I have paraphrased a little, but that’s pretty much what someone wrote after taking my course, Selling with Stories.
He felt a little disappointed because I hadn’t given him a structure or template he could use for creating stories as part of his direct sales promotions. My bad. Kind of.
My mistake, I think, was not in what I taught… but in how I failed to be 100 percent clear about what I’d be teaching.
When I created the course I did so based on a strong belief that the whole idea of “selling” online is changing, and changing fast.
The traditional hard-sell approach is on the way out.
A more sincere and story-based style of selling is on the way in.
There are two reasons for this.
First, the social web just isn’t a natural venue for the hard sell.
In fact, any social setting is a bad place for a direct sales pitch. Maybe you’ve been to a neighborhood BBQ and had someone approach you with his or her latest multi-level marketing pitch. Wrong place. Wrong time. Totally unwelcome.
If you want to be all about the pitch, there are places you can do that.
TV ads, print magazine ads, billboards and direct mail are all one-way communications platforms. The advertiser talks at an audience. Not social at all. So if you want to go for the hard sell in those places, knock yourself out.
But when you’re in a social setting, the rules are different.
Now consider “story” and how that fits into a social setting.
If someone comes up to you at that BBQ and starts telling you an interesting story, that’s OK. Could be a funny story, a sad story, an entertaining story or a story with some timely news included.
Stories told and shared at BBQs, around the water cooler at work, in your favorite bar, or around the kitchen tale at home… they are all welcome.
The hard sell is not a good fit within social settings.
Telling stories is the perfect fit within social settings.
Knock-knock… the web is a social setting!
The web is not one of those old-school, one-way communications platforms where companies can shout at their audience.
The web is a shared, social platform and always has been. But with the growth of social media, the social nature of the web is becoming increasingly clear.
And that means if you want to sell products or services online, you have to “abide by the new rules”.
You have to sell in a way that is acceptable in a place where communications are, for the most part, social.
Which brings me to the second reason why the long-form, hard-hitting sales approach is a poor fit online…
The web is moving to mobile.
Take a look at anyone younger than 40 and you’ll see they spend very little time on their computers.
Most of their time online is spent on their smartphones.
And while they are on their phones, they spend most of the time on mobile apps, and not on the traditional web.
How well do you think your “selling at them” approach is going to work with an audience that spends most of its time on fast-moving, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat?
If you want to sell to a socially engaged audience, you need a socially engaging vehicle – like stories.
OK… so why did my customer think my course was a fail?
Because he thought I would teach him how to fit stories into a traditional sales structure.
He thought he would learn how to use stories to make his traditional sales pitches stronger.
But that’s not what I teach in Selling with Stories.
What I teach is how a good story can replace the traditional sales approach. I show you how a good story can hook an audience of prospects, appeal to their hearts as well as their heads, engage them more deeply, and make them want to become your customers.
More pulling and less pushing.
On the social web, stories are replacing sales copy as the smart way to build an audience of engaged prospects… and to then convert those prospects into happy customers.
NOTE: If you want to know more about the power of telling stories, check out my course, Selling With Stories…
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