3-Step STORY SELLING Framework: How to Get Homeowners to See Your Point, Agree, & Sign With You

In this video, I'm going to be teaching you the three step story selling framework. Now you might be asking yourself, Adam, what in the heck is story selling? Why does this matter to me? How does this apply to roofing sales? Here's why. Have you had this happen? You said all the right things, but the customer just didn't get it. Like it just didn't click. And then they, you lost the sale because they chose to work with someone else. It's the worst feeling in the world. You feel like a failure, you feel like you're not good enough. Why didn't it happen? I said all the right things and chances are you did. It's not your fault. The reason the story selling framework works so well is because it goes far beyond the words and it gets people to see, feel and understand your message, agree with you, get on your side, see your point, like it trusts you and work with you. And that's what we're going to be doing here. So why use this framework? Because of how we're hardwired as humans. This is powerful psychological principles that we truly can't resist. We are wired this way because of survival mechanisms that have served us for thousands and thousands of years. So when we learn how we are wired as human beings to receive information and make decisions, us as professional salespeople can learn how to effectively communicate to get our customer or soon to be customer, seeing our side, agreeing with us, liking us, trusting us and choosing new business with us. So this is what will happen. They're going to see your point. Why? Because you've communicated in a way that they literally cannot not see your point. They're going to agree with you. Why? Because stories are so much more powerful than words. We're the best contractor in the area. Anyone can say that. But show me how. Alright. They're going to like you. Why? Because it's relatable and it's entertaining and it's memorable. They're going to trust you because it doesn't feel pushy. You're guiding them to to their own decision at their own free will. And they will inevitably choose to work with you, which means you win the business, you earn the commission, everybody is happy. So this program, this three step story selling framework works when you're pitching at the door, overcoming objections and even closing the deal. So here's how it goes. Pitching at the door, the slap formula which I teach and as you've seen, with these formulas, I break down these concepts, ways that we can easily understand and apply in the field. So this Framework this story selling framework. You can plug in the Slack formula. After you ask your open ended question and the customer responds, you can present to their answer. Overcoming objections. You can use it with the ARO objection handling formula, acknowledge, reassure, overcome. And you can use it to close deals, meaning to emphasize a point at the end or if you get one of those what I call the 11th hour right at the end objections right before signing the deal. So you're going to be able to apply this in every single scenario in selling. So here's why it works. Every single decision, every buying decision that we make happens in this order. There's three elements that happen in this order. First is emotional. All decisions, whether you're buying a new pair of pants, booking a trip, buying a flight, getting a new roof, buying a new car, getting a new watch, ordering a new phone are all emotional gut reactions. Desires, wants, okay, they are all started with some sort of emotional pull. Then only later do we validate by logic. Have you ever seen those people that could rationalize everything or anything? Like doing some lavish vacation to Florida in the middle of the busy time when they could be selling and they're like, you know what? I had a great year. I deserve a trip and I had all these hard things happen. And therefore I validated with logic my emotional need to escape reality and go sit in a villa in Key west for eight weeks during prime selling season. Okay, Emotional need to escape validated by saying, hey, well logically I can afford it and I worked hard. Okay? This is how we make decisions. And then boom. Fear. We take action now. So we don't put off that buying decision because of fear. Now I want to dive into this fear thing for a minute. Fear is beaten like to a dead horse. Beaten like a dead horse. In the sales and marketing world, there's fear in there scaring people. People who are not educated in sales go the scare route. You know, it's what you see on chintzy infomercials. This is scaring people. What I mean by fear is this. Let's use an example. Outside of roofing, your favorite band is coming to your town next month. Okay, I really want to go see my band. It's going to be an amazing experience. Hey, I should go because they're only here once and I can afford the $100 ticket and I should get tickets now because if I don't, tickets might sell out. I don't know when they'll be back in my town. It could be a year. Fear is the consequences of not doing something Right. Emotional desire to have an experience validated by logic and supported. Because if we don't do it, there's consequences. This is what I mean by fear. And with a roof, so I'm retail. This all applies retail. The consequence of not doing a roof sooner is risk of things coming up and having issues that become more costly and the cost of roofing continuing to go up. Storms. You got a storm damage claim. Okay, well, the damage isn't that bad. Well, if you don't take action now, you lose the opportunity to do anything about it. And if there's issues down the road linked to this, you're out of luck because you missed that window of opportunity. This is fear, okay? That's the consequences. So all buying decisions, emotional, validated by logic. And people do something now because of fear or the consequences, what could happen? So your real world stories and experiences trigger these three elements, emotion, logic and fear, better than anything that you can ever say. Okay, there's telling someone something and then stories and experience. All right, here's how it fits together. So I want to give you a couple of examples so you can see this applied for