Sales Storytelling - Stories That Sell (Script, Structure, and Examples)

All right, welcome back. So we just talked about context led questions and how those can warm up a cold buyer and get them engaging faster. The second technique we're going to talk about for accomplishing the same thing is the discovery prompter. Okay. That's what you're going to learn in this video lesson. Now, I have two warnings for this one. The first warning is the same thing I gave in the last one. The discovery prompter technique serves a purpose. That purpose is to warm up a buyer who might be reluctant to share pain. But if you have a buyer, even if they were like outbound, who is willing and open and ready to engage with you, you don't generally have to use this technique. You're just jamming in a complicated technique that doesn't need to be there. Okay. In those situations, you can just go directly and start having a conversation. So I just want to emphasize that use the discovery prompter when it serves a purpose. When your buyer is a little bit cold, they need to be warmed up before you start asking about pain and problem oriented questions. Now, the second warning I have for you on the discovery prompter is this one takes practice. Okay? This is a storytelling skill. You're going to want to practice it a few times before you actually go live with a customer. Okay? So it's a skill. Make sure you're getting the marbles out of your mouth and you're certainly not going to get it amazingly right the first time you try it. So I want to set that expectation with you. So with that said, let's talk about the discovery prompter and talk about what it is. The discovery prompter is something you use at the beginning of a discovery call right after you've set your rules of engagement, and it intends to warm up your buyer so that they're willing to have a conversation with you. And what it is is it's a short pain based narrative or story or even short sales deck where your buyer can see themselves in the story or narrative that's being told because the pain that you're telling in the story is relevant to the pain they're experiencing. And after you do that, after you spend between three, four, maybe five minutes at the most telling this narrative, then you simply pass the torch and say, anyway, enough about us and the problems we solved. Tell me about your challenges. The idea here is if the pain narrative you just walked them through was on target, right? It resonated with them. Then when you pass the torch over to them, they will open the floodgates. They'll say that's exactly what we're struggling with and they'll tell you everything. But once again, it takes a lot of practice to be able to generate that kind of result. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to craft a narrative that feels like you're peering into their soul. Okay, Maybe you're telling a customer story. You're walking them through a deck. The point is it's a pain oriented narrative, not outcome. Right. You're not telling like a success story of a customer. You're telling about the challenges somebody was facing. Ideally, they're the same challenges that the person you're talking to is facing. They can see themselves in it. And then you pass the torch back over to them and then you start discovery. So I'm going to walk you through the structure of a great discovery discovery prompter. And the version of the discovery prompter I'm going to teach you is a customer story. Okay. There is another way to do a discovery prompter and it's generally a really good pain oriented short sales deck. But one of the things I've learned is that most sales reps, probably most of you watching this, don't have control over what kind of sales deck you use. Usually it's like your leadership team decides that or your product marketing team or sales enablement team. And so I'm going to give a technique you can use. And in the bonus section of this course, if you're curious about what a deck version of this looks like, I have an example there. So the structure of a great discovery prompter is this one of the customers we worked with was dealing with. And then you insert the pain statement where they were dealing with. Then you say before working with us, they were struggling with. And then you expand on some of the pain you just established. Then you say, in fact, it was such a struggle that. And then you start to talk about some of the negative impact, negative ramifications, the things that create urgency. Then you transition to the solution. The short story. You don't go into a lot of detail. You more so talk about the desired future state, future state. Rather than details. You say the short story is we helped them achieve, we help them increase close rates, we help them improve, improve employee morale, whatever. And then you end by passing the torch. Right? Anyway, enough about us, enough about our customers. I just wanted to give you a sense of some of the challenges we do solve. So talk to me about your challenges. When it comes to X area you solve. And the idea here is if you got these first four Points. Right. If they were resonant and targeted and your buyer, the person you're talking with, can see themselves in the story, or at least kind of see the pain in their story, you're going to trigger them to want to open up to you. And this next principle I'm about to say is worth writing down. This is very profound. And you'll notice how true it is the more time you spend in sales or any go to market profession when you can articulate a buyer's problem better than they can themselves. In other words, if you can peer into their soul, they will automatically assume you have