself. And it really comes down to three ways that you can use stories to selling products and services. And the first way is the before and after story, and this is really a very classic one used everywhere in the marketing and fitness in the market in the fitness niche.

And the way this works is if you've ever seen a photo of a person taking a picture of before and then taking a picture of after workout, a gym or a salad.

Vertical those assault is a recipe, no it's not a recipe. The words are escaping me today. What do you call that a fitness.

So, diet, that's the word I'm looking for. So, if you're on the diet, then we take a beat up before and after to show the effect of the diet right, and this is very, very simple but powerful story. It's also used in, let's say someone has pain right pain relief and all these things are hygiene, cleanliness, right, in the place where you need to clean you show that how dirty it was and how difficult it is to remove the stains. And then once you've applied that you turned it detergent, all the stains have been removed. In just one swoop, or one wipe.

And even though in most cases, all of those products don't really ever do the one wipe thing that they show the magic wipe, but it's the demonstra bility, right, so the before and after story is very good at demonstrating how quickly the client can get a result. Now you may be in a coaching niche you may be in a different niche that demonstrable it seems impossible, but it's actually it's possible you just have to look differently. And one of a very good example of these will be when, if you just take the product and the end result, if you can show the result.

Physically, if it's lowered bills, so if your products lower someone's bills. If you can show the result differently. So if your product is, aesthetic, it has, it has something to do with how something looks then that's even better. So for example if you're a graphic designer closure the difference between good written content and bad, and you'll see this in book editing actually. So if you've written a book, and you got someone who can edit and format the book for you on platforms like fivers and freelance and all those like Upwork platforms, you'll see that some of those vendors have a before and after image of how a formatting book looks, and this is really good at showing you the before and after effect.

Once you've formatted the book, highlighting the importance and the result you get because otherwise, the author who's writing the book doesn't really see the point of formatting, right, and so getting good at demonstrating how your services and products are is one way to increase, and make your sales by making your product relatable to clients. And so this is one way that I've seen that is being used heavily and works so well and the best part is it's as simple as using an image, or using words, right, for example, using two plans right comparing a pro plan versus a basic plan is another way of demonstrating the difference in results that you get, that's another way of using that.

So, there are many ways but the idea here is you tell a story by simply contrasting the difference in benefits, and the difference between when you had the problem and once the problem solved, when you had the roadblock. And once the roadblock has been removed, when you had the pain and once the pain has been relieved. So that's a really powerful method then another type of story that I've seen is called a bridge story, right.

A bridge story type, and this one we've talked a little bit about but I want to highlight a few key things here, or how you got started, right, it's called the bridge or how you got started. Oh, the hero's journey. Now it has many words many places, but it is very simple elements as well. If you want to you can make it as simple as possible or as complex, but in terms of simplicity, the simplest way to create a story is but before and after, because it can be it can be as visual and with very minimal words. Now, in terms of the bridge story. One of the things that the key elements in there are, is the background and the desired result.

Then there's the, the wall or the river, right, and then the person who wants the desired result. Our avatar, our hero has to cross that river by building a bridge. And once they're on the other side, they've gotten the result they wanted. They go back. The bridge is the product right they're selling the product. Right. And so the goal here is to create that bridge, of how your clients can get the results which are on the other side, right, creating that bridge in their mind and the way this works is, tell the backstory, you tell the desire, you talk about the problem that's stopping them from getting the result. and then you give them the bridge, tell them how they will get the result right your product how your product will help them get the result.

And what that will mean for them. But those are the five key things that I've noticed being used. And the unique thing about this story is, you can use it to talk and make yourself relatable. But you also make your products relatable. But beyond making just your product relatable, is that once you when you create the bridge in the, in the minds of your customer you're allowing them to position themselves in your shoes. You're educating them in the problem, not just the solution, because sometimes the problem isn't very obvious. Remember, we have hot, warm and cold customers right.

We say customers cold when they don't, they only know the problem, but they're not, not the solution. And they don't know if you, if they don't even know if you exist, and then the customer is hot if they know the problem, the solution and they know you. Right, and they're cold so in most cases sometimes the customer, the client is cold, right called traffic, they don't know the problem yet properly, they're Googling, to understand the problem. And so having this bridge storytime allows you to be the person who is educating them with a beautiful story, but also leading them to the product. and this way you really build a very loyal client because you've educated them. You want them emotionally because they're really struggling to understand what is happening.

Right, tied up in all these things that are happening around the noise confusions the answers that aren't fully clear, you're really simplifying, something that is so complex and emotionally overwhelming draining tiring event. You're making it simple, digestible and understandable. And all the while, leading them to the product, which offers the ultimate solution that they're looking for. And so it becomes a very powerful way to allow your dream clients and dream customers to be loyal, for years and buy from you more and more, and then another type and the final one type of story is, we have the avatar story.

Now, this is when you create a fictional character or characters, right, one or two, and then you tell a story retell a permanent bridge story, right, you talk about the bridge story of this character of the problem they're having so their backstory the problem they're having, sorry the backstory that is their desire, the goal that they want, then the problem that they're having. Then this, you know, the idea the solution that could help them, and then how they get the solution, etc, and then the result.

Right. and the idea here is, you may not have a backstory to your product, but by creating this fictional character, it allows you to create all those elements, so you can create an around those emotions, making your product or service relatable, right. It's the exact same as a breach story, or the hero's journey. But in this case we are creating the character, and most movies based on the avatar story. Because in a sense of characters, our heroes are fictional, right. So now that you know those these are benefits for each one of those, lots of places to use a lot of these.

So, a place where you might use the breach story or the hero's journey is on your bio, you could talk about yourself, how you came about to build a business that you're in. So, and that could be a very powerful way of selling expertise, showing them that you are the go to person, for this particular problem because of your story of where you came from. to solving this problem to being where you are right, so that becomes a very powerful way of doing it, and then your avatar could be in demonstrating, let's say your software, and you want to create a short little video, you know that explains how to get started and everything. And that could be your little demo, instead of, if you didn't have a demo that could be a demo.

Either way, by combining these you always fit them into any type of services. You just have to think and look harder, and you would feed them. So, this is us on stories and how to use them for your product services in business you can really use this, you know, to make your business relatable, make your team relatable, make yourself relatable, make your product relatable. But also, you know, even, even in the level of transactions when you're presenting these can fit in well, in terms of making your talk, presentation, relatable.

But the goal in using these is essentially to connect more with clients and to make them invest, emotionally, into your product and service because when they do that, then investing with their credit cards, becomes much, much easier. So, thank you so much for tuning in on this episode of the virtual entrepreneur. I hope you got value, and you're able to start implementing on that. If you want more help or advice on this, go to my website for more detail on grandmama or myself to get started on telling story about your product, your services to your ideal clients and customers so you can sell more, and so I can get your message more people.

Aside from that, thank you so much again for tuning in and I'll talk to you on our next episode of the virtual entrepreneur.

As always, have a wonderful evening.