In August I had the pleasure of attending the California Mortgage Bankers Association's sales and marketing show, which was co-presented with the California Association of Mortgage Professionals. Among the speakers were Deborah Shames and David Booth of Eloqui, who spoke of the need to create a connection with the client.
The best way to do that, they said, was to share a success story with the prospect.
But success stories don't just work on consumers. Bill Lee, president of the Customer Reference Forum, says success stories are even more effective as training tools for sales people. They can have a more direct and powerful impact on sales closing rates.
Lee gave the example of Huthwaite, a sales performance improvement organization, which was called in to work with a medical products company launching a new device.
The sales staff was dependent on the firm's marketing collateral to understand how this new device worked.
Huthwaite found the collateral focused on the device's features rather than the buyer's needs and solution benefits.
So Huthwaite took a small group of the firm's sales staff, told them to ignore the product's features and instead provided them with a list of specific customer problems and needs the device would solve.
The sales staff was also asked to make a list of customers who might have those, or similar, needs and a list of questions that would help them probe to uncover them and their business implications.
Lee noted the group that used Huthwaite's advice had a 54% higher level of sales during the first year of the product's launch.
"Suppose that, for an important offering your firm is selling, 30% of your sales [force] lacks the knowledge they need to properly sell it. That figure might be conservative, depending on the newness of the solution, churn in the sales force, lack of adequate or timely training, and so forth.
"If providing success story training materials to the less knowledgeable sales people is even half as successful as the Huthwaite's experiment, then you've still increased revenues for the solution by about 8% in the first year," Lee said.
During their presentation, Shames and Booth said a success story is like a three-act play. There is an obstacle to be overcome, a solution is offered and there is a benefit to using that solution.
Even sales people who hear such a story from their trainer should understand the point.
