Mike Bosworth: The Power of Story in Sales

Conversational Selling

About Mike Bosworth: Mike Bosworth is the author of three books on selling, a keynote speaker on sales, marketing, and leadership, and in his later years, enjoys being known as a 'sales philosopher.' Mike's passion is helping people land the job of their dreams, assisting salespeople in exceeding their goals, and supporting their families. He enjoys leading experiential workshops on sales and leadership. Mike began his career in the information technology industry in 1972 on the Help Desk for Xerox Computer Services. He was their top new business salesperson in 1975, managed the "Branch of the Year" in 1979, and was promoted to Manager of Field Sales in 1980. Mike founded his Solution Selling business in 1983. Mike has a B.S. in Business Management and Marketing from California State Polytechnic University. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Mike.

In this episode, Nancy and Mike discuss the following:

• The science of selling through emotional connection
• Why most people do not like salespeople
• The importance of asking for permission to tell the story
• The science behind storytelling for sales success
• Leveraging the psychology of storytelling in sales conversations

Key Takeaways:

• The authentic secret sauce of connecting with strangers is a 60-second customer hero story.
• When you're in sales, that's like original sin.
• No matter how good your story is, you can't go up to a stranger and start telling even a 60-second story: you must get permission.

"The biggest problem large organizations with lots of salespeople have been trying to solve for the past 40 years that I've been a sales trainer is that 20% of the people sell 80% of the business. And that top 20%, the real difference—and it took me years to figure this out—is that they have an intuitive ability to connect and build trust quickly with strangers emotionally. So, my mission as a sales trainer for all these years has been to help the bottom 80%, the people who are not natural intuitive trust-building connectors, help them feed their families, buy a house, and send their kids to college. And when you go into the enterprise sales range, for instance, in the mid-90s, in my Solution Selling organization, we trained 15,000 IBM salespeople. " – MIKE

"So, if you think about it, most people will not admit a problem to someone they don't trust, so the story creates an emotional connection and enough trust that they could risk sharing their problem. And once they share a problem, they go from suspect to prospect." – MIKE

"The best salespeople I've known over the last 40 years rarely have to close because their EQ, their emotional intelligence, is so high, and they're willing to help the buyer buy rather than try and "sell" them something, and people love to buy. Human beings hate to feel sold to, but they love to buy. So, the very best salespeople rarely must close because they're so good at facilitating the buying. So smart companies, when they hire new salespeople, they don't teach them about the product; they teach them how their customers use the product." – MIKE

Connect with Mike Bosworth:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikebosworth/
• Story Seekers: https://www.storyseekers.us/
• We Concile: https://weconcile.com/

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