A Story To Tell

“There’s a place in a piney hollow, That no one but me can find
Some Choctaw built it in the hillside, Stone by stone in a simpler time
It’s a holy place, my daddy showed me, Back before this land of mine
On the blue side of the mountain, Where the sun don’t ever shine
So deep and dark like a hurtin’ down in my heart, Maybe somethin’ there will show me some kind of sign
On the blue side of the mountain, Where the sun don’t ever shine”

–     Lyric from “Blue Side Of The Mountain” by The SteelDrivers

In the profession of selling, we can “pitch.”  We can persuade.  We can cajole, argue, convince, debate, present, wine and dine — heck the list is pretty much infinite.  There are a bazillion ways we can yap our way to an outcome.

Or, we can tell a story.

The wide-eyed wonder that little children bring to story time is still in us, and it’s still in our clients and prospects.  And, it’s dying to get out.

Consider the possibilities.  Today, they might receive 200 e-mails.  They’ll get a few dozen text messages.  They’ll be bombarded with advertising and marketing messages to the tune of a few thousand before they hit the pillow tonight.

But how many stories will they be told?

HP and Apple can still romanticize their garage roots.  Michael Dell has built a gargantuan business that is about to complete the largest acquisition in the history of the technology world — and people still refer to it as “the business he started in his dorm room.”

What is your story?  How does it deserve to be told?  How will you tell it?

And most importantly, how does it draw out the wide-eyed wonder in the person to whom it will be told?

“It’s a holy place my daddy showed me.  On the blue side of the mountain.  Where the sun don’t ever shine….”  Feels different, a few paragraphs later, doesn’t it?

We owe it to our teams to give them a story to tell.  They owe it to us to tell it, compellingly.

The profession of selling is honorable.  When we master the art of storytelling, it’s still fun, too!