Storyselling is a sales strategy that uses meaningful stories to connect customers with products or services and convince them to make a purchase. It’s a great strategy because it leverages something we all emotionally connect with when they’re done right: stories.
As long as you have characters, a plot, a conflict, and a good ending, you can create a story that drives sales every time.
Characters: Choose a Hero and a Villain
Without solid characters, there is no story. Storyselling is no different.
At the very least, you need a hero or protagonist (main character). Your customer should always be the hero of your story. That’s how you’re going to get them to really feel the story. They’ll connect to the narrative a lot easier when they’re the main character in it.
Then, every hero needs a villain to keep things interesting. The villain in a story where the main goal is to prompt a sale has to be a problem rather than a person.
For example, if the story is about your product, the villain is the problem your product solves. If you sell software that helps with hiring and recruiting, the villain could be how hard it is to find top talent. If you sell high-top basketball shoes, the villain could be ankle injuries.
To sum things up, your customer is the hero of your story, and the villain is a problem they’re facing.
Plot: What is Your Customer Going Through?
Along with characters, the sequence of events that happen or the plot, carry the story. The storyline is everything. It’s what sucks us in or completely turns us off. Too many details in the plot and the story drags on forever. Not enough details and the story feels incomplete.
Even if very loosely, your plot should follow the traditional structure to ensure it has the most important details in it and has a good pace:
- Exposition– the beginning of the story where characters and the initial storyline are introduced
- Rising action– the conflict comes in and develops
- Climax– the most crucial part of the story where conflict comes to a head and things change
- Falling action– when everything starts to fall into place and conflict starts to subside
- Resolution– the end of the story when the conflict is fully resolved and everything makes sense
More importantly, your plot should align with what your customer is going through. Tell the story from their point of view or with their point of view in mind. Show your customer that you truly know them and the set of circumstances they’re facing and incorporate this context into your narrative.
Your plot needs to be a sequence of events your customers can truly resonate with. It will help get them in this mode of “Hey, this is exactly what I’m going through and I might need the solution offered at the end of this story.”
Conflict: Harp on Your Customer’s Pain Points
Things get juicy in a story when the conflict hits. I haven’t ever gotten through a story where everything is perfect and nothing bad or challenging ever happens. Those stories are boring. And the last thing you want to do is bore people who you want to buy something from you.
Create some tension and add depth to your story. Remember that villain I talked about above? What kind of conflict is it bringing to your customer? Better yet, what kind of havoc is it creating in their life? You can also get into what’s stopping them from solving the issue.
I’ll use the high-top shoe example again. Your customer loves playing basketball. But the game’s been taken away from them more often than not because of ankle injuries.
That scream you let out when you reinjure your ankle after just recovering from another sprain that happened a few weeks ago is something different. They want to get new shoes that protect their ankles better, but the best options are too expensive.
You’re really digging into the challenges your customer is going through and the emotions that come with it. And when you flesh out this conflict the right way, it should lead perfectly into your product or service being the answer. In other words, a good ending.
Ending: You’re the Answer Your Customers Are Looking For
I love a good ending to a story, and so do most people. The really good ones make you feel something. They make you want to get up and do something, especially if you’ve felt yourself in the main character the whole story. This is exactly what you want when storyselling.
Ditch the cliffhangers, complex endings, and sad outcomes. Stick with triumph and how your customer came out on top with the help of the product or service you’re trying to sell them.
The person in the story bought your high-top shoes and hasn’t had an ankle injury since. They bought your hiring and recruiting software, found the best person for the job, and profits doubled. They hired you as their personal fitness coach, lost 60 pounds, and reversed diabetes.
Your customer ends up being the hero in your story, but your product or service was the answer that got them there.
How Do You Use Stories to Make a Sale?
Create a good story with great characters, a thick plot, a juicy conflict, and a good ending. Tell the story in a captivating way, and voila! Sale. Well, there’s a little more to it than that.
To use stories to make a sale you have to hammer home one thing: your product or service is the reason this story has a happy ending. It’s the reason the main character is thriving now. It’s the reason all of their pain points went away.
In addition to positioning your product or service as the solution, you need to tell the right stories to inspire action.
What Kind of Stories are Most Impactful to Tell Customers?
You might want to tell every story, but it’s not realistic. Nor is it worth all the time and effort to create them because it’s much more productive to focus on the stories that will have the most impact and prompt a sale:
Here is a short list of those stories:
- The story of the person/customer who inspired you to start your business
- How the most unlikely people became customers
- Product stories that really illustrate how a customer’s life changed
- Stories about the biggest pain points your customers have
How Long Should Stories Be?
You’ve probably heard something vague like short enough to keep someone’s attention but long enough to get the point across with the details that matter. But I want to give you something more concrete based on the mediums businesses use most for storyselling:
- If it’s a written story for a blog or website, keep it at anywhere from 800-2,000 words, depending on the story you’re telling.
- If it’s a video story, keep short videos less than 2 minutes and long videos less than 10 minutes.
- If it’s a social media post, work with the caption character count for the specific platform. Instagram allows 2,200 characters (365-468 words), but they usually shorten the captions at 125 characters and people have to click on it to read the rest. Facebook’s character limit is 5,000 (800-1,000 words). X has a 280-character limit (40-50 words). LinkedIn gives you 700 characters (130-150 words).
- If it’s a carousel post, use no more than 10 slides with a visual and 1-2 sentences on each.
- If it’s an infographic, make it a one-page illustration. No more than six sections or points with images assigned to each.
Why is Storyselling so Powerful?
Storyselling is so powerful for a few reasons. You’ve probably heard this before but our brains retain information given to us through stories far better than when we’re just being fed straight data and statistics.
So, when you weave your product or service into a story, a person will likely remember it. Also, people resonate emotionally with stories that they can see themselves in, and emotions drive actions.
Stories are easier to digest as well. You can explain those complex concepts or hard-to-figure-out features better in a story because you can illustrate how a person used them in real life.
Finally, storyselling sets you apart from the many competitors who are drowning their potential customers in “Buy this!” Storyselling shows you cared enough to get to know them and what they’re really going through before asking them for anything. People like this in sales as much as they like it in relationships.
What is the Golden Rule of Storyselling?
The golden rule of storyselling is make your customer the hero in the story, emotionally connect with them by highlighting their pain point, and position your product or service as the solution to their problem.
A Prime Example of Successful Storyselling
Nike is one of the best at storyselling. They speak directly to athletes or people who play sports competitively and tell their stories so well, especially in commercials.
One of my favorites is the “You Can’t Stop Us” commercial from 2020. It spread a message of unity at a time when we were all divided. It also told the story so many athletes learn; that you can’t do it alone and don’t have to.
They don’t mention their products at all in the commercial. But everyone’s wearing them. And everyone in the commercial is thriving, fighting, and achieving something. The hope is that everyone watching thinks their products have a lot to do with that.
Even if you don’t think that, they tell the story so well that you just want to go out and support the brand. And that’s what it’s all about.
