The Power of Storytelling While Cold Calling for Sales
When cold calling for sales, we are often trying to get a point across in a very short amount of time. Typically, you are trying to share how you can help the prospect and one of the most powerful ways to accomplish this is by using the technique of storytelling. Let’s look at three scenarios to display the power of this.
Scenario 1
Let’s look at a scenario that does not pertain to direct sales to take a step away from true selling. Take two young boys that go to school together. One of the boys consistently picks on the other. The boy that is the brunt of the jokes and antagonizing is clearly bothered by the behavior of the other.
A teacher steps in to talk with the boy that is doing the bullying and tells him to stop and it is not very nice. As the boy listens to this, he thinks it is no big deal and it is funny. The instructions go in one ear and then out the other and nothing changes. The teacher was trying to sell the boy on not bullying but the message did not have enough of an influence to get attention and change behavior.
Scenario 2
Take the same scenario as above, but now add a component of storytelling. As the teacher tells the boy that he needs to stop, he then goes on to tell a story of two boys that were also bullied while in school. The teacher then shared how the bullying caused stress, anger, and depression and bothered the boys so much that they had a desire to harm others. Then the teacher shared that the two boys ended up bringing guns to the school and ended up killing twelve students, one teacher, and injuring twenty-one other, before taking their own lives. The event directly impacted thirty-six different families and indirectly impacted an entire community and nation. And this all started with a one boy picking on another.
A harsh example, but it displays the power a story can have (details taken from the school shooting at Columbine High School in 1999). Which scenario do you think has a better chance at getting attention and motivating behavior and action?
Scenario 3
Now we can apply the same logic of storytelling to cold calling for sales. When you have a prospect on the phone, you have to be quick and to the point for how you can help them. The best way to do that is to tell a story. Here is an example of how to do that just that:
Hello Ms. Gonzales, my name is Tony Waters, I am with Trinket Corp. Purpose for my call is that is that we have been working with your competitor, Tucker Energy, and have helped them to improve their inventory turnover by 30%. This lead to an increase in revenue of $250K the first year that we worked together. This all started with a 30 minute discussion with them. Are you available to put a few minutes on the calendar to explore if we can drive the same results for you?
As you can see, when you add a quick story while cold calling for sales, you can quickly paint a picture for how you can help them and why the should invest some time talking with you at a minimum.
When 
