Use your web site to tell a story…Buy valuable sales time!

[Joseph Coplans]

Some of you may know me. I got the chance to be a guest on David Sandusky’s radio show. If you gave a listen, thank you, thank you. I’m grateful for the chance and I hope it was fun. If you didn’t, heck, the broadcast is still up there and though I can’t quite compare to Garrison Keillor, it’s a blast to talk shop about the tools yourbrandplanners can use to persuade others about their value…

That’s what I do for others. By using the ‘magic of the moment’ and by getting into the rhythm of discovery, I help business owners get to the next persuasion language level. Great sales messaging, or core messaging, comes from talking about what you can remember about excellent interactions with your clients or customers—excellent interactions with the people that affect your brand, period. I’ve learned that the difference between excellent sales people and good sales people is that the group of excellents know why they persuade so well. They’ve studied how and when they hit the truths and the touch points that resonate with others. How do you study it? How do you get to the place where you can see how you’ve identified (in that customer or job prospect or potential employer) the things that matter to that person?
You get there by constantly refining your process, sure. And yes, it’s great to ask why somebody hired you…but I think it’s based on something else:

Buying some time—buying some sales time—to be exact. It’s a simple concept. Some people use props. Some people tell stories… but few people use their web site. Web sites are still passive places where we hope people will take a look and not click-off in 9 seconds. Truth is, we have a lot more control over that process than we ever knew—if we choose to enjoy the role of moderator, usher, commentator, storyteller, narrator.

So many companies are so literal about their web sites. Literal. They imagine people going there irritated and disinterested, so they create sites that make people…kind of like what they were afraid how they think people are. And this is true even for personal sites. Creating content based on the fear that “people don’t read” or just want “information” is blocking opportunities for rapport.

The goal is to slow people down…get them to lose themselves in the world of your offering—if even for a few moments…

How?

I’ve learned that having the kind of content on your site that you can actually narrate—where you can actually bring people through a narration of human stories of your triumphs and learning lessons—is an incredible way to buy critical sales time. And when you buy time, the more they buy, the more they learn the more you can accomplish together.

Example…I did it all the time when I was an account executive at a VAR (value added reseller) that sold wide format printers. I would take them to the page that had all of the stats and a beautiful image of the Mutoh printer. And they could plainly see all of the stats themselves…You want it? Just buy it, right?

Not at all!

People only buy from people they have a human sense of connection to. And after all, this was a 45K printer.

So I would talk about how Mutoh was a subsidiary of a larger company in Japan…And how this company rose out of the ashes in World War II to become one of the most successful Global entities known. I would talk about my experiences in training on it…and I would talk about how I asked questions (pre-planned practical questions) on behalf of my customers, about VOCs and space issues…
I kept them on the phone. I used the web site to buy time…

I built rapport. I used strategically placed stories to address my customer’s pain and made it sound LIKE A plain ol’ DAY IN THE LIFE OF MY EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES.

I sold a ton of those machines. Web sites are fantastic vehicles for stories. Buy critical sales time with them. They’re cheap. And they really pay off.

Here’s a sample exercise: Go to your Facebook site or your Linked In home page. Pick a “friend” or a “contact”, and tell the story about how you met to someone else. Then choose a section on your web site that has your product or services…and tell the story about why people buy from you. It will feel awkward at first, but with practice, you won’t stumble. Or, if it’s your own personal web site and you are on the phone with a potential employer, take them to the section that is about your life. Tell a story about a choice you had to make, and bring it back to how you feel valuable employees make decisions all the time for the company.

It would be great to share this forum too, as a way of first writing and telling the story you’d like to tell as you buy critical sales time. Hey, let’s hear yours!