Heart palpitations or … “Tell to sell”…
Typical department store situation: the pants are a dream, color and fabric perfect, the desired size of course SOLD OUT. Classic, right? For a mediocre salesperson, the chance for decent, fact-based customer service: "Yes, sorry. We won't get those back in until tomorrow..." For the good salesperson, a chance for true customer loyalty: "Let's uncover the secret together of when we'll get this great piece back in stock." A subtle but important communicative difference that goes far beyond mere word choice. The first variant communicates just the facts (friendly, yes, but just the facts). Variant 2 tells a story and thus creates an emotional connection of the customer with the situation in seconds; understanding is achieved on the heart level. This is one of the secrets of storytelling: stories reach people on the emotional level, where facts remain stuck in rationality. Stories are always received by us in a holistic context, numbers & facts detached from all environments. This automatically puts two opposing communication types against each other: consensus-oriented (story) and argument-oriented (facts). While story communication is based on individual experiences, looks for commonalities and thus breaks down barriers, fact communication focuses on experiments and explanations and emphasizes distinctions and differences. It's actually fascinating that in light of these insights, a large part of sales teams still only believe in the power of "logical" PowerPoint slides and Excel charts, while surprisingly little use is made of the emotional power of stories. Stories that follow certain archetypes are particularly effective. Story archetypes have two invaluable advantages: 1) EVERYONE can 2) IMMEDIATELY build an emotional relationship with them. Of course, mass media also rely on this, where it's exactly about this immediate emotional effect. One of the most powerful archetypes is, for example, the HERO'S JOURNEY (which we are currently experiencing live with Barack Obama, others are stylized as heroes by the media to show the "journey"). Or FREEDOM – a very strong story archetype (which, by the way, has provided a company like Harley-Davidson with stable sales and loyal fans for decades ("we sell a lifestyle, the motorcycle is free..."). And also the story archetype DISCOVERING A SECRET used in the introductory example immediately achieves 100% emotional impact with the audience. The crime genre lives very successfully from this (even if the gardener is not always the murderer), it drives us into every even the most far-fetched Indiana Jones / Dan Brown / Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Between 20 and 25 of these archetypes have been categorized so far and made usable in training for companies in communication and sales processes. Be inspired and dare to use the big stories when selling: storytelling and embellishing is already a great strength of many salespeople. The use of story archetypes helps to develop from simply told "little stories" emotionally effective and targeted stories. Two books about "tell to sell" are recommended here: Peter Guber’s “Tell to Win” (http://www.amazon.com/Tell-Win-Connect-Persuade-Triumph/dp/0307587959/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305722384&sr=1-1) and “Made to Stick” by Chip & Dan Heath: (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_13?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=made+to+stick&sprefix=made+to+stick)