Storytelling - Sales Asset

Challenge: So, the place where I work is called upGrad, where I work as an Admissions  Counselor helping people in enrolling into our education programs. Now, as a counselor, my job  is to make sure that the learners are really able to understand the USP of the program, where  they can connect it to their career and can really see its value. But apparently, I used to be like a  chatbot(website), just telling the data which was already present on the website. Thus, my  conversion ratio (lead to sales) was less since not many learners could identify the benefits of  enrolling into the program.      Selection: I understood that I will have to change the way I counsel and add more meaning and  value to it. The tool which I used was story-telling. I could understand that for a learner to  completely relate to our program(product), it is important that I share relevant examples which  he could easily relate to. And thus, he would get the underlying value addition of the program.      Application: So, moving forward, in all my counselling, I used to tell two stories where in the first  case(let’s say X), the learner who took the program and then, explained his career growth after  few years, how he could moved up the corporate ladder, how he managed to apply his learnings  into various work activities, how he used to networking for better opportunities etc. In the second  case(consider Y), the learner did not enroll into the program and thereby lead to a flat trajectory  of career growth and where he missed on various opportunities to scale up.      Insight: By doing this, there were three clear insights viz. 1) There is more engagement with the  learner during the counselling. 2) I am able to build more trust with the learner. 3) The  conversion of lead to sales has increased phenomenally.      Approach: In future, I am looking to innovate with various styles of storytelling; one of which is  the prompting where I keep on continuously asking questions regarding their future and whether  they are taking active steps in that direction. The moment I find an answer where they aren’t  prepared would be my gateway to explain the benefit of our program linking to that question in a  storytelling manner.

