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What is...?
What is The
Banana/Lettuce Story?
When people’s
expectations aren’t met, even when they are offered something they would
otherwise cherish, they will often become irrational and even angry.
This principle is
especially true in a sales setting. My own experience has taught me
that one of the keys to a successful sales meeting is to manage
prospective customers’ expectations.
The Banana/Lettuce
Story is the name we give to the opening narrative in a Double Your
Sales meeting with prospective customers. We do not tell
prospective customers about the experiment with chimps, bananas, and
lettuce. Instead, we make sure their expectations as to what the meeting
will look like are aligned with ours. We use “The Banana/Lettuce Story”
nomenclature in teaching the Double Your Sales process in order to
remind students of the serious consequences of not managing the
expectations of prospective customers.
When you tell The
Banana/Lettuce Story in an actual meeting with prospective customers,
you should outline what you expect to accomplish in the meeting; inquire
as to what they need and want from the meeting; and then create and
describe aloud a consensus agenda based on both sets of expectations.
What is The New Me
Story?
The New Me Story is a
brief and effective way to introduce yourself to prospective customers
and to shift the sales meeting to the right, intuitive side of the brain
where buying decisions are made. The New Me Story helps prospective
customers see you as a real person, someone who has experienced real
life, and made change for the better, in the process becoming someone
who is more capable of helping them address their concerns and find
appropriate solutions to their problems.
The New Me Story
utilizes the traditional story arc, which is found in all good
literature, movies, and television programs. It paints a picture of who
you used to be, identifies an event that shook up your world, describes
your struggle to deal with that event, and celebrates your eventual
improvement because of that event.
What is The Who Are
You Story?
The Who Are You Story
is told by prospective customers, not by you. Your role is to provide
the questions that act as a catalyst for your prospective customers to
tell you about themselves, and for you to listen attentively. I call
these kinds of questions “story-leading questions.” Story-leading
questions make it easy for customers to share experiences from their
lives.
The Who Are You Story
allows prospective customers to introduce themselves to you and to share
meaningful aspects of their history and life experience with you. The
Who Are You Story prepares prospective customers to describe the
problems and concerns that have caused them to meet with you.
If you were to diagram
The Who Are You Story, you would see that it looks something like a
funnel, moving from general questions about prospective customers such
as “How long have you lived here?” or “How did the two of you get
together?” through a description of their experiences with the types of
products or services you offer, and finally narrowing to the specific
narrative of what brings them here today.
What is The Worry
Story?
The Worry Story is your
prospective customers’ expression of their concerns and what lies behind
those concerns. The Worry Story usually follows quite naturally from
The Who Are You Story, especially the segment that explains what brought
them to see you today.
The Worry Story is told
by your prospective customers, usually in response to your story-leading
questions. It is essential that prospective customers articulate their
worries themselves; it doesn’t count if you try to tell them what their
worries are.
Your prospective
customers may only have one very large, compelling worry, but often they
are troubled by several concerns. The Double Your Sales process is more
successful if you can help them identify multiple worries. Human nature
is such that it is easy to dismiss a single worry, even a large and
frightening one, but it is more difficult to dismiss several clustered
worries.
What is The Hidden
Waterfall Story?
The Hidden Waterfall
Story is a story from your personal experience, from the experience of a
colleague, or from the life of a famous person about someone who made a
serious mistake and, as a result, got into serious trouble.
The label "Hidden
Waterfall Story" is a metaphor, much like The Banana/Lettuce Story. In
this metaphor, you are an experienced river guide, and you are taking a
group of inexperienced tourists on a kayaking trip. They are kayaking
merrily down the middle of the river, unaware of the dangers that lurk
ahead. Because of your experience, you understand those dangers. Your
job is to warn them of the dangers and help them avoid the pitfalls.
In this particular
stretch of river, although the water is smooth and flowing easily, you
know that just around the next bend lies a 100 foot waterfall. If the
kayakers do not change course quickly, the current will soon become so
swift they cannot resist it and they will plunge over the waterfall to
serious injury or even death.
Unfortunately, because
it’s such a pretty day and the river is so peaceful, and because they
suspect your motives anyway, the tourists aren’t inclined to listen to
you or believe you. Simply telling them of the dangers isn’t working.
You must find a way to communicate with them so they will appreciate the
serious danger they are in and take corrective action.
The solution is to tell
them of someone else who failed to recognize or heed the dangers
they faced and, as a result, suffered the painful consequences. That is
what I call a Hidden Waterfall Story.
What is The
Consequences Story?
The Consequences Story
is a story told by prospective customers about the potential impact of
their failure to properly address the worries and problems they have
identified.
The Consequences Story
is a narration of what the future might look like to prospective
customers if they do not deal with their areas of concern. It is told
in response to your story-leading questions, questions that invite them
to look forward and picture what might occur if they fail to take
action.
Typically, you will
invite prospective customers to imagine and narrate a Consequences Story
that addresses each of the worries or problem areas they have identified
and that drills down into three or four levels of impact to themselves
and those they love.
What is The Benefits
Story?
The Benefits Story is
told by prospective customers about the potential impact of fixing the
problems and concerns they have identified.
The Benefits Story is
their narrative of a future in which their areas of concern have been
handled. It is told in response to your story-leading questions,
questions that invite them to look forward and picture what might occur
if they find and implement answers to their problems.
What is The Kind of
Like You Story?
The Kind of Like You
Story is a short, simple story that helps prospective customers picture
themselves working with you, allowing them to enjoy the benefits and
avoid the consequences they described earlier in The Consequences Story
and The Benefits Story.
The Kind of Like You
Story works because it allows prospective customers to envision
themselves in the place of someone you helped in the past, someone with
similar issues and concerns, someone with similar hopes and aspirations,
and someone who used a similar solution to the one you're proposing.
Because of its
simplicity and its sparse nature, The Kind of Like You Story invites
prospective customers to complete the picture in their own mind by
projecting themselves into the narrative. As a result, they are able to
imagine themselves using your solutions to achieve a happy ending to
their story.
What is The How We
Do It Story?
The How We Do It Story
is a step-by-step narration of the process you use to address customers’
worries and solve their problems. It is a story-based description of
how you deliver your services or products.
What is The
Investment Story?
The Investment Story is
a narrative describing what and how prospective customers pay for the
goods and services you offer. There is always something more to talk
about than just “the number.” The Investment Story is that “something
more.”
What is The Dress
Rehearsal Story?
The Dress Rehearsal
Story is a technique for intentionally turning the meeting “analytical”
and speaking to the left side of prospective customers’ brain. It can
take any number of forms, all with the objective of bringing Mr.
Analytical squarely into the conversation during the meeting, thus
giving you an opportunity to influence his thinking.
What is The Next
Step Story?
The Next Step Story is
a conversation between you and the prospective customers in which you
and they develop a clear picture and an agreement about how you will
proceed from here. This is nothing fancy; in fact it is low-tech and
blatantly obvious. Unfortunately, it is often overlooked.
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