This lament came from a head of sales.
He noted that they had invested in storytelling training, thinking that storytelling skills would give his customer-facing team superior sales performance over his competition. Sadly, it didn’t!
In fact, he reported that win rates and sales stage conversions had decreased since the training took place.
We explored his situation, and I watched a number of his team’s discovery calls and demo recordings.
What became clear was that his team’s focus on storytelling negatively impacted their application of core discovery and demo skills: They believed that good storytelling would replace the need to execute these fundamentals well.
The recordings also showed that only a few team members were actually good at storytelling.
Worse, many of the stories employed by the team were not engaging or compelling. They were simply facts (and claims!) reset in storytelling structures. They lacked authenticity and impact.
Storytelling is not a replacement for core skills; storytelling supplements, enhances, supports, and entertains.
- Surgeons can’t simply tell stories about successful surgeries; they must also have the necessary skills (before they open you up!)
- Contractors can’t simply tell stories about great construction projects; they must also have the necessary skills (before they pour your new foundation!)
- Chefs can’t simply tell stories about fabulous meals; they must also have the necessary skills (before they feed you something unpalatable!)
Sales, presales, and customer-success teams can’t simply tell stories about happy customers; they must also have the necessary discovery and demo skills to execute their roles successfully.
Establish a superior core set of skills, then add storytelling!
And here are excellent starting points!
Doing Discovery
https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/
Great Demo! Third Edition:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/
Doing Discovery Workshops
https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/doing-discovery/
Great Demo! Workshops
https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/great-demo/
Then add storytelling (here are some examples):
Suspending Disbelief:
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