Where Are Your Stories?

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By Brad Shorr | February 19, 2007

Most would agree that the most effective way to communicate a sales message is by using a story. Yet, most sales letters and collateral are loaded with everything but stories. Assertions. Ideas. Features. Benefits. Information. Where are the stories?

Sometimes, the best stories we have are so close we don’t even see them.

Here’s an example. A friend of mine in commercial banking recently showed me a sales letter she was planning to send to potential clients. The purpose of the letter was to introduce herself and interest the CEO in scheduling a meeting.

The letter, which wasn’t bad at all, talked about the usual things–her commitment to service, her creativity, her bank’s broad array of products. All true, good, but not much different from the twenty other solicitation letters that land on a CEO’s desk on any given day.

I asked her, “Do you have any stories of how you really made a difference to a client?”

She told me about how she had once owned her own business. That experience, she said, helps her understand what companies go through when they’re starting out and struggling to obtain financing.

That statement, in fact, appeared somewhere in the body of her letter.

I pressed her for an example of how this understanding had played out in her work. After awhile, she started telling me about a company she had called on three or four years ago. It was a brick-and-mortar start-up, strapped for cash. They had been rejected for a loan by bank after bank. But she looked deeper than these other banks and saw the underlying value. She worked overtime to put together a loan program, and now, a few years later, the company has a thriving business.

“There’s your story,” I said.

To me, the way my friend handled the situation is inspiring and, as banking stories go, even heroic. But to her, the episode was so much a part of her daily routine and outlook, she barely recognized it as something worth talking about.

We changed the letter to highlight this story, making it more memorable and more credible. Stories have a way of doing that when they’re real. It’s worth the effort to look!

Word Sell … Scrambled Toast

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