Top sales producers know that words can form pictures that can conjure up galaxies of impressions. Words can power the imagination, trigger dreams, make men march off to war, ignite or extinguish love. Words can form images that last for years or even generations.

The right combination of words can result in a powerful “word picture.” All powerful communicators use stories and metaphors. Leaders control and influence masses of people with word pictures and stories. Jesus taught with parables that are still inspiring and guiding us today. Whether you like or dislike Ronald Reagan’s politics, you must agree that he is a powerful communicator. And, if you listen to how Reagan handles tough questions or makes a point, you will find he frequently tells a story. It may be a story about a little girl who wrote him a letter about her father being out of work, or it may be a story about his wife Nancy or it may be a story about Tip O’Neill, but whatever the story, Reagan uses it to make his point elegantly, persuasively and powerfully.

According to our research, the most powerful and successful salespeople use stories and metaphors to win customers.

A very successful life insurance agent was struggling to sell a large universal life policy to a wealthy young entrepreneur. The young man liked the policy, but was considering doing business with a smaller life insurance company. He thought a smaller company would give him, his wife and children better and more personalized service. The successful agent thought about this objection for a moment and then said, “Let’s say you and your family were going to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to England. You had your choice of going on the Queen Elizabeth II or on a tugboat. Do you think you could get better service on the Queen Elizabeth II or on the tugboat? Well, we are like the QE II and that smaller company is like the tugboat. And, the amazing thing is that we don’t cost any more than that tugboat. Now, who do you want to make this journey with, us or that smaller company?”

The story made all the right points. The logic was irrefutable. The images were clear and persuasive. The story closed the sale.

Even though until recently story telling has not been taught in sales training courses, it is nonetheless an essential ingredient in master salesmanship. No one had the tools to systematically teach story telling to salespeople who weren’t born with an obvious story telling gift. The common perception was that some people can tell stories and others can’t.

However, using developments from modern psycholinguistics (the science of words and the impact words have on people), the power of story telling can finally be shared with the average salesperson. The magic, charm, and charisma of top salespeople – qualities that top achievers take for granted – are now at hand for any salesperson who is willing to learn the skill of story telling. And, the studies are showing this skill definitely increases sales.

Most great motivational speakers, such as Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins, have used stories for years in their famous and well-known speeches. Some of Zig Ziglar’s speeches, for example, are almost nonstop stories, story after story after story. While these great speakers have used stories to motivate and inspire their audiences, they have not imparted these techniques to the audience. The tools of psycholinguistics can now put the power of these sales giants into the hands of almost any sales professional.

How Long Is A Good Sales Story?

Sales stories do not have to be long to be good. Some of the best ones – although only a few sentences long – stick in your mind like glue. Their power comes from their ability to trip the human imagination.

For thousands of years, the best storytellers have known that details that are left out of stories will be automatically and effortlessly filled in by the listener’s imagination. For example, the less seen or told about a scary monster (one big claw, clamped around the door, dripping blood!), the more havoc the creature plays on the imagination. The producers of the film Alien, who showed us bits and pieces of the frightening monster, were using a proven technique that has been employed by master storytellers for thousands of years.

Sales superstars let words play on the range and depth of the human imagination. Sales champions, like Hollywood writers, can let a glimpse of something stand for the whole. No makeup or special effects wizardry can match for sheer power the force of what we think the alien creature looks like. And, in selling, choosing the right words to tell your story can motivate your prospects and customers to take action – in ways ordinary information never can.

So why don’t more sales professionals take advantage of the rich resources of story selling?

Why Do Stories Work So Well?

The psychology of sales stories is fascinating. First, of course, a good sales story grabs the customer’s attention. Then the story focuses the customer’s attention. Here are some of the additional psychodynamics of sales stories:

1. Good sales stories make the customer relax, putting him or her in what we call the “entertainment mode.” Anxiety drops dramatically. It is interesting to note that skilled psychotherapists also use stories to lessen the anxiety of patients and then to guide them to take a new course of action.

