Your entire perspective on sales will shift if you embrace this marketing truth: you need to be selling stories, not products, to your prospects.
In this longer coaching video, I’ll share why clear communication is so important to connecting with your prospects and the storytelling formula I’ve had enormous success with in my career.
Resources:
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- Connect with me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andyneary/
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- Connect with me on Instagram: instagram.com/andy_neary/
Video Transcript:
This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
A lesson I learned from a mentor of mine was to ditch clever for clear. And what you’re going to learn in this lesson. And the two that follow is how to craft a very simple message that attracts good prospects. You see, what we’re talking about is a brand story. Now, when you think about storytelling in our industry, I know where your head went a little bit.
You see, most in the industry want to talk about themselves. What you’re going to learn about today is a little secret of how we flip the marketing message. That’s going to change everything for your business, because let’s be honest, here’s a couple truths about marketing today. Number one, too many good opportunities go to waste with poor communication. You know you’re smart.
You know you have great products. You have great strategies. But without good communication, you’re not going to attract the right prospects and your message is going to fall on deaf ears. Another mistake made far too often in the insurance industry is we focus our message on ourselves. Too much marketing is spent on it. Let me tell you why we’re awesome.
When you’ve got to be talking to your prospects. Because here are the brutal truths. Number one, no one cares when you are founded. They really don’t. Number two, they don’t care how great you are. All your prospects want to know is what’s in it for them. And in this lesson in the two that follow, you’re going to learn how to craft a message that has your best prospects raising their hand.
You see, good marketing does two things. Number one, it creates curiosity. It gets the right prospects to say, that’s interesting. I want to know more. And when you create that curiosity with your prospects that intrigue, now, you can take them to the next step and let your credibility come in. So if there’s one thing I want you to remember when it comes to crafting a targeted marketing message is start with curiosity.
Back it up with credibility. The other secret people don’t understand in this business is winning. Business today is about selling stories. It’s not about selling products. Yes, you have a wide array of products you can offer your clients, but if you’re going to get them to do business with you, if you’re going to get them to cross the finish line, you’ve got to start selling better stories and there’s not a better story to tell then your prospects story.
You see, my career changed when I read this book right here Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. If you haven’t read this book, I highly urge you to go get a hard copy. Get the audible. He’s got a fantastic possible podcast out there called Business Made Simple. What changed my career is when I read this book, I realized there was a entirely different way to pitch my services to the market.
And what I realized I was doing all along was I was talking about the wrong person. You see, like you, I was spending all my time trying to convince my prospects why I was the best fit. I spent all of my time and effort in my marketing to talk about who we were, how long we’ve been around, all of our expertise.
I was trying to prove how great I was and none of it mattered. By reading this book, I realized there is only one thing that matters, and that’s telling the prospect’s story, not mine. In fact, this book has meant so much to my career. I went out and got certified as a story brand guide to be able to bring these tools to our clients, and by watching this lesson in the two that follow, you’re actually going to get access to some of the tools directly through the story brand model.
Because here’s the reality. Clear communication creates a clear connection. Remember, when it comes to marketing, when it comes to crafting a message that’s going to attract the prospects you want. Ditch clever for clear. Just keep it simple. All right. We’re going to dive into the brand script storytelling formula here. Story selling formula. That is, as I mentioned in the last lesson, as a story brand certified guide.
I’m excited to be able to bring this concept to you because this changed everything in my career. When I learned how to tell better stories through my social media, through my webinars, through my public speaking. That is when I started attracting prospects I never dreamed I could get in front of. And I know this can do the same thing for you if you leverage it the right way.
So what is the storytelling formula? Looks a little like this. Now you might look at this and say, Andy, what in the heck is this? This is the actual brand script that comes from story Brand. But I’m going to give you a much clearer version. This is how we tell stories. You see what you’re about to learn. I Hate to Tell You is going to ruin every book you read and every movie you watch from here on out, because they have all been built the same way.
They all tell a story in the same formula. And that story goes like this. There’s a hero who has a goal, but they encounter a problem keeping them from that goal. And when they realize that problem is keeping them from the goal, they go seeking a guide who has got a plan to help them avoid failure and achieve success.
And a book and a movie is nothing more than a repeating loop of story after story after story that follows this formula. Now what we’re going to do here is we are going to write out the story of your ideal prospect. Now, there’s one thing I want you to remember when it comes to writing good stories. And that’s step one.
Every story is a hero. I asked you, who’s the hero of your story? Who is it going to be? Is it you? Is your agency or is it your prospect? Yeah. That’s right. It’s your prospect is the hero. Remember to write effective marketing. Marketing, messaging. It has to start with targeting the hero being your prospect, not you and your agency.
