1: What’s the difference between a fact and a story?
A fact is, “The queen died and the king died,” Dan Pink writes in his book A Whole New Mind.
A story is, “The queen died and the king died of a broken heart.”
This week, we’ve been exploring the power of telling customer stories with contrast. Now, take a closer look at what makes these stories compelling.
First, what does “contrast” refer to?
The before, also known as “the pain.”
And the after, also known as “the gain,” as described by Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer in their book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
What’s the missing element of many business stories? Emotion.
How do you bring in emotion? You talk about the people who were impacted by the challenging situation (the pain).
Then, show how their lives became “better, easier, more fun, or less stressful after using your solution,” according to Erik and Tim.
One problem with many customer stories? They aren’t actually stories. They’re really just a data dump in a different form.
“In preparation for some messaging work with a multi-billion-dollar software firm, we received 100 customer stories to review,” Erik and Tim write. “If you had read those customer stories, you would have noticed that they were missing one important element: human beings.
“They read like one robot company had worked with another robot company and produced some robot results.
“There was no sense of real people being frustrated with the way things were before the company solved its problem,” they note, “and there was no sense of people being happy with the new way things were being done after the company bought this solution.”
First element: Show emotion.
2: The second element of a great business story: Include “telling details.”
“Using telling details cures one of the big challenges in customer stories—the failure to be interesting,” the authors write.
Telling details are small pieces of information that bring a story to life.
Tom Wolfe, the author of The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Right Stuff, once said, “You can tell a lot about a character just by the shoes he’s wearing.”
Here is an example of telling details in a customer story from one of Tim and Erik’s clients.
“We were working with a company that supplies filter bags to businesses like cement companies,” they share.
“These filter bags are similar to the ones you have in a vacuum cleaner, but obviously are much larger and more highly engineered. They go inside of the ‘baghouse’ for these big pieces of equipment.”
Erik and Tim were gathering stories for the sales team; the stories were acceptable, but a bit dry.
Then, one salesperson turned to the person next to him and said, “You know what I love about this customer? Before they started using our bags, they used to have what they called ‘baghouse parties’ once a month.
“This was a big joke, like a moving party or something else that nobody wants to do. They would make a bunch of their people come in on the weekends and change the old filter bags.”
Erik and Tim jumped on the concept of the “bag-house parties.”
Did the customer still hold those baghouse parties now that they had started using the company’s solution? The salesperson said no.
“Baghouse parties is an example of a telling detail,” they write. “When you can tell a customer story by saying that the company used to have to hold baghouse parties once a month, and now they don’t have to hold them anymore, you’ve told your customer a tremendous amount in a very few words.
“Your customer can imagine what that situation must have been like, and what it would mean to have that problem go away.”
3: Final element of a great customer story with contrast: Make the customer the hero of the story.
Notice the difference when the salesperson is the hero.
“You can’t believe how messed up they were before I arrived,” the salesperson says in so many words. “The customer had made a bunch of bad decisions, and it was hurting their business.”
“Fortunately, I identified the problem and rescued this poor customer.”
What is the prospect thinking as they listen to this story?
“If I were to do business with this salesperson, how would they describe my situation to other people? Would they describe me as hopeless? As someone they had to rescue?
“Would you want to do business with that salesperson?” Erik and Tim ask. “Would it feel safe?”
A better approach? Make the customer the hero.
“You’ll still get credit for being part of the solution,” they point out, “and you won’t risk alienating the prospect you’re talking to.”
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Reflection: Are my stories just facts dressed up—or do they help people feel something and see themselves in the situation?
Action: Rewrite one customer story to include emotion, a telling detail, and position the customer—not you—as the hero.
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