Make People Want To Buy From You!

People buy from people.  More specifically, people buy from people they remember.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling financial services, insurance, or camel muzzles.  Everyone will say the same thing:  “I give my clients special care,”  “I’m honest and fair,” or “Our camel muzzles are the best.”  No one even says, “I only care about some of my clients,” or “I’m mostly honest,” or, my favorite, “let me tell you the truth.”  What does this mean? You weren’t telling me the truth before?  It reminds me of signs I saw in front of pubs in Edinburgh saying, “Good food being served now.”  What, if I came back in an hour the food would be lousy?

What can you do to stand out?  Again, people buy from people.  They want a story, a reason to choose you.  I’m working with a client who gave me a presentation on the history of the company she works for.  Pretty boilerplate stuff, until we dug a little deeper.  She told me that the founder of the company had a partner, and that the partner married the sister of the founder, and the founder in turn married his partner’s sister.

Now, that’s a story!  People don’t just want to buy products from that company; they want to buy products from the two guys who married each other’s sister.  Now they know something personal, and they have a hint of a unique love story.  “Let’s buy from those guys – that’s a neat story.”

This is the type of connection you need to make with your client.  They can buy your product from a dozen different people.  You have to give them a reason to buy from you.  You need to tell them a story.

Our brains are hard-wired to hear and remember stories.  How long do you think we’ve been telling stories?  The cave drawings in Chauvet, France were done 30,000 years ago.  Were they just paintings?  No, they were stories.  Stories of those people and how they lived.  All cultures passed down their history through oral tradition; essentially, story telling.

Eventually, people started writing things down.  Without delving into etymology (the study of the history of words), it’s safe to say that if you put the evolution of mankind’s communication on a timeline, we’ve only been reading and writing for a very short time.  People remember only about 25% of what they read, but 75% of what they see; and that’s what a good story will do.  It will make them “see,” or visualize what we’re telling them.  Isn’t that what we want to do on a sales call or during a presentation?

Does a good story come easy?  Usually not.  Is it worth the effort?  Well, let me ask you this.  Do you want your clients to remember you and your products and services?  You bet you do.  Tell them a story that is relevant and memorable, and they will buy from you.  Why?  Because people buy from people they remember.

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