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Professional buyers will tell you (like they told me) that competitors in just about every space are so similar that it’s hard to tell them apart. They need a differentiation story—which means you need a differentiation story. One of my favorite examples of that comes from Sharad Madison, CEO of United Building Maintenance. UBM is a [read more]

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Who knew you could learn so much about running a business and understanding your customers from a professional photographer and a candle? I didn’t. But then I had a chat with Jeffrey Shaw, former photographer turned business coach and author. He spent three decades as highly-sought after portrait photographer. Now he’s the host of business [read more]

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Can you use the same storytelling techniques with data that you can with words? Of course, you can. In a previous article, I shared one method of telling stories with data. In the video above, I’ll show you another method that I call the “Discovery Journey” story method. And it has nothing to do with [read more]

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Nobody ever quit their job and started their own company for a boring reason. And that’s why one story every salesperson should have in their arsenal is their company’s founding story. It introduces the prospect to the person who started your company and helps them see and feel why it was started in the first [read more]

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Humans have a habit of judging people before even meeting them — often just based on what they do for a living. And unfortunately, just working in sales is sometimes enough to create rather powerful — and negative — preconceptions. And until you can get your prospect past those preconceptions, your job will be much [read more]

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{The 8th in a series of the 25 most useful sales stories.} One of the types of stories you’ll find useful in the rapport-building phase of the sales cycle is one to assure your prospect that, when necessary, you’re willing to go to bat for them with your own company’s leadership. Of course, that doesn’t mean [read more]

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{The 7th in a series of the 25 most useful sales stories} One of the things I learned from interviewing professional buyers was that there are two things salespeople can do to immediately earn buyers’ trust and credibility. In the words one buyer used to explain it, “First, tell me when you can not help me. And [read more]

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{The 6th in a series of the 25 most useful sales stories.} One of the things I learned from interviewing professional buyers was that there are two things salespeople can do to immediately earn buyers’ trust and credibility. In the words one buyer used to explain it, “First, tell me when you can not help me. [read more]

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{This is the 5th in a series of the 25 most useful sales stories salespeople should have in their repertoire.} The major premise of Simon Sinek’s bestselling book Start with Why can be summarized in his statement “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” It should make sense, then, that in order [read more]