B2B Sales — Story Telling

Let me tell you a story about my recent experience in choosing an architect. During the process of choosing, I learned the importance of storytelling.

The study says — decision-making is more emotional than logical. And the story is one of the best mediums to connect emotionally. People genuinely relate to themselves with the story and believe the values shared by you would help them get their answers or solutions. Or you can say, they relate with the protagonist of the story. This is the best way to connect with the customer.

Recently I switched my role and I have come to another side of the table. Usually, I have worked as a salesperson, but now at Geolife, my role asks me to select many different vendors. While doing so, I realized the importance of stories told by the vendor to me. And when I look back, I can analyze, how my stories had impacted my customers.

It is a natural tendency of a human to believe in stories. Our mind is trained to listen and believe in stories from childhood. And we are indirectly attracted to the same. True story; false story; good story; bad story; whatever type of a story, a mind always wants to hear it till the end. Or at least wish to know what happened at the end. This shows that the person is engaged with you if you tell him the information in form of a story.

Storytelling is really important in B2B selling. The story doesn’t have to start with “Once upon a time, there was a king and his kingdom”. It may start with; there was a customer whom I approached in an exhibition. And end with this is how I could solve his problem. This helped me stay associated with the customer for the last few years. Such a story in between the presentation would have a great impact on your customer to build loyalty.

While listening to the stories of failure and victory, people relate with their experience and understand what you have gone through, which is more likely to get connected. People live the story like the protagonist of the story and bring that experience while they leave the meeting.

One more benefit of the story is, stories are memorable than the facts and stats. This helps you to be in customers’ minds for a longer period.

In B2B sales, the customer wishes to know how the company and the salesperson are. Would both of them give me a proper service for the long term? So, when finding a solution for these answers, the real-time stories help him understand how he will get support in the future.

If you are a start-up, you may not have a few case studies to showcase, but in such a scenario, you can share an insight story. There is a story behind how the product was developed, there is a story about how the product helped to solve problems. Find these stories and narrate them to your customers. The purpose behind the startup, inside operations challenges, and things like this. You have to gain the confidence of the customer by engaging him. And storytelling is one of the best media of engagement.

During my Diwaly tenure, the example of how I managed to serve a customer with 200kgs of chocolates within 2 days helped me to gain other customers. People had given me comments that “Your willingness to work and show hard work makes us give you business.”

I understood the importance of Storytelling now. But during my VEM tenure, I remember, my conversation would start from the story of the premises. How Philips used to work on these premises a few years before, their capabilities, and other details. It helped to engage the customer as he entered my premises. Later, my stories of different customers and their problem solving were included in the presentation. Today, when I look back, I can analyze and understand the positive parts of my presentation.

Customers wish to know your integrity, capability, capacity in the first meet. He/she is interested to understand more about your experience, solution providing capability, and your ability to be his/her colleague from other organizations. And to make the customer understand these qualities you have to tell him stories of other customers. Just the numbers won’t convey this feeling.

While concluding I would just say, stories are more engaging, more memorable & thus more impactful. Share your stories with your prospects to engage them, and later convert them to customers.

If you believe it, share a story about, how a story helped you gain a customer. :)