both storm and retail. And I want you to pay very close attention to see if you can see how this framework comes together. After I give you these examples, I'm going to summarize the framework into three easy steps to help you use story selling in your very next deal. So let's begin. Let's pretend this is the scenario. I'm presenting my bid in a retail scenario to the customer. The customer says the other guy can do it cheaper. Here's how it works. Hey, Mr. Homeowner. Let's call him Jim. Hey, Jim, totally understand this bid is $2,000 less than mine. And I understand that you want to save some money. Why would you want to overpay for your roof? Now, if you don't mind, may I tell you a story? Alright, Jim, here's what happened. It wasn't, I don't know, six, eight months ago, maybe. I get a call from a customer and not long before that, we were in this exact same scenario. This roofer was $2,000 cheaper than me. And Jim was really concerned about getting a good value and saving money, so he went with the cheaper bid, despite the advice I gave him. And Jim called me up after the roof was done. And I said, jim, why are you calling me and not the other roofer? He goes, adam, I need you out here right now. My chimney started leaking, my ceiling is drenched and stained, my carpets are drenched and they need to get cleaned and we need this roof fixed now. And I said, I get that, Jim, but why are you calling me? The other contractor that did your roof should have a labor warranty to cover it. It was just done six months ago. You know what he said? He goes, adam, I did call that other contractor and guess what? He's out of business. I am stuck. I need your help. So I go out to Jim's house. We not only do that roof repair on the chimney area, the flashing, and have to help him figure out restaining, excuse me, painting his entire ceiling and then cleaning his carpets, which cost him more than the $2,000 that he saved with the cheaper contractor. So Jim, I understand there's a difference between the cost that you see today versus, excuse me, the price you see today versus the cost over the long run. So this other gentleman I worked with, he went with what appeared to be the cheaper price, but it ended up costing him substantially more in the long run. And when people choose a cut rate project, they risk working with financially unstable organizations that may not be around to back them. And they risk cut rate installations that lead to financial consequences later, which means the overall price is much higher. So I would hate to see you end up having this happen to you where you choose a cheaper price, knowing that the cost down the long run is actually there's a much higher risk of it being more and of course the inconvenience. Alright, so there's a story example for this. Alright, now pay attention to this one. See if you can see the similarities. Insurance, give me an estimate. Say the customer's name is Jim. Also I'm switching from Peggy. I wonder if anyone caught that. So, hey Jim, I understand you had a claim on your roof. You want an estimate? Probably want to pocket some cash. I don't blame you. Right? This happened, who can do it for cheaper? Is the insurance paying the right rate? Do you mind if I tell you just a quick story about experience I had in the past? So sure. So Jim, here's the deal. It was newer in my career, I had some fault in this. But I want to share a story with you about a customer who's in a similar situation as you. Calls me up, says, adam, can you give me an estimate on my roof? I said, sure thing. So I go out there, write an estimate. It's a smaller roof, $7,000, 7,500 bucks. I forget the exact dollar amount. And he goes, you know what? Estimate looks great, let's move forward. I said, excellent. So I fill up the Paperwork with him. And I show him all the fine print. You know, the one in a million horror stories of what could come up. You know, we have to do things the right way to keep the house protected, get the. Build the roof up, to code all these things. So he signs it, we're doing the roof. Day one. My crew calls me up. They're out there. Not only was there one layer, not two layers, three layers of roofing shingles, and the bottom one was wood shake, which meant that I had to rush order a separate dumpster for all the wood shake to go in this dumpster, all of the asphalt shingles in this dumpster. And we had to have, you know, do extra runs because it was twice the material. Three if you count the. The wood shake. Then we had to rush order a bunch of plywood to redeck the entire roof. I had to call the customer and say, listen, you know, that fine print, this is the worst case scenario. And we didn't see it because the crew didn't notice. I didn't notice. The previous installer put edge metal on everything, and it was more well hidden than anything I've ever seen before. And that homeowner was almost stuck with a $7,000 extra bill. The price of the roof doubled. And I, you know, from my vantage point, we have to get paid for it. It's just that simple. And then I said to him, or excuse me, the customer says to me, he goes, adam, does this change anything if it's an insurance claim? And I said, you are in luck. It changes everything. I just so happen to be an insurance restoration contractor as well as a roofer, and I would be more than happy to help on this process. Now, if we just flip some paper, I can go to bat for you. I'm going to document everything that's on that's unfolding on this, as long as you give me that claim information. And since we are in progress, we can keep this thing going. Get your house dried in, get your roof put on, and all you're going to pay is your deductible. No more, no less. Everything else is going to be taken care of so you don't have to pay that seven grand out of pocket. How's that sound? The homeowner was ecstatic, and I ended up getting them everything done for just their deductible, which is about 1000 bucks. So what's the key takeaway here, Jim? Is when we shoot for an estimate, we're often doing ourselves a disservice because we're pushing Away the people that can help us and support us. We're taking on excessive risk and we're potentially taking on financial risk. That's completely unnecessary. I, on the other hand, am