the best solution. They'll automatically trust you, and they will automatically have a very, very open conversation with you. Okay, so I'm kind of selling this technique and I want to be careful about that because it does take some time to get this right. But when you do, you can open up cold buyers very quickly and very productively. So here's an example of what this looks like. Right? This is kind of a short example, and I might be kicking off discovery and I said, let me just start by telling you a story so you have a sense of the challenges we solve, and then I'd love to hear from you. Anyway. I personally worked with an HR tech company very similar to you that was struggling to generate enough qualified pipeline in this economy. Before they started working with us, their pipeline had shrunk from around 4x coverage against quota. So only 2 1/2x coverage. Right? It was. It totally shrunk like a, you know, cotton sweater in the dryer. Now is becoming such a struggle. Notice I'm expanding on the negative impact. It was becoming such a struggle for them that their quota participation had plummeted. The percentage of reps meeting or exceeding quota went from a healthy 65% to just 20%. Okay. It was really affecting their business and their sales reps were getting upset. A lot of people were leaving because they just weren't making money. Now, I won't get into the details here. I'll tell you some of the details a little bit later. But the short story is we helped them build an inbound marketing program to ratchet up their pipeline and we got them back to 3X coverage. Okay. We haven't gotten them back to forex yet, but we're trending in the right direction and it's still trending up as far as I know. Now, enough about us and our customers. The reason I told you that story is just to give you a sense of some of the challenges that we solve so you have context enough about them. Help me understand the unique challenges that you're facing when it comes to your pipeline generation efforts. Okay, so that story, if my potential buyer is struggling with something similar, they're going to be sitting there like, yeah, that is exactly what we're dealing with. And let me tell you how that's showing up in our world. Okay, so that's the power of the discovery prompter. But it's going to take a few things. It has to be targeted, right? You have to tell a different story based on the buyer Persona or potential problem the buyer is you're talking to is experiencing. That's one and two. It takes a little bit of storytelling skills. Now, this structure, if you follow this structure, you're going to be following the right storytelling arc, but you're going to want to practice it. It's going to feel clunky the first few times you use this. And that's why I emphasized this technique specifically. Takes some practice. And of course, after you tell the story, you end it by passing the torch. You say, anyway, enough about us, enough about the problems we solve and our customers. I want to hear about you. Tell me about the key challenges you're experiencing in X area that would be problematic if you didn't solve them six to 12 months out. Okay, story, capture the pain, pass the torch, get them to talk. By the way, as a quick side note, this question works really well, right? You'll notice some of the phrasing problem that would be problematic if you didn't solve it six to 12 months out. That phrasing is a filter to get them to talk about urgent problems, right? Not just any problem, but the things that you have to solve within some sort of time horizon. In this case, six to 12 months. So that's kind of a quick language technique to get your questions more targeted. Generally, this is going to work much better at the tail end of a discovery problem prompter. Okay, so exercise straightforward enough. You are going to craft and practice a discovery prompter and you're going to try it once, but I want you to practice it in a dry run three times before you bring this to a live customer. So, based on a customer you're selling to. Right. Either their buyer Persona or an account. Choose a customer story that you know and you can tell that you think is going to resonate with them based on their situation. Next, create the discovery prompter using the story framework and then finally practice it three times. Then try it once, live, and then self assess so you'll see this exercise document in the resources, we've got all five steps of the discovery prompter, right? So here are the steps. Pain Statement before working with us, where you expand on the pain, talk about the negative impact the customer is experiencing, tell the short story of how you helped and what they achieved. That's the important part is talk about the desired outcome and and then write your question for passing torch. Anyway, enough about us. Tell me about your situation. So in this, right in the second column, it's just giving you kind of the fill in the blank sentences to start with. So under this column, under your version, that's where you're going to write out your discovery prompter. Once you do that, go practice it at least three times. The best of you are going to practice this closer to 5 to 10 times. And then, and only after you've given this a dry run a few times, then go use it. Live, self assess and rate yourself on how it went, what went well, what can you improve next time. And just realize that this skill especially is going to take some time to get a hang of or get the hang of. So give yourself some patience. Don't expect perfection the first time you try it. Try it a few times, practice a few times and get better each time you try it. All right, go give it a try.