In life, great stories can have a profound impact. Hence why you (we) wept like a baby at the end of Titanic.
But great stories don’t just belong on the big screen. Their power belongs in the business world too. The key to a sales pitch that wins clients, gets business, and drives results? You guessed it. Storytelling.
In this post, we’re going to walk you through positioning master April Dunford’s sales story framework. This is the narrative that helps you easily communicate the unique value of your product to customers.
Time for some introspection. Here are seven questions you’re going to need to ask yourself.
- What’s the problem you’re solving?
- What else is out there that addresses the problem?
- What’s the perfect world solution for your customer?
- Who are you?
- What value do you bring?
- What’s your proof?
- What do you want the customer to do?
Ready? Let’s get started.
Step 1: What’s the problem you’re solving?
For this exercise, let’s create a hypothetical scenario. You’re a manager at a messaging-for-work app. We’ll call it Stack. You want your sales team to go after one of the big fish in tech, and for that, they need a compelling sales pitch.
To start framing the problem, identify a characteristic that:
- Sets your company apart from the competition
- Could solve big problems for a potential customer
Stack is unique because it’s instant, easy to use, and it saves time. In a dispersed workplace world, it’s bringing teams together to solve problems and collaborate in real-time, from anywhere in the world.
Your best-fit customers are medium to large orgs that have decentralized teams that need to move fast, kick ass, and take names. So how could instant, easy messaging solve a big problem for those people?
Choose the option you think is best.
A. Too many meetings are requiring too many people and too many hours.
B. Email chains get buried and create productivity bottlenecks, costing your company a lot of money in time lost.
C. Your team works remotely and is spread across five time zones.
D. Rich keeps group-texting the team after hours.
E. All the above.
Did you pick E? Beyond the fact that Rich should just stop, these scenarios actually do matter to your customer.
The problem is that the company is losing countless hours of productivity from emails and meetings that could be messages.
Takeaway: To frame the problem, identify something your company does really well that solves a big, thorny problem for your customer.
Step 2: What else is out there that addresses the problem?
Now that you’ve framed the problem, look into what else is out there for these customers. What are the advantages and disadvantages to each approach?
“Steams is proprietary to MicroChalk, and they have huge B2B sales muscles.”
“Meetings are more personal.”
“Email is old-people friendly.”
Now you can pivot…
“But there’s one thing that all these solutions CAN’T do: Connect a team for an impromptu, emoji-filled chat to get questions answered quickly.”
Boom.
You’ve just proved that in a world full of solutions, most of them lack the thing your customer needs.
Step 3: What’s the perfect world solution for your customer?
In this step, you will define what a perfect solution would be. In essence, you’re defining your customers’ purchase criteria.
The first step: Put forth a point of view that your customer is likely to align with. For instance:
We want to encourage collaboration and heads-down time over butts in seats and recurring meetings.
The second step: Tie your original point of view to a vision of a “perfect world,” where their problem is solved.
In a perfect world, we’d bring water cooler chats to the home office.
Heads should be nodding and now you can transition into your sales pitch.
Step 4: Who are you?
Okay – so you’ve visualized the perfect world. Now you must demonstrate how your product meets the “perfect world” criteria.
Re-introduce your product. You are Stack, a communication tool for the modern workplace.
Step 5: What do you bring to the table?
Now explain how exactly you deliver value is the centerpiece of the sales story. This should be short and sweet. “We deliver 1, 2, 3. Here's how.”
Here at Stack, we save your distributed team hours each day by taking away the formality of email, the optional attendees of meetings, and the cost of a phone line with an instant, easy, fun messaging app.
Step 6: What’s your proof?
Customers want to see proof. And proof you shall give them! Stackers, it would behoove you to point to your impact on productivity metrics, customer reviews, or accolades in the press.
For example: Customers have an 85% improvement in time to first deal and a 48% improvement in time to reaching quota.
“The Cog Ops team saw 20% fewer recurring meetings in the first six months of onboarding Stack.”
“OMG. Email is dead and so am I. Stack for Work is everything.” - Alyssa, social coordinator
“Stack is the only work notification you’ll ever need.” - Bizniz Digest
Step 7: What do you want the customer to do?
Get to the point already! This is all well and good, but you are trying to sell something, so there comes a time when you’re going to have to ask people to buy it.
Your call to action can be an offer of a demo, an invite to talk more over Stack instead of a calendar invitation, a short survey to drill down on their specific needs. Make the next steps clear to you and your prospective customer.
—
A powerful sales story isn’t a highlight reel of your product. It’s a guided journey for your customer to make sense of their options and the assurance that they’ve made the best possible choice. Because, hey, you’re STACK!
Want to apply this sales story to your business? Download our sales pitch template to put your learnings into practice.
To learn more about how to make your products stand out in a crowded world, join the Product Positioning Sprint, taught by positioning expert April Dunford.
