Next to “communicating business value” storytelling is the most frequent demo skills improvement sought by sales and presales managers. But just “wrapping a story around your demo” is not a simple or effective solution. Successful Storytelling is about communication stickiness and the ability for your prospects to remember – and retell – your key messages.
Similarly, “A Day in the Life” demo is not an effective story. It’s just a framework and is not compelling on its own.
Level 8 practitioners use stories when presenting their most important points, critical concepts and key competitive capabilities. Stories help make these ideas memorable, enabling prospect players to retell those same stories with high fidelity within their own organization.
Stories about how other, similar customers successfully used your capabilities to address their challenges are engaging and stimulate interest: They generate hope and curiosity, “If they could do it, then we probably can as well – and I wonder how they did it?” This is where you harvest and apply Informal Success Stories in your demos.
Stories don’t need to be Norse sagas! Sometimes, simple is better.
Never tell a good story once! When you find stories that resonate strongly, practice retelling these to tune and improve your delivery and their impact.
Measurement(s) for Achieving Level 8:
A) Uses structured stories to support key capabilities or concepts.
B) Bonus: Prospects retell your stories internally!
Pros:
- Makes your demos particularly remarkable and memorable.
- Enables champions to recommunicate key ideas effectively.
Cons:
- Requires extensive personal experience or a team stories repository.
Grade: A
\Want a couple of demo horror stories? (Of course you do!)
See “The Credit Card Story” and “Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory” in Suspending Disbelief:
And here’s a bit more on “Effective Storytelling in Discovery, Demos, and More”
See Chapter 14 in the Third Edition of Great Demo! for a complete treatment of storytelling in demos.
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