If you’ve ever studied marketing, you know how powerful stories can be. They are the key to great sales and marketing, and when done correctly, they can completely change your business. The right stories are engaging, entertaining and they teach your farm how working with you can change their life and the community you serve. You’ve heard of story telling, but have you heard of story selling?
In short, story selling is when you use story telling combined with sales to connect with your audience. You aren’t just telling a story, you are story selling.
Not sure where to start? Here are 5 types of story selling strategies you can use in your farm to convert more business!
Share Your Brand Story
One of the easiest ones to understand for many agents is your Brand Story.
This is when you share the story of you and your business in your farm. You share your unique value propositions, what makes you different, what you bring to the community and how you make it a better place to live.
Your Brand Story should focus on the problems you plan to fix in the farm and the solutions you offer. It’s how you position (from the C.P.R.) yourself in your farm to stand out.
The main focus should be to help instill the right image or perception of you and your brand in your community’s minds so they see you as the right choice for them and the community.
It helps you stand out while also explaining what you’re all about.
Share Your Values
For many consumers, the values you align with can make or break their decision to work with you or not. When you share your values through story selling, you are able to connect with your audience on a deeper level.
So how do you do that?
You might share how you came to develop your values and what you learned along the way. You may share important causes you care about or social issues that matter in your community. These stories help your audience understand what exactly it is that you stand for.
I’m sure you’ve seen it before. You check out a company’s website and want to get to know them.
You jump over to the “about us” page and find a pretty cookie cutter mission statement. It’s usually filled with fluff and buzz words but there is nothing else out there to back up these believes.
The right story brand based marketing can help fill those gaps so people don’t just READ what you believe, they see you live it.
Share Your Backstory
You may not think your personal back story will help you sell homes and connect with your farm.
Especially if you are new to the business. The reality is that most consumers what to work with a REAL person. Not some cookie cutter cloned agent. By sharing your personal back story, you have a chance to connect with your farm. You may talk about the origins of your business, or your path to where you are now. Maybe you share some hardships you have had to overcome or some amazing achievements you have made.
But a great backstory doesn’t just tell people who you are, it connects people to you and also helps solve their problems. Maybe your back story shares a problem you faced that they may be facing and how you overcame it. You could share your story about fighting for the little guy and how that impacts the community. Maybe you share some wins that you had that they may be struggling to achieve themselves and you explain how you can help them do that too.
The key to making this work is by tapping into their emotions by using story. These emotions are what make people take action. You’ve probably heard it before, but it’s so true: People make decisions based on emotions and then justify it with logic.
Share your story and don’t forget to be honest and real!
Share Before and After Stories
You’ve seen them before. You’ve seen them often.
Before and after stories! The reason you see them so often is because they work! Whether its weight loss stories, rags to riches stories, home reno shows or any failure to success stories.
These “before and after” stories help people connect with what is possible. If you can show them what they too could accomplish, it becomes so much more real in their minds. That’s why staging homes works so well in real estate. It’s a true before and after story. You are showing what a home could be!
You should use your clients before and after stories to help connect. Maybe they worked with another agent before you and didn’t have any luck but then you knocked it out of the park for them. Maybe you could show buyers who were renting and couldn’t afford to buy a home until you gave them great advice and got them into their first place. Or you could share home some of your clients home renovation stories of their before and afters!
The key to the perfect before and after story is starting with a bad or uncomfortable situation and share how you helped the situation become better for you or your clients. Share how working with you solved the problem or made their life easier and how others can get the same result.
Share Your Customer Testimonials
People love to work with people that can be trusted. One of the easiest ways to help build this trust is through customer testimonials. These testimonials signal to others that you are a legit business and that you can be trusted. I’m sure at some point in your life you have gone online and read reviews about a company or product you were interested in.
If you don’t think the general public isn’t doing the same thing with real estate agents, you are sadly mistaken. People want to see if others have had a good experience so they can take the guess work out of making the right decision.
Humans hate to look bad and they don’t want to get stuck using the wrong product or service.
The right testimonials can help your audience connect and relate to you because others have already done so. They can see themselves in the eyes of the other customers who have come before them.
The key to a great customer testimonials is ensuring they are authentic. This will ensure you have the greatest impact. A boring cookie cutter testimonial will not only not resonate; it will sound fake and contrived. Remember what we talked about earlier about using emotions to connect with people.
If you haven’t done so yet, go back and ask some of your best clients and community contacts to write you a testimonial (and an online review). Ask them to be honest about what kind of impact you have had in their lives. If you did your job right, most will be happy to provide this for you as they want to see you succeed too!
Your Customer Is the Star!
Just remember, it doesn’t matter what kind of story telling (or story selling) you do, you have to ensure the customer is the star.
It’s not all about you. It’s about what you can do for them.
They have to connect to and relate with your stories and see themselves as the hero. Once you understand your audience well enough, you will learn what connects with them the most. This will make your story telling so much more relatable and make the transition into a sale so much smoother.
Remember that the goal of story selling is to sell, not just tell. Build relationships by sharing your stories so they will build trust with you and WANT to work with you. Keep this goal in mind as you craft your stories.
If you like the idea of story selling and want more help with it, the great news is we will be introducing a course designed specifically all about story selling in the new year. Keep an eye out for it so you won’t miss out.
Happy Farming!
Ryan Smith – Founder/Creator
Launch Your Farm
Be sure to check back on our blog and show to get awesome information about geographic farming!
Blog – http://www.LaunchYourFarm.com/Blog
Show – http://launchyourfarm.com/category/interviews
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