So let’s dive into this exercise. Let’s build out your brand script. Start here. What is your prospects goal? Now, the best way to answer this question is to go back to the five star prospect profile exercise and think about the problem you love solving. If you think about the problem you love solving, you can reverse engineer what’s your prospects goal?
Is it to make sure their business is protected? Is it to recruit and retain, attract and retain good employees? Is it to lower their insurance cost? What is it? What is your prospects goal? The hero’s goal.
Because with that goal, we’ve got to answer question number two. What problem is keeping them from achieving their goal? Now, if you’ve already done the five star prospect profile, this work is already done because you should have answered the external problem, the internal problem and the philosophical problem. And a quick refresh. Remember, the external problem is the obvious problem.
Rising health insurance cost or coverage, lack of coverage, uncovered risks, whatever it might be. The external problem is the obvious problem staring the prospect in the face. But we can’t overlook the internal problem. Remember, the internal problem is those questions, those doubts, those fears your prospects have when they look at themselves in the mirror. Those questions are asking themselves.
When nobody else is around, we got to be able to create marketing that cuts right to the internal problem, because every goal has a problem that is keeping your hero from achieving the goal they’re trying to establish. Now in this story, when they realize that they have a problem, this is when they go seeking help. If they don’t know they have a problem, they’re not going to go seek help.
And that’s a challenge for you right now, because let’s face it, most of your prospects may not even know what their problem is. And when it comes to the lesson on creating content, I think you know where we need to start directing some of that content towards. Help your prospects uncover problems, because when they have the problem, they go seeking the guide.
You are the guide. Now, if you read the book Building a Story Brand, Donald Miller references some movies like Star Wars and then the movie The Hero is Luke Skywalker. The guide is Yoda and Obi-Wan. You are the Yoda and you’re trying to help Luke Skywalker, your prospect. Now a guide must have two things a guide must be able to show empathy, to say, hey, listen, you’re struggling with this problem.
And I get it. It’s not easy to solve, but the process the guide must also have credibility. And when we get to the lesson on content, like I said, you are going to learn how to create a lot of expert credibility. So as the guide, you have got to be able to show empathy and you have got to have credibility.
Now, when they start seeking you, the reason they’re coming to you is because you have a process, you have a plan. Now, if you go back to the five star prospect profile, you’ve already answered this. Hopefully you have a repeatable process you’ve named that is helping your prospects solve the problem you love solving. Now, a lot of advisors we work with get stuck here.
Maybe you are too, which is Andy, you’re having me focus on one problem, one solution here, and we solve a lot of problems and we have different solutions. I get it, but remember, what we’re doing right now is we’re crafting a message to go target your best clients. And your best clients are the ones who have the problem you love solving.
That’s going to be fixed by the solution you have that you do better than anybody else. That’s the name of the game today. It’s not about becoming known for many things. It’s about becoming known for one thing. Because now that you have the solution, you have two jobs as the guide. Number one, you’re going to help them create a successful result.
What is that result? You help your ideal prospect create, but equally important.
What failure are you keeping them away from? What would happen if they don’t hire you? You see, when it comes to trying to attract our best prospects, we love spending on time on the success we’re going to help them create, but we don’t spend enough time on what’s going to happen if they don’t do what you suggest, what is their life going to look like?
If they don’t make any changes, they keep doing the same thing over and over again. Because any time you pitch your services to a prospect, they have two choices. They can hire you or they don’t. What’s your life going to look like if they don’t hire? You have to craft that message and use that message in your marketing.
Use that message in your proposals because it’s going to be very effect when it comes to pushing your ideal prospects across the finish line. Now here’s where this. Can absolutely take your prospecting to the next level. Now that you’ve got this story that you’re going to put out to the market to attract the right prospects, I want to imagine you’re sitting in an intro meeting, a discovery meeting with a prospect, and you’re asking questions like, what’s your goal right now?
What would it mean if you could achieve it? What’s the problem keeping you from achieving it? And how is that problem affecting you today? What you’re doing is getting the key components of your prospect story. What you’re going to learn in phase four is this is going to set up a more effective intro meeting, a more effective proposal when you can sell your prospect story.
Because with this brand story in hand, here’s what you’re doing. You’re now directing the right message at the right prospects. And when you direct the right message at the right prospect, you’re going to start winning business with less opportunity. You don’t need to have dozens of prospects in your pipeline, because you’re going to have the right ones in your pipeline.
You see more revenue starts by attracting the right prospects, and you have to attract the right prospects by having the right message. And if you use this brand story, story selling formula, you’re going to be setting your lasers on the right prospects, and it’s going to attract the best ones in your pipeline. And your job of selling just became a lot easier.
Business is no longer about who you know. Business is about who knows you. In a noisy industry like we’re in gang, you got to get people to know who you are.