Storytelling for Business
I am working online with one of my favourite clients, who are using this current situation to refocus and reassess the message that they tell their customers and themselves.
The reason they engaged me is that they have rapidly expanded over the previous five years and they see this time as an opportunity to listen and learn from each other, how best to tell the story of their business.
The Aim:
Identifying and articulating how their products dramatically improve the livelihood of their end-users.
The Plan:
As is only natural over the years, each of the senior management team has developed stories to explain what they do when engaging with prospective customers.
Our plan is to get together, listen to the pitches and create a template for the different types of engagements that are required over weeks or months on the path to closing a deal.
For example:
- First contact e-mail, or elevator pitch at an event.
- First meeting online or face to face.
- More detailed conversation, probably involving more technical discussion. (Your job is to convince your audience that you can do what you say you can do).
- Send a proposal. A proposal must say: we understand your business better than anybody else and we have a solution that is tried and tested.
- Follow up Pitch – presentation to the senior team. The economic buyers – the people with the ability to close the deal.
In this presentation, you must convince your prospect that you understand their problem, supported by a solution that is tried and trusted.
If you are talking to the business owner, all of the above may happen in the one meeting.
We are under way:
We have started the process by coming together as a group and identifying the questions that need answering, in order to understand the prospects problems and current situation.
The outcome at this early stage is a list of questions that the prospect will answer before we can move to the next stage.
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say”. Flannery O’Connor.
This exercise has been hugely helpful to the whole team as the more experienced people have explained the questions they ask and the reasons for doing so.
This has been very helpful to the newer team members and will be very helpful in training external partners e.g. Distributors, Dealers, Sales Agents, etc.
First Steps completed:
Now a list exists of the key questions that they need to know the answers to. Because, when further down the road, a proposal will need to be sent out and a prospect will need to be reminded of the problems that you can fix.
Coming Soon …
I will keep you posted on our Next Steps in the coming weeks and months.
Action:
If this exercise/journey is something that may interest you or your business, please click the link below.