2. People tend to be less critical in listening to stories than when sitting through a fact-packed formal presentation. Your prospect’s mood shifts toward receptivity – not unlike going to a play or seeing a film. Defenses drop. Information and suggestions slip in unnoticed by the conscious mind, yet they have a powerful impact on subconscious buying behavior.

3. Stories contain vivid images and potent messages. A good storyseller turns a success story into an unforgettable tale, in which the prospect puts himself right into the action of the story. The story is then about the prospect rather than about someone else!

Develop Your Story-Selling Skills

How can you become a more effective storyseller? Mediocre salespeople tell stories in short, choppy sentences; top sales producers, however, link everything together into one long flow with the frequent use of the word “and” to connect sentence after sentence after sentence. The effect of repeatedly using the conjunctive “and” to link sentences together is positively hypnotic.

In addition to connecting all the parts of a story into a flow, top salespeople give special emphasis to emotionally laden words and phrases. This emphasis on how you say what you say is just as important as the content of the story itself. The best training in story selling involves much practice. Simply listening to a great storyseller does not guarantee you will be able to analyze or pick up any of his or her skills. However, with the right analytic tools and with some practice and coaching, your self-confidence with story selling will rise dramatically.

The greatest storytellers in history were not necessarily the ones who made up the most original story. In many cases, they were the ones who told well-known stories the best. How Odysseus escaped from the clutches of the Cyclops was known long before Homer. Homer just retold the story better than anyone else! Many best selling books today, including sales training books, contain information and techniques that are commonsense or well known. What makes one book sell a thousand times more copies than another is how well its stories are written and told.

The majority of salespeople within an industry all know the basic “successful applications” stories. But if the product and the price are about the same – it is the individual salespeople who tell these stories the best who win the sale!

If you have the chance to spend some time with one of your company’s top producers, seize the opportunity! Go on sales calls with him or her, tape the presentations and then transcribe them. You will be amazed to learn that in a 45-minute presentation you might hear more than a dozen powerful sales stories! And, after doing this a few times, you will find that your understanding of the dynamics of story selling and your skills in telling sales stories have greatly increased. We have been hired by many companies to travel on sales calls with their top producers and we have learned much of what we know about powerful story-selling techniques by watching and recording these sales champions in action.

We have found it best to collect a range of stories. Some customers respond best to funny stories. Others want stories laden with benefits. Some customers are most motivated by stories that show them how to avoid or solve a problem. There are dozens of different types of stories you will want to collect to multiply your selling power.

A mediocre sales performer tends to retreat into the security of product data and facts when a prospect raises objections or poses tough questions. Most product data is already adequately covered in brochures and product literature. The job of the sales professional is to make those facts come alive and the best way of infusing life into these facts is with the art of story selling.

Good storysellers have to be good listeners as well. By listening attentively, they learn what kinds of images and characters their prospects will respond to best. The most powerful stories are stories that are customized for each prospect, and these also strengthen rapport between the sales professional and customer.

We have found that top sales managers need stories as much as do top salespeople. Effective sales managers encourage and guide their sales teams by telling success stories and “near miss” stories, along with an analysis of how that miss could have been successful. Sales managers also motivate with “thrill of victory” stories and educate with “agony of defeat” stories.

Human beings may be the only animals that think and dream and plan in terms of stories and therefore storytelling may be one of the highest human qualities.

The truth of the matter remains that while powerful sales stories will help you sell more products and services, they will also help to enrich all of your relationships with your customers. And that reward, to many sales professionals, is just as important as big commission checks.

Donald J. Moine, Ph.D., is a speaker and motivational trainer with the Association For Human Achievement in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. He is coauthor of Modern Persuasion Strategies: The Hidden Advantage in Selling, a book on neuro-linguistic programming and salesmanship. Dr. Moine has been a consultant and sales trainer to many financial services and high-technology companies. Dr. Moine and Gerhard Gschwandtner are currently writing the first book ever on The Power of Story Selling, which will contain a collection of some of the most powerful sales stories ever assembled. For more information about this upcoming book, call, the Association For Human Achievement, 213/378-2666.

Linda Seard produces sales story training books for the Association for Human Achievement. She is a specialist in modern sales training and objection-handling techniques.