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This is the final and fourth post of ‘The Storytelling Enterprise’ series. This series outlines the power and promise of capturing the organizations’ relevant selling stories for your sales team and – in a timely way – delivering them so they can be easily practiced, coached and mastered.

Our story so far:

Part I of the Story Telling Enterprise blog series outlined the power of everyone in your company capturing stories for the sales team and gave some good examples of selling stories.

Part II outlines how to capture your stories in a story deck that is easy to use and in a format that a sales person can easily digest and practice.

Part III shares a successful way to organize your weekly story workshops to get your reps comfortable learning new stories and mastering them.

Part IV addresses the question – how do you navigate busy calendars and multiple time zones to make role playing your company’s selling stories convenient and scalable?

Please click here to continue this post on the SharperAx blog site

This is the third of a four part series on The Storytelling Enterprise. This series outlines the power and promise of capturing the organizations’ relevant selling stories for your sales team and – in a timely way – delivering them so they can be easily practiced and mastered.

Hubspot approached me about posting the third installment of the Storytelling Enterprise on their sales blog, which I was delighted to do.  Please click here to continue reading, thanks!

This is the second of a four post series on The Storytelling Enterprise. This series outlines the power and promise of capturing the organizations’ relevant selling stories for your sales team and – in a timely way – delivering them so they can be easily practiced and mastered.

Our story so far

Part I of the Story Telling Enterprise blog series outlined the power of everyone in your company capturing stories for the sales team and gave some good examples of selling stories.  But what format do you use and how do you deliver these stories to your sellers?

The evolution of the story deck

Although it is now an integral part of our standard playbook, the story deck took a long time to evolve into its current form.

When I started my playbook consulting practice, I was focused on capturing the key selling magic in the sales tools that make up the sales playbook.  The focus would vary from engagement to engagement, but there was usually a need to tighten the focus on a sweet spot, further differentiate the evaluation process, bring potential deal breakers forward and qualify harder early on, communicate business value more frequently, be prepared with competitor silver bullets, be ready to respond to prospect questions and objections etc.

But a funny thing always seemed to happen.

Please click here to continue this blog on the SharperAx blog site.

This is the first of a four post series on The Storytelling Enterprise.  This series outlines the power and promise of capturing the organizations’ relevant selling stories for your sales team and – in a timely way – delivering them so they can be easily practiced and mastered.

‘Selling’ Stories Are Key to Good Selling

Companies hire salespeople to have influential conversations that compel prospects to consider — and ultimately buy – their offering.

When a good salesperson is having a conversation with a prospect, they are usually asking thoughtful questions, listening actively, and telling relevant stories.  These “selling” stories are typically short (no longer than three minutes—think four to six bullet points) and are usually about the salesperson’s industry, company, customers, competitors, or offering. They are often told in response to a prospect’s question or objection (stated or implied).

Please click here to continue this blog on the SharperAx blog site:

I'm happy to introduce Tom's first post.  I had the pleasure of working with Tom both at Oracle when he was building out its application sales organization and then again when he was on my board of advisers at Nimblefish.  Tom is a leading expert in target marketing strategy, sales models, value pricing strategies, negotiation and just plain old selling!   He is one of the very few software folks who has driven over $1BB of software sales and he has done it through all kinds of economies so his thoughts on selling in this recession are particularly interesting.

Seven Changes to Make on a Rainy Day

You bet. It's time to buckle up. Change the way you do things. Take advantage of what you have and start improving your bottom line today. Polish the car and get it serviced instead of buying a new one. Paint the house instead of moving. Focus on local festivals instead of traveling to new continents. In other words, take this time to re-examine what's real today. Fix it. Make it better. Benefit from it.

If you are in business today you have customers, real live people who depend on your product to get their work done. You have a market that works. It may be soft, but you know that it works. Under normal conditions the organizations in those markets need your solution. So why not take this time to capitalize on your existing customers and re-sell into your market? Polish your organization. Re-paint your product. Focus on your market. Stay home.

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