Copyright 2006 Stuart Elliott
If you want to get someone to pay attention to what you are saying, tell a story!
Everybody loves to listen to a good story but not many people tell stories in their sales letters and that's a pity because story telling is a sure-fire way of capturing a persons attention.
Selling and story telling are skills that we all possess but very few of us capitalise upon...
Think about your life and the things you've done and you'll be able to come up with hundreds of stories, all you've got to do now is package one and include it next time you write.
Start off with something like "I can remember the day I... " and instantly your listener will give you their full attention, wanting to hear more.
Here's an example of some selling that everybody does at some time or another, without even thinking:
Remember that fantastic movie you saw the other week and how you told all your friends about it, and you said they'd be mad to miss watching it?
Well that is selling by using stories in a nut-shell, and we all do it, we all have it inside ourselves!
What is more difficult, however is to take that natural skill and transfer it to our product. In other words to actually take those words and put them down on paper or in the case of online selling, onto that 'magic' little screen that allows us to talk to millions of other people around the world.
We often come up with a total blank when we try to put our thoughts down and write copy to sell our product.
When this happens we should revisit the wisdom of our ancestors, go back to the days before we all had computers and further still, to the times before books or even paper were thought about.
Go on think back...
Are you there yet?
Well, how did our ancestors pass on their messages and the folk lore of their times? They used stories. They told stories that captivated their listener's attention and kept them where they were, listening in enraptured silence to the lore of ancients.
Motivational Speakers Use Them Too
Think about all the great motivational speakers, how do they capture their audiences attention? They use stories of course. They paint a picture with words so powerfully that it allows their audience to SEE exactly what they are talking about!
I remember watching the great Jim Rohn in action a few years ago. He was telling a story of how, as a youngster, the bank wanted to repossess his car because he was having difficulty meeting the monthly payments.
He went on to tell how, on the day the tow truck came to take his car back, he stormed into the bank with a bag full of one cent pieces and slammed it on the desk right in front of the manager. How he told the manager to count out the money, every last cent that was owed, and the great satisfaction he had as he sat there for over an hour and watched the manager do just that, clear his debt and call back his hounds!
The audience were gripped, there were several thousand of us there that day, we all felt Jim's acute pain and embarrassment at having the tow truck appear outside his house to repossess his car. We shared his feelings of joy and triumph over the bank so intently that we were transformed into the person who made the manager reluctantly accept our money, all the thousands of one-cent pieces!
Did we listen to the rest of his speech? You bet we did!
Picture now, an audience of thousands perched so far onto the very tips of their seats that they are in constant danger of falling to the ground, afraid that if they breath or move even a fraction of an inch they would miss one of the momentous words that were being spoken.
That was us! So intent were we upon his words that if he had whispered his speech to us we still would have heard it no matter how far away we were.
This lasted for a full 90 minutes and in that time not one of us moved lest we missed a single word from the master. Afterwards we were left gasping for breath and sat there, momentarily stunned into an awed silence as we digested what we had heard.
Such is the power of words in the hand of a master, but the tools he uses are tools that we possess, each and every one of us!
They are tools that we should be using whenever we sell our product.
Everybody has stories they can tell and you should use your own personal stories the next time you write a sales letter to sell your product!
Don't rely on the tired words and experiences of others, you are unique in this world ?V market that uniqueness.
What have I just done to make you read this far? Simply share a story in my own way, that's all. It is something you should be applying right now in your business, every time you think about your products and how you can market them.
Your life is full of stories, share them with the thousands who want to listen, use them and you will sell more of your products! |
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