focused on handling this for you to get your roof done the right way without cutting corners and making sure there's no surprises. So do you see how both those came together? Now I'm going to break them down to show you those elements. You can see how much more powerful this is than me just saying, hey, well if you go to the cheaper guy, it's cut rate versus me, right? That's telling them versus showing via a story. Then we have this one, give me an estimate. Instead of saying, hey, you don't need an estimate. We can tell them that, but only after the story. So here's how it works. You're going to use this three step story selling framework. Like this, you're going to tell a story. Big whoop right there, huh? Shocker. You're going to tell a story. By the way, keep a story bank. It doesn't matter if, if it's the same story over and over. You may have heard that story of the RE deck costing twice as much. Why? Because it's in my story bank. It is the best example of why someone needs to not pursue an estimate in their retail route on a claim because of what can happen in the risks. Okay, so tell a story, keep your story bank there, then summarize your point. So after I tell that story, you remember how both scenarios I said, and this is what happened, he went with the cheaper contractor and it ended up costing him more. The price was higher in the long run. And this is a risk you run when looking for cut rate projects. The price appears cheaper, but the cost, the end cost, is much higher. And you don't know the financial health of an organization, of a company if they're even going to be around to support and back you and then you're left and screwed with problems down the road, right? Or summarizing the point, hey, I know you want an estimate, but that's actually not the ideal way to go about this because you're doing yourself a disservice in pushing away those that can help you and make this process easier, smoother and cost you less money. That's the summary. Then I'm going to tell them what could happen. So I'm going to remind them. Hey Jim, what I'd hate to see is for you to go with the cheaper person because the price looks cheaper now when down the road the cost could be way more substantial because you're risking cut rate installation, you're risking the financial health of the company. You don't know if they're going to be around for the warranty. Alright, so that's summarizing what could happen with the insurance side. Jim, I understand you want an estimate. If you go down this road, if anything comes up, there could be very expensive financial surprises. They're going to fall on you. And whichever contractor you choose, if you choose the cheapest one, you don't know if they're going to be able to back you if something comes up. And frankly to them, they just need to get paid. It's not, they don't care about supporting the process. It's like this is the project, this is what came up. We get paid, we don't operate that way and I'd hate to see that happen to you. So this framework, tell the story, summarize your point and tell them what can happen. Appeals to that hardwired psychological framework. Emotion, logic, fear. Emotion, logic, fear, Tell a story, summarize, tell them what could happen. This is the risks, this is the fear, alright? This is how we get people to take action now. And we're not doing it in a chintzy way. We're not scaring homeowners into a decision. We are using true stories to help facilitate a deeper dialogue, to get them to see our viewpoint, agree with us, like us, trust us and do business with us. So I want you to start using this right now. Create your story bank. What experience do you have? And if you're brand new, think of experience or listen. Talk to other sales reps in the company, talk to the owner. Anything that's relevant you can bring in to use as a real life story in your story bank. And it's okay if it's the same story because each customer, customer is going to have a different experience. So feel free to use them when they work. Why change it, right? Use what works. Now I want you to test it for yourself on your next appointment. Seriously, your very next appointment. When you come up to something and you say, hey, I know this homeowner, it's emotion, logic, fear. They're going to make this decision based on emotion. Do they like me? Do they trust me? Am I connecting with them? Does this seem right? Does it feel right? Then they're going to validate it on logic. Does everything else add up saying, yep, good decision, and then how can I get them to take action now? And then I want you to report back, DM me, email me drop a comment on this video. I want to hear how this is working for you in the field. So here's a summary for the three Step Story Selling framework. We're hardwired to process information in this order. Emotion, logic, fear. All right, all decisions are made. Emotion, logic and fear. So use the framework to tell a story that appeals to the emotion. Summarize the story to validate their emotional response using logic, right? And then what could happen is fear. This is the reminder of the consequences, why someone should take action right now. Now you have the three Step Story Selling framework, which I'm going to just rewind here because I'd love to end on this note. This is the key takeaway to get customers seeing your point. To get them agreeing with you. To get them to like you, trust you, and to choose to work with you without any of this pushy sales stuff. You are guiding them to work with you at their own free will, which will lead to a happier customer experience, an easier sale, less cancellations, less buyer's remorse, less customers ghosting you, more commission in your pocket and everybody wins. Now listen, this story Selling framework works very well when overcoming objections. So if you want to learn more on that, jump into this playlist right here on how to overcome objections. And if you are new here and you haven't done it, you got to take me up on this. Click right here and get a free copy of my Pitch Like a Pro Roofing Sales Training Video Library. All my videos organized by category, easy to reference. So objections here. Pitch Like a Pro Video Library for free right here. I will see you on the very next video.