When a potential customer asks you to talk about your business, your first inclination may be to sell them all the great technologies and services you offer. But the best way to separate yourself from the pack isn’t to talk up some impressive array of powerful tools; it’s to share how you’ve helped customers in similar situations achieve better outcomes. Because if you’ve truly benefitted your customers, they have a convincing story to tell about how you’ve helped others achieve success. So, stop selling features and benefits and take the following steps to start using your customer’s story to tell your own.

COUNT YOUR WINS

To tell a good story, you need to know it by heart. So, well ahead of any meeting or sales call, you should catalog relevant examples of times when you’ve helped a business reach a positive outcome. Categorize them by vertical, business size, types of challenges overcome, types of goals achieved, or any details that you may be able to relate to a potential customer’s current situation. Also, make sure you’re having this conversation with your existing customers, so you’re aware of all the positive results your solutions have helped create.

START WITH A HOOK

Once a conversation turns to what you do and how you can help, using the words “typically” or “usually” is a great place to start. These words establish that you regularly help business leaders in similar situations and allow you to enter the conversation from a place of expertise. Emotionally, they will enable the prospect to see that their pain points are not unique and build confidence that you may be able to help since you’ve solved problems like these before. 

For example, “Typically, businesses in your current position have told us that after implementing our services, their staff was more knowledgeable about cyber threats, which helped them detect and avoid several malware attack attempts.”

GET SPECIFIC

To effectively recall your success stories and relate them to your potential customer, use the following questions to dive into the specifics. Make sure to include each of these details in your success stories. 

  • What problem did you solve for your customer?  

Provide details about how you solved the problem.    

  • What was the impact of the problem before you fixed it?  

Relate pain points you know your customer is currently experiencing to the pain points your customers had before they hired you. 

  • Who was most impacted?  

Consider the person sitting across from you. How did your solutions help make life easier for someone in their role?  

  • How are the solutions you offer leading to better outcomes for your customers?  

Highlight the benefits of working with you specifically. 

Keep in mind that although business owners must think big, playing to grand ambitions isn’t wise when relaying outcomes. People are much more likely to respond to fixing something that’s broken than they are to react positively to some imaginary optimistic scenario. So, when highlighting results, think more in terms of risk mitigated and dollars saved and employ phrases such as “more efficient,” “costs less,” and “more effective.”

TELL YOUR STORY

Use these specifics to construct a concise story such as this one:

“A local business we worked with similar to yours had outdated IT infrastructure that wasn’t keeping up with their ability to grow. So, they used our help to right-size their computing power which allowed them to add employees and expand with the confidence that their technology could keep up with their growth plans.” 

Unlike unengaging technical jargon that attempts to sell high-tech solutions, tangible customer success stories like the one above are empathetic, relevant, provide social proof, and are easy to pivot from if the conversation takes a different direction. 

If you feel like you could use more guidance on how to tell your story or want to learn more effective sales techniques like the one above, contact OSR Manage today.