Everybody and their dog says they have a selling story…
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“Why should I come to your webinar, Cathy, let alone buy your course? After all, I can just google the term “stories that sell’ and a zillion articles come up.”
Good question. I’m glad you asked.
When I googled “stories that sell,” I got a lot of advice for telling stories in general.
For instance, one article identified 4 kinds of “selling stories:”
A news story that supports your sales position
A personal story of overcoming a problem
A historical or fictional story that can be a metaphor for the buyer’s experience
A case study of how you helped a client
These stories can be extremely helpful in your marketing. But they may or may not be stories that lead a prospect to buy.
Stories that command attention may not take the listener to the next step, which is to say, “I want that.”
Other advice includes, “Make an emotional connection.”
Excellent advice…if you understand that emotion happens naturally when the prospect connects with your story. You use important tools of storytelling — such as creating your characters and placing them in a scene.
Think about what happens when you meet a new person.
If you try too hard to be emotional, they’ll feel smothered. You create a relationship by finding common themes and showing you understand each other.
When telling stories for business, you start with your purpose.
Think of assigning your story a job to do. Will it grab attention to hear the rest of your message? Introduce you as the person behind the website? Demonstrate how your service works? Explain a concept?
Those are all useful goals. Sometimes they’re essential to your business.
But a story that sells does something different.
You follow a recipe to create the characters, devise a plot and set the scene.
Learn more here.
I’m Dr. Cathy Goodwin, a copywriter, storyteller, and strategist. My clients are small business owners, entrepreneurs, independent professionals, and solopreneurs. I help them become more productive by adding storytelling as a marketing tool. To Grow Your Business.
The Strategic Storytelling podcast focuses on using stories strategically to grow your business. No campfire stories, no fairy tales, and absolutely no bedtime stories here!
My book, Grow Your Business One Story At A Time, is available from Amazon as an ebook. Originally published at https://cathygoodwin.com.
