I recently had the privilege of attending a presentation by Kindra Hall, author, speaker, and storytelling advisor. I also receive her weekly email and her last email really resonated with me. She talked about individuals and corporations alike spending days, weeks, even months hashing out their values and mission statement, only to have them fall flat. Why? She argues clients and employees don’t resonate with words, they resonate with stories. Stories about those words, what those words mean to the individual, and how they make them feel.
This is especially true in my experience with sales. I have 18 years under my belt of either selling insurance or advising new reps how to sell insurance. Let me tell you, people don’t buy products, they buy the way that product, or service, makes them feel. An old adage in our industry is “features tell, benefits sell”. For example, a feature you can purchase on car insurance is road service, want to buy it? Now a benefit of road service is if you ever break down on the side of the road you’ll have a number to call and someone will be there to help you out no matter what time of the day or night, want to buy it?
Borrowing from Kindra I would take it even a step further and say you need to add a personal story to the benefit. I often tell my new reps don’t sell car insurance to a client, you need to sell coverage to the person in a claim. You need to tell a story of a claim, either you were in, or steel someone else’s claims story until you have your own. Walk that person you’re talking to through that claims experience, don’t leave out the details. Ask them what they would want to happen if they were involved in that claim, get them away from just thinking what’s this going to cost every month. Customers don’t want to pay for vehicle rental coverage, but someone who was involved in a bad at fault accident definitely wants another car to get to work while theirs is being fixed.
Back to how this all started, your mission statement and values. Can you tell them to someone in a story, with passion and feelings? If not, I’d suggest going back to the drawing board, if so, you’re on the right track.
Jeremy L Peterson's Blog 