Stanford University Professor Chip Heath asked his students to give one-minute speeches about crime. The average student used 2.5 statistics in his speech, while only one in ten students told a story. But when students were asked to recall the speeches, 63 percent remembered details of stories. Only 5 percent remembered any individual statistic.5

the most commonly used tactic for identifying story topics is looking around the buyer’s office for clues to common interests. As Eric Storey explained, “When I enter a buyer’s office, I look around. What personal items are on the desk and wall? Pictures of family, race ribbons, diplomas? All are clues to potential connections we have.” But today,

your first homework assignment is to develop this kind of story for yourself. Here’s how. Start by inventing a main character who’s in a typical industry you serve (“Suppose you’re in the chicken business”). Then describe a plausible series of events (“get the chicken from the farm to the retail store”) that results in the problem your product or

EXERCISES 1. What are the three most common objections you get during sales calls? For each objection, think of an occasion involving a current or previous customer (or even another prospect) that demonstrates the fallaciousness of the objection. Ask your customers or other salespeople in your office for help identifying such an occasion. 2. Think

EXERCISES Develop stories for the five most common uses of storytelling during the main sales pitch. 1. Your product’s invention or discovery story. What situation gave rise to the inventor creating this product? This is a personal story from the inventor’s perspective, not an impersonal “corporate” story. 2. Problem story. Like the bank calling

being

“First, tell me when you cannot help me. And second, tell me when you made a mistake before I find out from someone else.”

the app Refresh. It accesses your online calendar, identifies the people you have upcoming meetings with, puts together a dossier on their background and interests, and sends it to you prior to your meeting. Based on their public social media profiles, it can tell you what their interests are, pull recent headlines about the company they work for

1. Create a list of questions to elicit the following stories from your buyers. In your next meeting, ask them for: Personal stories to help you get to know them better Stories about the biggest problems they’re facing, so you can get a concrete idea of how you might help them Stories about how their favorite suppliers became their favorite suppliers,