A great story—that illustrates how you transform your ideal clients—is a powerful arrow to have in your quiver.
You probably already have a go-to favorite—a crazy over-the-top, but 100% true story of one of your best client outcomes—that works its magic on a regular basis.
But even a great story doesn’t work for every situation.
You need a handful or two of easy-to-remember stories so you can spend most of your sales conversations listening—and then pull out the right story when it’s helpful.
What makes a top story? One that clearly shows the transformation you make with/for your sweet-spot clients. How they’re far better off after you’ve worked with them then they were when you started.
Just make those details vivid and juicy so your audience can see and smell and taste them.
Say for example that you’re an expert at the people side of mergers and acquisitions. Your go-to story might be about successfully merging two completely different cultures—a David and Goliath perhaps.
But not every situation is so black and white. You’ll trot out a different story when:
The CEO’s concern is how to align the new organization around satisfying a particular key customer.
They want to ensure that the combined engineering department hits the ground running on a bet-the-next-year new product.
The businesses are heavily regulated and the merger must satisfy outside parties beyond customers and shareholders.
The two sales forces are radically different, so a key deliverable will be structuring their roles and compensation to retain top performers.
See what I mean? The David and Goliath story just doesn’t cut it here.
All you have to do is chart out the kinds of problems you hear from your clients and design a simple story menu: if this problem, then that story.
Bonus: laying this out will likely bring up a few great stories you’d almost forgotten.
Oh and if you’re not already using your stories in your marketing, now is the perfect time to start.
Related: Monetize Your Interviews: Turn Every Podcast and Video Into Revenue Streams