One of the things that my kids ask me every single night before they go to bed, sometimes I do it, depending on time, and sometimes I don’t, is to tell them a bedtime story.  I think that all of us enjoy a good story.  It starts from very early on.

The reason is, if you trace this back to the caveman days of history and how learning was passed on from one person to another, it all started with the campfire story.  Stories were told from one person to the next were handed down from generation to generation.

Genetically, I think that we are wired to enjoy story telling for the sake of entertainment and sometimes to learn.

In those stories that I tell them at night I often times have some kind of tie in to achievement, or learning, or being a good person in general, some sort of moral to that story; although it gets very difficult after having done it for ten years.  But nonetheless, they love stories.  It is the same thing with your sales people; your sales people learn and can be motivated extremely effectively through story telling.

That’s what we are talking about on this week’s show.

If you are a sales manager who loves every part of your job except speaking in front of groups, then this is definitely a show for you.

Stories will be very effective in one on one conversation as well as group presentations that you need to do for regional or weekly sales meetings, or even on conference calls and tele-seminars.

As a sales manager you have to master the art of public speaking.  The easiest and best way to do that is to integrate story telling into that public speaking so that you can motivate your troops and keep them engaged while teaching them a lesson at the same time.

Each month you have a sales meeting, you take up the podium and you have the usual round up of sales stats, pie charts and graphs.  As you are going through them, your sales managers in the audience start to fidget, you notice that you are starting to lose them a little bit; their eyes glaze over. Even though you haven’t finished your entire part of the presentation, you know that you have lost your audience.  The reason is because graph and charts are mundane and boring.  Stories about those charts and graphs really help sell your message far more effectively.

Like we said before, people remember stories much longer than they ever remember charts and graphs because they can relate to it.  A story lowers an individual’s defenses.  You are naturally hard wired, from the days back of the caveman, before human history relied on the written word of books and manuscripts, stories were passed along by word of mouth and that is how people learned.

Stories both boost retention levels, but they also help to make sure that your particular sales message has a certain amount of legs.  If you want people to talk about your products and ideas, they are far more likely to find a story more interesting, memorable and engaging than a straight pie graph or chart.

Today we will give you 12 quick tips on using story telling as an effective part of speeches and one on one interaction with your team:

1. Be natural

Don’t recite a story word for word.  The audience will know if it is memorized.  Tell is casually.  If they know that you are trying to memorize and you are stumbling for your words, they will figure this out quickly and your message will be lost.  Approach story telling as though you are speaking to the audience in your living room.   Even get closer to them than you normally would, get out from behind the podium, make an interaction and personal connection with them.  In the United States about 4 to 5 feet away from people is a good personal distance away.

2. Keep it lean.

Don’t turn the story into a novel.  Stick to the basics of who, what, when and where.   Keep it under a minute or two.  You might ask yourself if there is any part of the story that you don’t need, and pull that part out.

3. Know what you are trying to accomplish

Telling a story for its own sake doesn’t improve the speech.  Many people start off speeches with a joke that has nothing to do with the topic.  Have it tie back into your message.

4. Tie the story to the point being made

An example of this, when I was selling diagnostics, our selling team figured out all of the tiny little glitches and weaknesses of our competition. 
I related a story of the storming of Normandy Beach in World War II, to small packs of 4 or 5 non commissioned officers that picked out those tiny little weaknesses in the German defense line and exploited them in order to win that entire battle.  I related that back to what we do on a daily basis with our competition.  If you are going to tell a story about the Normandy landings on D-Day in World War II, relate it back to something specific and something that you are trying to reinforce to your group.  In this case it was how important it is for us to know our competition, their strong points as well as their tiny little weaknesses and then exploit the weaknesses just like the Allies did back in 1944.

5. Don’t overdo it.

Limit the number of stories to 2 or 3.  If you start telling a story on every little point, people are going to loose you.  I have been guilty of this, I have done presentations where I have had 7 or 8 points that I wanted to get to, and I told
I told a story on each one.  Even though they didn’t last too long, that was probably too much.  If you have 7 or 8 points, maybe tell stories for 3 of them and cite examples of the other points.

6. Balance failure with success

If you are trying to motivate your sales people, one of the best ways to connect with them and get your message across is to underscore your failures.  It is not always bright, blue skies; there are times when they are going to fail. If you manage sales people that do cold calling they might make 100 calls to get 10 appointments to make one sale.  That means 99 times out of 100, they are really failing, but they are getting to that one sale.  You can talk about your failures as well.  Makes you much more transparent, builds trust, and helps motivate them as well.

7. Don’t fabricate

Don’t make anything up.  If your audience thinks that you’ve made up a story, then you will lose credibility. You can cite an example of somebody else, but if you say it was you, when really it was somebody else, they will figure that out quite quickly.  Sales people are adept at picking up nonverbal clues and if you are telling a lie they will notice very quickly.

8. Don’t be obvious

During the set up, make sure that it isn’t immediately evident of where that story is going to go.   If you give it away too early, you reduce the suspense.  Make sure when you start the story, you don’t give away the ending so that there is a certain amount of suspense.  If they don’t know where the story is going, then that is more effective and it will keep them engaged during the entire story.

9. Collect your material

Build a file of great stories along the way.  Find something in a magazine and put in into a swipe file to be used as a story or anecdote for future use.  You can go to your swipe file to help you in creating speeches.  If you are reading about somebody that has done great things locally, or a great historical figure you can sprinkle those into stories just like the World War II story of D-Day.  Create a swipe file of sorts. 

10. Maintain eye contact

It is extremely important to connect with people visually so that their attention doesn’t wander.  Make sure that you know your material so that you can wander around and get into their personal space from 4 or 5 feet away and look at their eyes.  Make that eye contact.

11. Use controls

Your voice has 3 control knobs:  speed, volume, and tone.  You can use all three of these components in different ways; you can turn up the volume to emphasis something or speak a little more softly in other parts to be more subtle.  You can adjust each of these three components to relay your message for maximum impact.

12. Practice

Memorize the details of the story and then relate them off the cuff.  The first two minutes are usually my weakest times, so I would rehearse the main points several times.  Once I nailed that beginning then I would get into a flow.  Sometimes I write down some key words that you want to touch on, so that you don’t get off course on those crucial first few minutes.  It goes without saying, if you are going to do a long speech, practice it over and over again.  As Winston Churchill used to say, “If you speech is 10 minutes long, you should practice 10 times that”.  That would be a hundred minutes of practice. That is a good gauge to use so you will knock it out of the park.  This is very effective in group speeches as well as one on one conversation that you have with your reps.

This method is effective with all motivational profiles.  As we have talked about in previous shows the Sales Management Academy for our paid members, you can figure out what profile each individual person fits in.  Speeches and story telling is one universal tactic that you can use during meetings and one on ones to make maximum impact with your team.

To summarize:

1. Be natural
2. Keep it lean
3. Know what you are trying to accomplish
4. Tie the story to the point being made
5. Don’t overdue it
6. Balance failures with success
7. Don’t fabricate
8. Don’t be obvious
9. Collect your material in a swipe file
10. Maintain good eye contact
11. Use controls of volume, speed and tone
12. Practice, practice, practice 

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